These are all the winners of the agreement on the port strike

() – The agreement reached Thursday night to end the strike of 50,000 dock workers has many winners and few or no losers.

The agreement only affects salaries, not other contractual provisions. But the union agreed to return to work this Friday after three days of strike while those other details, including greater use of automation and technology, are negotiated.

But the wage deal halted what could have become the most disruptive U.S. strike in decades if it had lasted weeks or months. The strike stopped the flow of imports and exports at dozens of ports, which could have been a massive blow if the strike had continued.

Here is how the main parties involved have turned out.

The top winners are members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). Members of this union will get an immediate raise of US$4 an hour, on top of their current maximum wage of US$39 an hour. This represents an increase of more than 10%.

And they will get the same increase of US$4 per hour each year for the six years of the contract. Those US$24 accumulated increase will mean a salary increase of 62%. And they will return to having well-paying jobs without losing much in wages. Unlike many unions, the ILA lacked strike benefits to help its members pay their bills.

The agreement fell short of the 77% increase that the ILA was asking for, but it far exceeded management’s previous offers of increases of 22% over the life of the contract, then 40%, and finally just under 50%. .

A week ago, few outside the American labor movement or the shipping world knew ILA president Harold Daggett. By the end of the week, the controversial union boss was a national figure and something of a star in both worlds.

With colorful language – swearing almost every second sentence – and forceful statements, such as expressing his willingness to sink the world economy to get union members to achieve their demands, he did his part especially well.

Daggett drew attention to the record profits that shipping companies have been making since the pandemic, and how their members had shown up to work throughout the pandemic to move the goods that consumers and businesses needed. And his strategy won.

Not all the attention was positive. His salary of almost a million dollars a year, much more than that of the heads of some larger unions, attracted attention. Allegations of mob ties also came to light, which Daggett denies and of which he was acquitted in a federal RICO case in 2005. According to the union, Daggett received death threats and was harassed, which he described as attempts to harass him. give in at the negotiating table.

But Daggett was likely pleased by the attention the strike brought to him and its members, and by the profits foreign-owned shipping companies were reaping, said Dr. Sal Mercogliano, a maritime historian and associate professor of history at Campbell University.

“They wanted to get the public’s attention,” Mercogliano said of the union on Friday. “The influence that the ILA had was enormous.”

And Daggett kept all the local unions on both coasts unified, something that Mercogliano said was not certain at the beginning of the negotiations. Mercogliano said that a year ago he would never have predicted that all the local unions would go on strike against all the ports.

The fact that goods begin to circulate again in a relatively short period of time, and that there are little or no shortages, can not only be considered a victory for the companies that ship goods, but also for the consumers who buy them.

“The decision to end the current strike and allow the reopening of East Coast and Gulf ports is good news for the country’s economy,” the National Retail Federation declared late Thursday. “It is vitally important that the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance work diligently and in good faith to reach a fair and final agreement before the extension expires. The sooner they reach an agreement, the better for all American families.”

The shortage could have caused prices to rise for several products. Congestion at West Coast ports due to the pandemic turned out to be a major factor in the price hike that began in 2021.

There were calls for President Joe Biden to use his powers under the Taft-Hartley Act to force ILA members to return to work during a 90-day “cooling off period.”

This would have eliminated much, but not all, of the union’s negotiating leverage, as Daggett made it clear in a video to members that he expected them to continue getting paid and that members would then move only a fraction of the load they normally do.

Still, Biden refused to act. He and other members of the administration — including Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — made clear in public statements that they wanted to see an agreement that would reward union members for their work, which produces record profits for shipping companies. foreign owned.

According to Mercogliano, the fact that a strike occurred was not a victory for the administration. A clear victory would have been to avoid the strike.

But it would have been catastrophic to avoid a prolonged strike that would have caused serious economic disruption, with shortages for consumers, factory closures for lack of parts or export capacity, and calls to act in a way that would have enraged Democratic supporters of the unions. As Biden said this Friday afternoon: “We have avoided what could have become a serious crisis for the country.”

That’s why he can thank his acting Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, who was in New Jersey this Thursday working to close the wage agreement.

It may seem strange, but shipping companies also fared better.

A quick agreement is a victory for a sector that is very profitable right now. In just three days, the strike had tied up 5% of global container capacity, according to Mercogliano. After a full week, it would have been 10% and would have continued to rise.

“For shipping companies, as long as they continue to make profits, this is not a big problem,” Mercogliano said.

Not that this was the deal that the US Maritime Alliance, the group that negotiates on behalf of shipping companies, terminal operators and ports, wanted. But it was the one they could settle for after the Biden administration made clear it was not going to intervene. Mercogliano believes the Biden administration put more pressure on USMX, as the group is known, than on the union.

The Biden administration “had influence over the maritime alliance,” Mercogliano said. He said USMX “heard the word it never wants to hear: “antitrust”,” suggesting the administration might have considered taking action against the way shipping companies coordinate with each other.