Dockworkers to Restart Talks With Jobs-for-Automation Offer
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A U.S. dockworkers’ union and their employer group will meet in New Jersey on Jan. 7 with just over a week to hammer out a deal on a new labor contract or risk halting roughly half of all the country’s container volumes.
A strike that would shut every major U.S. East and Gulf Coast port is all but certain if the two sides can’t clear the highest hurdles before a Jan. 15 deadline — or agree on another extension.
In early October, the International Longshoremen’s Association reached a tentative deal with ocean carriers and terminal operators on a 62% wage increase over six years, suspending a three-day strike but leaving the technology issue unresolved.
The tough-talking leaders of the ILA, union President Harold Daggett and his son Dennis, who is second-in-command, have refused to bargain since mid-November after walking out of a meeting with the U.S. Maritime Alliance, declaring an impasse over the employer group’s use of semi-automated, rail-mounted gantry cranes at port terminals.
ILA union chief Harold Daggett speaks to picketing workers outside the Port of Newark in New Jersey on Oct. 1. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News)
The ILA got some high-profile backing in December, when President-elect Donald Trump declared his support for the union in their fight against automation, which they say is a threat to dockworker jobs.
The USMX, as the employer group is known, says the semi-automated cranes improve efficiency in tight terminals and aren’t a threat to employment on the docks.
The Daggetts are demanding the right to add new jobs alongside new technology and at terminals in Virginia and New Jersey where the semi-automated cranes are already in use, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. The move has raised concerns from some USMX members about the economics of the added labor costs — and how much it could increase the union’s leverage in future negotiations, the people said.
Meanwhile, the USMX is bargaining for a “professional workforce,” which the people familiar said would improve productivity over the casual workforce in place now and help make a 62% raise easier to absorb.
The ILA declined to comment and the USMX hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
A group of USMX representatives met with ILA leaders on Jan. 5 to draw up language on automation ahead of this week’s formal negotiations, CNBC reported. The resulting proposal would give the union the right to create human jobs to complement technology implemented at ILA-operated ports.
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Such a proposal may indicate an acceptance of the ILA demands by some USMX members, but it could also compromise the tentatively accepted pay raise, especially given the improvements to port efficiency sought by USMX members.
“With just 10 days until the deadline for an agreement that averts a strike, leading retailers are implementing contingency plans and working to try to keep inventory moving and limit the impact to consumers,” the Retail Industry Leaders Association said in a statement Jan. 6. “But the ability to keep the engine of global trade fully revving in this case lies with the ILA and USMX.”
The trade group’s members include Home Depot Inc., Dollar General Corp., and Gap Inc.
