Longshoremen walk a picket line outside the Dundalk Marine Terminal in Baltimore on Oct. 1, 2024, the first day of an International Longshoremen’s Association strike against East Coast and Gulf Coast ports. The union suspded the strike Thursday until Jan. 15, after making progress on a new contract. Photo by Danielle Brown.
Longshoremen are returning to work at the Port of Baltimore and other ports from Maine to Texas, just three days after walking out on a strike that threatened to cripple the economy if it went on for an extended period of time.
In a joint statement Thursday night, the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents shipping companies, said they had “reached a tentative agreement on wages and have agreed to extend the Master Contract until January 15, 2025 to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues. Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume.”
The contract had expired Monday, and the ILA and its 45,000 members walked out at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, shutting down dozens of ports along the East Coast and Gulf Coast. It was the first such large-scale strike on the East Coast since 1977.
The announcement of a return to work was immediately welcomed by President Joe Biden and Gov. Wes Moore, who earlier in the week had called on both sides to return to the bargaining table but had otherwise refused to intervene in the strike.
“Our state is not complete without the men and women that works these ports every day, and we are thrilled that come tomorrow morning our ports will be firing on all cylinders,” Moore said in a statement Thursday evening.
Biden congratulated both sides on a “tentative agreement on a record wage and an extension of the collective bargaining process represents critical progress towards a strong contract.”
Longshoremen walk a picket line Tuesday. A prohibition on automation has been a key union demand. Photo by Danielle Brown.
“I congratulate the dockworkers from the ILA, who deserve a strong contract after sacrificing so much to keep our ports open during the pandemic. And I applaud the port operators and carriers who are members of the US Maritime Alliance for working hard and putting a strong offer on the table,” he said in a statement released by the White House.
The two sides did not release details of Thursday’s tentative agreement on wages, but the union has been demanding an increase of $5 an hour in each of the six years of the new contract being negotiated. The shippers, known as USMX, had offered an annual $3.25 an hour raise on Monday, according to published reports, but that offer was rejected by the union.
In addition to higher wages, the union has been demanding more generous health care benefits and a ban on automation of port operations.
USMX said last month that it had offered a continuation of health benefits and automation protections as well as higher wages and retirement contributions. It said its last offer Monday would “increase wages by nearly 50 percent, triple employer contributions to employee retirement plans, strengthen our health care options, and retain the current language around automation and semi-automation.”
Each side blamed the other for the strike, with the union claiming the shippers refused “demands for a fair and decent contract” and USMX saying the ILA was refusing to negotiate. USMX filed an unfair labor practices complaint against the union with the National Labor Relations Board last week.
Because of the number of ports affected, the strike had the potential to be a drag on the U.S. economy, affecting supply chains and hampering holiday sales if it went on for an extended period of time.
Christina DePasquale, an associate professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, had said a long-term strike could have been “felt everywhere, on the East Coast and then even outside of that in terms of warehouses, retail establishments, businesses outside of the East Coast. It would really touch most aspects of the supply chain in the United States.”
The strike posed an additional challenge for the Port of Baltimore, which was shut down for two months this spring after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River on March 26, blocking shipping channels in and out of marine terminals there. State and federal agencies had just managed to reopen the port this summer.
The Moore administration said Baltimore ranked first in the nation in 2023 for volume of autos and light trucks, roll-on/roll-off heavy farm and construction machinery, imported sugar and imported gypsum. It ranked ninth among major U.S. ports for foreign cargo handled and ninth for total foreign cargo value.
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An analysis for the port administration of activity in 2023 said the public and private terminals in Baltimore were directly responsible for more than 20,000 jobs and indirectly for another 30,000, generating more than $5 billion in income in total. It said the port generated $3.9 billion in revenues last year and spun off $647.1 million in state and local taxes.
After the Key Bridge collapse, the state rushed to provide aid to workers and businesses affected by the subsequent port shutdown. The Moore administration said in June, as it was starting to wind down those programs, that the state had provided $37.4 million in worker assistance since early April, and $22 million to support affected businesses in the Baltimore region.
It said at the time that 2,800 workers received direct financial assistance after the Key Bridge collapse and it claimed that more than 3,000 jobs were protected from layoffs as a result of the business support.
Unlike the Key Bridge collapse, economists said an East Coast strike would have been much more far-reaching, as cargo could not be rerouted to other nearby ports. A report by the economic analysis firm Implan estimated that a long-term strike could have reduced the gross domestic product by $981 million and resulted in $545 million in lost worker salaries for every month the strike continued.
“Anecdotally, supply chain disruptions might lead to increased costs for goods, which could contribute to inflationary pressures. If the strike prolongs, it could exacerbate existing supply shortages and drive prices higher,” said a statement on Monday from Bjorn Markeson, the Implan economist who prepared the analysis.