The International Longshoremen’s Association announced Thursday that it would suspend a strike after reaching a deal with the United States Maritime Alliance.
The union said its members would return to work immediately until Jan. 15 in order to give time for the leadership to negotiate a permanent deal.
‘One expert estimated that the strike could cost as much as $3.7 billion per day.’
A source told the New York Times that the union had been offered an increase of 62% in wages over the course of a contract lasting six years.
The strike had begun on Tuesday morning and involved about 45,000 union members working ports on the East Coast as well as the Gulf Coast. The union was demanding concessions, including a large raise for dockworkers as well as a ban on automation at the ports.
One expert estimated that the strike could cost as much as $3.7 billion per day.
Also on Thursday, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was ordering the National Guard to maintain order at ports and possibly “resume operations” so that disaster relief efforts were not affected by the strike.
“It is unacceptable for the Biden-Harris administration to allow supply chain interruptions to hurt people who are reeling from a category 4 hurricane,” DeSantis said.
While President Joe Biden does the power to end a strike under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, he has signaled that he would rather side with the union and allow the strike to continue.
U.S. ports are far less efficient than those of other countries because of a lack of automation in order to protect union jobs and wages. Critics accuse the unions of using force to artificially keep wages high at the expense of trade efficiency.
Some grocery store shelves were reportedly running out of toilet paper as a result of people panicking over the strike, though many noted that the supply of toilet paper should not be affected at all.
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Dockworker strike, Strike suspended, Port automation, Longshoremen strike, Politics
