East, Gulf Coast dockworkers voting on new contract

By Laura Anderson
January 27, 2025
International Longshoremen’s Association members on 3-day strike picket in Miami Oct. 3.
Militant/Laura AndersonInternational Longshoremen’s Association members on 3-day strike picket in Miami Oct. 3.

MIAMI — Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association are discussing a tentative contract agreement reached Jan. 8 between the union and East and Gulf Coast port bosses, following negotiations. Dockworkers are voting on the contract as the Militant goes to press.

Some 45,000 striking dockworkers had shut down East and Gulf Coast ports Oct. 1-3, winning widespread support from fellow workers and showing the power of organized labor. They were fighting for a new contract that included wages that cover soaring prices and to defend working conditions.

The bosses were pressing the union to allow the use of driverless trucks, automated cranes and computerized gate checkpoints to speed up work and boost their profits. For workers the question isn’t the use of technology, but the protection of jobs and safety.

Dockworkers face haphazard schedules, shifts that stretch for 15- or 20-plus hours when ships are in port, loading and unloading thousands of containers, and no work or pay when there are no ships.

The strike ended when the bosses’ United States Maritime Alliance increased its wage offer to 62% over a six-year contract. Negotiations continued over other issues, including the central question of automation.

Full details of the new tentative contract will not be released to the public until after the Jan. 15 vote.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the contract includes a provision that bosses “that add autonomous equipment must hire one dockworker for each new crane added.” But bosses will be able to continue getting a single dockworker to operate multiple machines at the same time at ports where they have already pushed this through, the Journal says.

“Solidarity from our global maritime unions,” ILA President Harold Daggett said in a Jan. 9 statement, “bolstered the ILA’s strength” in the contract fight. Alongside that support, a delegation from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union from West Coast ports joined the ILA strike picket line in the fall.