Half a century later, ILA returns to strike mode

Contract negotiations began back in February 2023 but quickly foundered on the issue of wage increases. A more recent attempt to come to the table in July also ended abruptly: The ILA suspended talks upon learning that automated technology was being used by USMX members — including Maersk, the world’s second-largest shipping company — to process trucks at port terminals without union labor.

ILA President Harold J. Daggett defended his decision to end the talks prematurely, arguing that there was “no point trying to negotiate a new agreement with USMX when one of its major companies continues to violate our current agreement with the sole aim of eliminating ILA jobs through automation.” A Maersk spokesman denied this charge, however, stating that the company was “in full compliance with the ILA/USMX Master Contract.”

Negotiations have not progressed in the months since, and tensions have escalated accordingly. On Sept. 5, Daggett affirmed that the ILA will “most definitely” strike if its demands are not met, and ILA leadership outlined its mobilization plan to unanimous support from its attending members.

The USMX, responding to these comments in an official statement, renewed its call to resume negotiations. “The ILA continues to strongly signal it has already made the decision to call a strike and we hope the ILA will reopen dialogue and share its current contract demands so we can work together on a new deal,” the statement read, “as we have done successfully for nearly 50 years.”

Money for nothing?

Indeed, the USMX (along with its predecessors) and the ILA share a nearly 50-year history of preventing strikes through successful negotiations, isolated job actions from local ILA unions aside.

The ILA is one of the least aggressive unions when it comes to coastwide strikes, especially relative to its militant West Coast counterpart: the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which orchestrated stoppages and slowdowns just last year to attain its desired contract.

In many respects, then, the ILA is riding the wave of labor’s recent successes that were achieved through hard-line tactics. In August 2023, the Teamsters celebrated the ratification of a new agreement with UPS. A few months later, the United Auto Workers secured large pay raises and other benefits for its members after a 46-day strike against Ford, Stellantis and General Motors.

To find the ILA’s last coastal strike, one would have to look back to 1977. There were a few issues at the heart of this strike, the least complex of which was a demand for higher wages.

But then as now, the ILA was chiefly concerned about the effects of automation on its members’ job security. Thomas “Teddy” Gleason, the ILA’s long-serving president at the time of the strike, argued that the union’s proposed wage increases would not increase shipping costs because “productivity has gone up 1,500 per cent” as a result of industry advancements in automation. Although this statement might seem like hyperbole to a modern audience, it must be remembered that the union was still reeling from the effects of containerization at this point.

In fact, the ILA had strongly opposed containerization since its inception. It is not difficult to see why: A container ship was able to be unloaded in a matter of days with a skeleton crew rather than the weeks and large gangs needed for breakbulk cargo. Automation in this time was represented by container cranes ousting gangs of longshoremen, who used sinew and sweat — and the docker’s hook — to haul freight to and fro.

The ILA went on strike a handful of times during the 1960s, seeking to safeguard dockworkers’ jobs and wages as port operations grew more efficient.

Perhaps the most important inclusion of the contract that followed the ILA’s 1964 strike was the assurance of a guaranteed annual income (GAI) for its New York members. In effect, the GAI ensured that ILA dockworkers at these ports would receive a considerable salary — adjusted for inflation, the GAI in 1974 was worth six figures — not only in the event that there was no work available for them, but even if they simply chose not to work. Gleason would later remark that “we sold our souls for” the GAI.

This novelty had a few unintended effects. First, ILA membership shrank between 1964 and 1977, with not a single longshoreman hired during this period. This freeze was also known as “closing the register.” Moreover, those few who were hired in the years following 1977 were not eligible for the GAI.

The ILA was already hierarchical with respect to seniority, but this division drew a clear line between the “haves” — senior longshoremen obligated only to clock in and out of the local hiring hall, and who retained near-absolute freedom to select or pass over any posted jobs — and the “have-nots,” young members who worked whatever was given to them.

