For the first time in nearly 50 years, longshoremen on the East and Gulf coasts went on strike Tuesday, a move that will cut off most trade through some of the busiest U.S. ports and could send a chill through the economy.
“Nothing’s going to move without us — nothing,” said Harold J. Daggett, the president of the International Longshoremen’s Association union, addressing picketers outside a port terminal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, early Tuesday.
The United States Maritime Alliance, which represents port employers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Businesses now face a period of uncertainty. Trade experts say that a short strike would cause little lasting damage but that a weekslong stoppage could lead to shortages, higher prices and even layoffs.
“When we talk about a two- to three-week strike,” said J. Bruce Chan, a transportation analyst at Stifel, a Wall Street firm, “that’s when the problem starts to get exponentially worse.”
The prospect of significant economic damage from a strike puts President Joe Biden in a quandary five weeks before national elections. Before the strike, he said he was not going to use a federal labor to force an end to a port shutdown — something President George W. Bush did in 2002 — but some labor experts said he might use that power if the strike started to weigh on the economy.
Longshoremen move containers off ships, sort them and put them on trucks or trains, and handle bulk cargo, too. Around three-fifths of the nation’s container shipments go through ports on the East and Gulf coasts, including the Port of New York and New Jersey, the third busiest in the country, and fast-growing ports in Virginia, Georgia and Texas.
A strike will also stop the shipment of cars and heavy machinery through the Port of Baltimore, where operations were curtailed for most of the spring after a container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Automakers said that they were monitoring the strike but that it was too early to say how it would hit them.
Cruise ship operations are unaffected by the strike, and military shipments will continue. Rick Cotton, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said Monday that around 100,000 containers would be stored at the port during the strike and that 35 ships arriving over the next week would be anchored offshore.
“The stakes are very high,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said at a news conference Monday. “The potential for disruption is significant.” But she also sought to calm consumers, saying shortages of food and pharmaceutical products were not expected.
For bringing large amount of goods in and out of the country, there is no practical alternative to ports. And ports cannot operate without longshoremen, giving them strong leverage in labor negotiations.
West Coast ports are open. Longshoremen there belong to a different union and agreed last year on a new contract that includes a significant increase in wages.
Under the contract that expired Monday, longshoremen on the East and Gulf coasts earned a …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
