We are less than a week away from the impending International Longshoremen Association’s (ILA) strike at all the ports on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts after negotiations with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) reached an impasse months ago.

The ILAs president, Harold J Daggett, is a feisty old codger, full of old-fashioned union bluster and bravado. I don't see any backdown in him in this snarling video going after the governor of South Carolina.

After hearing about International Longshoremen Association’s impending strike that will shut down all Atlantic and Gulf Shore ports next Monday night, I wondered if they endorsed Harris or Trump.

Watch this video from their President Harold J Daggett.

What do you think? pic.twitter.com/gBfyoZboWs

— JKash 🍊MAGA Queen (@JKash000) September 24, 2024

What exactly are Mr Daggett and his members asking for?

DAY-YUM, DUDE

...Media reports indicate the ILA is demanding a 77% pay increase over six years. This eclipses the 32% wage increase that the union representing West Coast port workers won last year for a contract of similar length. Port operators want to provide workers with a fair pay increase, but the ILA has reportedly rejected an offer to increase wages by 40%. 

The ILA is also demanding that the ports freeze implementation of technology that improves productivity, including measures that speed up the process of loading and unloading ships. Ports argue that these improvements are critical to America’s long-term competitiveness. A high level of productivity means containers and goods move quickly through ports, helping keep transportation costs low and getting products to store shelves quickly. These updates are badly need, because today U.S. ports rank as some of the least productive in the world. According to The World Bank Group and IHS Markit, no U.S. port ranked in the top 50 for productivity in the world.   

With many U.S. ports already at capacity and trade volumes expected to climb, the lack of automation technology and continued inefficiencies at these ports will come at a cost to American global competitiveness. These improvements, however, can only be made through an agreement with the port workers. 

I mean, even President Daggett brags his members are not exactly starving now, and they still turned down a 40% hike?

....East and Gulf Coast longshoremen with six or more years’ experience currently earn $39 per hour, up 11 percent since the start of their expiring six-year contract. Over the same period, inflation is 24 percent.

Neither the union nor management is making its wage proposal public, but The Journal of Commerce, a publication that focuses on trade, reported recently that the I.L.A. sought a $5-per-hour increase for each year of the contract’s six-year term, while management has proposed a $2.50-per-hour annual raise.

“My I.L.A. members are not going to accept these insulting offers that are a joke considering the work my I.L.A. longshore workers perform, and the billion-dollar profits the companies make off the backs of their labor,” Harold J. Daggett, the union’s president, said in a statement on Monday.

The big fight really isn't money - it's the move to automation. I read somewhere that things broke down negotiation-wise in July after Maersk was caught by the ILA using new automated gear to move containers with non-union help in one of their warehouses.

Shippers are doing the double-time scramble trying to get goods moved into place so as to minimize damage as best they can. 

U.S. companies that rely on East and Gulf Coast seaports have been importing early, shifting goods to the West Coast, and even putting cargo on pricey flights to hedge against a threatened Oct. 1 strike that could jam supply chains and reignite inflation ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

"This is just another headache after everything else we've been dealing with," said Kenneth Sanchez, CEO of Chesapeake Specialty Products, which sends goods like metallic abrasives and foundry sand additives used to make engine blocks and transmissions to customers around the world.

When - not really a question of "if anymore - the longshoremen walk out, the "unemployment numbers" for the work actions in progress could be pretty staggering right off the bat.

...The threatened walkout would come just five weeks before a presidential election between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump that is likely to turn on pocketbook issues.

A prolonged strike, alongside an ongoing strike by 30,000 machinists at Boeing that has already started to ripple through the aircraft maker's supplier network, could put a dent in the U.S. job market next month at a critical moment. Economists at Oxford Economics last week estimated the two labor actions could reduce payrolls growth by 100,000 jobs if they stretch into mid-October.

I'm not sure if that's a tacit appeal by al-Reuters not to impact Kamala's chances for the worse, or what it is.

The hit on the economy, to businesses and consumers on the backside, will be very real, and shortages of everything from bananas to coffee would begin to manifest almost immediately.