One contract to rule them all

But the most enduring legacy of the GAI by far was the resulting development of the multicoast “master contract” for the ILA, the model that provides the basis for today’s negotiations.

Prior to World War II, labor contracts for ports along the East Coast were negotiated on a port-by-port basis, with local unions as dockworkers’ primary representatives. In practice, many of the ports’ employers would simply agree to the wages and benefits negotiated in the region’s largest port, such as New York for the North Atlantic.

These larger ports were the first to feel the effects of containerization, something that would take years if not decades to reach smaller ports. Thus the copycat model no longer made sense. Yet it was equally nonsensical to demand concessions for dockworkers at these larger ports that were not granted at smaller ports — in New York, both the unions and the employers feared the loss of cargo being diverted to more competitive ports, unladen as they were by union restraints on automation.

By threats of a national strike, the ILA forced the New York Shipping Association (NYSA), the dominant employer association on the East Coast, to concede to a multiport master contract in 1957. This contract’s reach extended from ports in Maine to Virginia: in other words, the North Atlantic. 

In 1964, the ILA made a push for its New York workers to receive the GAI in exchange for agreeing to smaller gang sizes and less regular work assignments. Although the NYSA and the ILA had agreed to the spirit of this deal before the deadline, quibbles concerning the size of the GAI had delayed not only the North Atlantic master contract but also those of South Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports, which typically followed New York’s lead in broad strokes.

Employers at the Southern ports were dismayed and incensed when, on the verge of concluding negotiations with their local unions, they were hit with the ILA’s threat of a national strike. This strike, in their view, concerned matters wholly unrelated to their operations: Not only had containerization yet to be a factor in the region, but their cargo was largely agricultural and thus not subject to containerization. Irritating these Southern operators all but precluded the ILA’s dream of a national master contract, at least for the remainder of the 1960s.

It is important to stress that the NYSA and other employer associations successfully resisted the inclusion of the GAI as an item in the master contract. Thus, should a union desire to be promised the GAI, it would have to negotiate for it on a local, port-by-port basis. The GAI was essentially free money, so it is unsurprising that local unions fought vigorously for inclusion of it in their individual contracts.

In the run-up to the 1977 contract negotiations, the ILA’s main focus was to protect members’ job security at a national level. The ILA refused to entertain any contract that did not include the assurance that all of its members at every port could receive the GAI. But since the different locals had negotiated for this benefit in piecemeal fashion, there was a disparity in how much Pennsylvania dockworkers would receive annually compared with those in Florida. The ILA therefore sought a truly national master contract that would equalize wages and benefits across all East and Gulf Coast ports.

Yet as the ILA locals coalesced with their interests aligning, so also did the shippers. The confrontation between two powerful bargaining parties resulted in a seven-week walkout that began in October 1977.

This strike resulted in the pileup of cargo worth $4 billion, or more than $20 billion in today’s currency. After the strike ended, then-NYSA President James Dickman estimated that the action had cost the U.S. economy “many, many hundreds of millions of dollars” — anywhere from $1 billion to $4 billion adjusted for inflation.

Ultimately, an agreement was reached only by shifting the responsibility of the GAI’s funding from the port employers to the shipping lines themselves, though the 1977 contract did have the aforementioned effect of “closing the register.”

“To close the register,” wrote William DiFazio in his 1985 book “Longshoremen,” “meant to eliminate new longshoremen by making it impossible to enter the trade. In turn, that meant that the sons of longshoremen cannot follow their fathers to the docks.”

Ten years after this strike, ILA membership had fallen from a peak of 165,000 to fewer than 60,000. Meanwhile, the average age of New York dockworkers had risen to 58: The number of members collecting pensions and other benefits was almost double that of longshoremen at work.

That the current ILA is fully prepared to strike should not be dismissed. In March 1977, American Shipper expressed skepticism about the prospects of a strike that would unfold nearly half a year later. But given the costs of the ILA’s last multicoast action, one cannot help but wonder what the effects of such a strike would be this time around.