Dockworkers’ Strike - Community Alliance

Two workers working on a wooden dock. Automation is affecting workers’ employment in ports around the world. Photo courtesy of The Commons

In early October, there was a short-lived strike by about 45,000 dockworkers of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). The ILA had been negotiating since May 2024 with its employer group, United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. (USMX), regarding wages, retirement contributions and automation.¹

USMX is an organization responsible for the transportation and handling of cargo shipped to and from the United States.^2,3 In negotiations, USMX represents the interests of 40 major foreign container shipping companies, the terminal operators, the stevedore companies and the port associations. The shipping companies have been making hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, while the workers’ pay has remained stagnant.

Wages

Before the strike, the starting pay for an ILA dockworker was $20 per hour with the top-tier hourly wage being $39 per hour. The top-tier wage amounts to just above $81,000 annually. Dockworkers make significantly more by taking on extra shifts, making $100,000–$300,000 annually.⁴

The ILA asked for a $5 an hour increase in pay, rejecting the final USMX proposal of a $3-an-hour increase. As a result of the inability of USMX and the ILA to reach a contract agreement, ILA members walked off the job on Oct. 1¹—their first major strike since 1977.

The strike ended on Oct. 4. The union accepted the compromise offer from USMX of a $4-an-hour increase in pay, and the dockworkers returned to work. Upon ending the strike, the ILA and the USMX port operators issued a joint statement that they both “agreed to extend the Master Contract until January 15, 2025, to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues.”⁵

USMX parties had the money to pay higher salaries making wage negotiations relatively easy. The ILA and USMX will now need to address the much more difficult “outstanding issues” of automation. This is especially true given the Oct. 1 statement from the ILA:

“The ILA is steadfastly against any form of automation—full or semi—that replaces jobs or historical work functions. We will not accept the loss of work and livelihood for our members due to automation. Our position is clear: the preservation of jobs and historical work functions is non-negotiable.”⁶

Dockworkers

There are more than 300 ports in the United States operated by states, counties, municipalities and private corporations. There are three major port systems—the Pacific, the Great Lakes and the Atlantic/Gulf Coast. Each port system separately negotiates its own contract with one of the dockworker unions—the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) on the Pacific Coast, the Great Lakes ILA and the Atlantic/Gulf Coast ILA.

Only the 45,000 Atlantic/Gulf Coast ILA dockworkers went on strike in October.⁷ Their strike affected ports along the Atlantic Coast from Maine in the north to the Gulf Coast ports in Louisiana and Texas in the south. It shut down 14 ports and impacted 36 other ports along the Atlantic/Gulf Coast, including some of the country’s major ports in New York, Philadelphia and Texas.

Can the ILA Stop Automation?

As long as there have been ships moving cargo from one place to another, there have been dockworkers. Some of the other names used for the workers that load and unload cargo from ships are longshoremen, docker, stevedore or port worker. The gender-neutral term dockworker is often used to describe those workers currently. Over the years, there has been improvement in how ships are loaded and unloaded. The current technology uses intermodal containers via intermodal transportation.

Intermodal transportation uses intermodal containers to move freight from ships or aircraft to trains or trucks, and back. All the different modes of transport use the same containers. The freight in the container is not handled when the freight is moved from one mode of transportation to another.

Intermodal containers are uniform-sized metal crates designed and built for intermodal freight transport. Intermodal transportation, using intermodal containers, reduces the handling of the cargo, improves security, reduces damage and loss, and allows freight to be transported faster.⁸

Intermodal freight transport became the dominant method of freight transport beginning in the 1950s.⁹ The use of containers requires a larger capital investment in equipment by shipping carriers but is less labor-intensive and requires fewer workers. Using fewer workers, a container ship can be unloaded in 24–36 hours rather than a week for a ship without containers.

To prevent the increasing use of automation and containers by the carriers, there were several ILA strikes in the 1960s. Despite the strikes, the use of intermodal shipping containers, container ships and shore-based machinery to load and unload the containers became more widespread.

What Will Be the Future for Dockworkers?

In the face of increasing automation in the 1960s, the ILA held several strikes to protect workers. At that time, the ILA made an agreement that provided a guaranteed annual income (GAI) for those workers who were working at the time of the GAI agreement. The GAI did not cover new hires. This resulted in ILA workers keeping their jobs and getting GAI, but not a single new ILA longshoreman was hired in the East Coast ports from 1964 to 1977.¹⁰

Upon review it appears that no new ILA longshoremen were hired in the East Coast Ports from 1964-1977. The GAI began in New York, which at the onset included the North Atlantic ports (Virgina to Maine). The GAI spread to other East Coast Ports as the ILA consolidated its control, but not the Gulf Coast. Wherever there was GAI, there were no hires.

As automation increased, the need for workers decreased. With no new hires and older workers retiring, from the 1960s to the late 1980s the number of ILA dockworkers declined by 90%.^9,10,16

Now, shipping container employers want to use semi-automated or fully automated systems to unload and load ships. They think that having fully automated terminals will increase efficiency, decrease costs and increase profits.

As of 2021, a study identified 62 container terminals worldwide that were fully or semi-automated. There are currently three fully automated domestic ports—Long Beach Container Terminal in Long Beach, Calif., and TraPac and APM Terminal Pier 400 in Los Angeles.

“A fully automated terminal is a terminal where both the horizontal movement of containers from the berth to the yard and the vertical movement of containers in the yard is automated (unmanned).”¹¹

Due to increasing automation, some estimates are that the amount of human labor required in U.S. ports will continue to decrease. Humans will be required to repair the machines when problems arise, but if the shipping companies have their way, dockworkers will no longer be required to run the cranes or drive the trucks to load and unload the ships.

On the West Coast, the ILWU has had fully automated ports and their salaries have increased and are significantly higher than the ILA salaries.¹²

Given the history of automation in the workforce (e.g., the auto industry), it is unlikely that the ILA will be able to block all types of future automation and prevent a major workforce reduction.

The remaining dockworkers might have increased wages, as is the case with the ILWU dockworkers (starting pay $39 per hour). It is also possible (but unlikely if automobile automation is an indicator) that consumers might pay less for items if carriers pass on decreased shipping costs to consumers rather than taking the profits.

The union and the port operators extended their current master contract until Jan. 15, 2025. They will return to the bargaining table to negotiate all the outstanding issues including automation.^14,15,16

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