...As of Saturday, there were 42 container ships scheduled to arrive at the Port of New York and New Jersey, one of the biggest ports involved in the labor dispute, according to S&P Global's maritime tracking service Sea-web. Thirteen of the ships are scheduled to arrive after Sept. 30.

In August, the five largest ports on the East and Gulf Coasts processed about 24,766 40-foot containers of imports and exports valued at $2.7 billion each day, according to John McCown, senior fellow at the Center for Maritime Strategy.

Ports on the East and Gulf Coasts also handle roughly 75% of the bananas that enter the United States, according to Jason Miller, interim chair of Michigan State University's department of supply chain management. He added that it doesn't make financial sense to reroute or fly in such low-value perishables.

The cost to send a 40-foot container from Shanghai to New York jumped to around $10,000 in July. Rates have since retreated, but could spike again with a strike.

"If the cost of shipping goes up ... it gets pushed onto the end consumer - whether that's someone buying a car or someone buying a metal part in a hardware store," Chesapeake's Sanchez said.

The Biden-HARRIS administration is still only sending thoughts and prayers, letting the union hold the country hostage.

...Administration officials have said President Biden is not planning to force dockworkers back to work, which the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act authorizes him to do. Beth Rooney, director of the Port of New York and New Jersey, said last week that invoking the act would be “our best scenario next to there being a settlement.”

The port strike could greatly upset the economy, and in the home stretch of the 2024 race. Pointers courtesy of @NRO trade guru @DominicJPino

Thanks for having me @MorningsMaria pic.twitter.com/rie856S9Mh

— Caroline Downey (@carolinedowney_) September 25, 2024

Ports that account for up to as much as $4B a day in commerce. A work stoppage that is one day on strike = seven days to get the backup cleared and the goods moving.

A strike for which the union is warning they are willing to be out at least a month, if not longer.

At least half of all the imported goods this country receives come into these seaports.

Hope has faded away as far as avoiding a shutdown. Hope and prayers the shutdown, when it does happen, is "only a few days."

The chief executive over Georgia’s two booming seaports said Tuesday that a strike next week by dockworkers across the U.S. East and Gulf coasts appears likely, though he’s hopeful the resulting shutdown would last only a few days.

“We should probably expect there to be a work stoppage and we shouldn’t get surprised if there is one,” Griff Lynch, CEO of the Georgia Ports Authority, told the Associated Press in an interview. “The question is: How long?”

Georgia dockworkers are wracking up the overtime. No sandbagging in anticipation.

...At the Georgia Ports Authority’s monthly board meeting Tuesday, Lynch praised the roughly 2,000 union workers responsible for loading and unloading ships in Savannah and Brunswick, saying “they have done great work” ahead of a possible strike. He said the ports would keep operating until the last minute.

“We’re seeing phenomenal productivity out of them right now,” he said. “You wouldn’t know this was going to happen if you hadn’t been told.”

Some transportation experts believe that there won't be a major disruption and shortages in retail goods if the strike manages to last a few weeks, while others are not as confident in the system's resiliency.

..."Even a two-week strike could disrupt supply chains until 2025," Grace Zwemmer, associate U.S. economist with Oxford, said in the report.

As this lady in this trucking industry video explains, it's also devastating to the trucking industry. In a rail strike, who is basically the trucking industry's competitor, truckers make bank because they pick up what the railroads aren't carrying. And because they can transport so much less than rail, rates go through the roof for the available space.

The exact opposite will happen with an extended port strike - nothing will move. Not from the port to the retailers, farmers, or the factories. Because the factories, etc, can't get their raw materials to manufacture goods, truckers then have no end product to deliver.

A week or more is an "extensive pile-up" and "very disruptive."

US port workers are set to strike next week amid wage and automation issues.

MSU professor Jason Miller discusses what impact a prolonged strike can have on the country's supply chain and the broader economy: pic.twitter.com/OUiYNSyBFn

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) September 24, 2024

Is Biden not intervening because of his antipathy to Harris or out of his affection for union workers?

The answer is the surprise because, either way, this only hurts Americans and helps Trump.