Everyone Is Getting the Dockworkers Strike All Wrong

Update, Oct. 3, 2024, at 6:52 p.m.: The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the International Longshoremen’s Union has agreed to suspend its strike until Jan. 15, in order to provide more time to negotiate a new contract. The two sides have apparently reached an agreement on wage increases, although other details are unknown for now. Slate’s story on the strike reads below as originally written.

The massive port disruption that economists have been warning about for weeks is finally here. At midnight on Tuesday, about 50,000 dockworkers unionized with the International Longshoremen’s Association officially began a country-spanning strike, walking off the job from 36 shipping ports on the East and Gulf coasts, from Maine down to Texas.

This stoppage, which received unanimous approval from ILA members last month, is the first of its kind since 1977; the affected ports collectively handle nearly half the U.S.’s total imports and international trades, and the ensuing interruption could cost billions of dollars a day, as a J.P. Morgan Chase analysis estimates. (The strike, however, does not extend to cruise ships or military cargo.)

Don’t worry—we’re well stocked on most necessary goods at the moment, in part thanks to a last-minute dash to get imports offloaded on U.S. shores before the strike deadline, a redirection of certain trading ships to the West Coast, and retailers replenishing their inventories in advance when possible. So there’s no need for panic purchases at your grocery store right now. Still, the nervousness is understandable, since most coverage of this strike has been framed around the potential economic impact, all the more compounded by the impending presidential election. Lots of perishable goods come through the now-closed ports, like bananas, soybeans, poultry, and alcohol. (Most other food sources, like grains, should be fine.) And independent truckers who transport goods from the shores understandably worry about their livelihood.

With interest rates finally going down for the first time in years, following a period of sticky inflation, the fear from some political forecasters is that an extended strike, lasting weeks on end, will send consumer prices soaring once again, and thus sour voters on Vice President Kamala Harris. (The Democratic nominee has stated, “The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.”)

There’s a reason the strike was one of the first news events the vice presidential debate’s moderators mentioned on Tuesday night. And why some Democrats are currently spreading conspiracy theories about its timing, even though the ILA president has praised the Biden administration and offered a full-blooded union endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. (The conspiratorial lines of argument further assume that dockworkers are not themselves consumers, and that they do not themselves have the awareness, perhaps more than anyone else, about what goods are being held up at the ports.) What’s more, the Maritime Alliance’s CEO has a barely hidden history of spreading anti-Democratic rhetoric and easily debunked right-wing disinformation.

But to focus this story on just the so-far-hypothetical economic and political repercussions is to overlook what’s really at the heart of the ILA fight. Yes, it’s a story about modern-day labor anxieties and union leverage—but it’s also about something far more complex than your typical workers-vs.-bosses toss-up.

Harris has little if any control over the tango between the ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance, the overarching business representative for the ports involved. Her boss, President Joe Biden, does have authority under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to intervene in mass work stoppages that could lead to a national emergency, if the situation is so deemed; that power was last invoked by President George W. Bush, who sued to break the West Coast dockworkers strike in late 2002 after a punishing stock-market downturn. Biden, despite pleas from Republicans to force a resolution, has avoided weighing in one way or the other, besides stating that the dispute should settle “fairly and quickly,” assuring that the strike’s impact will be “limited” especially when it comes to fuel and energy prices, directing a “Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force” to meet and prep for adverse events, and ruling out any use of Taft-Hartley, a piece of legislation Biden apparently doesn’t “believe in.” (For what it’s worth, even Houston’s centrist mayor has walked the picket line in solidarity.)

The hottest items of contention here involve compensation and automation. Dockworkers are responsible for difficult and often dangerous labor, operating the cranes and trucks that transport and stock heavy containers onto the commercial barges that do business at the ports. As with so many other unionized industrial professions, the ranks of the stevedores have whittled from their early-20^th-century heights, thanks to two major postwar developments: the “containerization” revolution, which optimized and sped up the packing and onloading of goods, and the rapid consolidation of the global shipping industry. Port watchers no longer have to spend days stocking up a ship with just the use of their hands, which is why those jobs are gone.

But the dockworkers of today have to be skilled, knowledgeable, and dexterous enough to ensure that the incoming freight trucks, the hefty equipment, the potentially hazardous cargo, and the boats themselves operate safely and smoothly throughout all steps of the process.

That premium on skill and labor, added to the union’s historic strength, makes these dockworkers “the highest-paid blue-collar workers in the country,” as the American Prospect notes. Right now ILA members’ base hourly wage is $39, which they wish to gradually increase to $69 over the next six years, constituting an eventual 77 percent raise. (The latest offer from the Maritime Alliance was a 50 percent raise over that same time span.) The argument from the dockworkers is that shipping companies have made huge profits in recent years (true, despite a significant bust cycle in 2023) and that, in light of major cities’ higher costs of living and worker compensation not keeping up with inflation, the union members deserve more of those earnings. They argue they shouldn’t have to work relentless overtime hours, especially in dangerous conditions like the COVID pandemic, to actually make those stronger salaries.

The main sticking point, however, is displacement. The business interests in charge of the ports want to embed more self-propelling technology within dock work, whether that constitutes automated trucks, gates, or cranes. This trend has taken off at dozens of ports across the world. Still, multiple studies and real-world examples have shown that full or semi-automation does not actually do much to reduce costs or increase efficiency at the docks, although in certain applications, it can help to ensure human safety.

And therein lies another primary conflict about tech at the docks: The Maritime Alliance is interested in leaving some leeway for automation, but the dockworkers want absolutely none. The work may be grueling, but it’s among the few organized blue-collar professions that can offer its employees a solid lifestyle and dignity. And, like those in other career paths now endangered by political and technological changes (e.g., autoworkers, fossil-fuel field hands, farmers), they’re not convinced that they’ll be guaranteed a “just transition” to let them down easy and help them move to another gig should they be displaced by robots. The idling warehouse truckers also have to worry about this.

When ILA supporters haven’t had to fend off complaints from observers about their demands and the strike calendar, they’ve had to tangle with another inconvenient talking point: the whole mob thing. Anyone who’s watched Season 2 of The Wire is familiar with the historic presence of mob ties among the labor institutions at the shore—and indeed, law enforcement specialists have previously alleged that a group of East Coast dockworkers has longtime ties and so-called special arrangements with mob families (e.g., the Genovese in New Jersey) that allow them to rake in exorbitant salaries (closer to a half-million). The ILA’s wealthy and long-serving president, Harold Daggett, has already been tried and acquitted on charges related to these mob links, and he continues to deny any beneficial connections, citing prior court testimony in which he told tales of being himself terrorized by mob guys. Some folks have seized on this fact, as well as a now-infamous September video in which he boasts of the power his union has over the broader economy, to claim that this is all just another criminal racket.

Here’s the thing: The ILA’s explicit mob activity and influence is long, long past, and the livelihood concerns from the tens of thousands of lower-level rank-and-file dockworkers are as legitimate, impassioned, and honest as those of any other hands-on laborer. Not only will we continue to need these longshoremen (and women) who have the know-how to make this economy work—we will need people who continue to stand up for so-called unskilled, blue-collar labor as the world continues to change, and jobs continue to shift, in ways more of us are beginning to anticipate. The ILA has previously set examples of how to weather the adverse ties of tight corporate control and worker exploitation over the decades, and is currently setting yet another example. We could all learn something from that.