A new six-year master contract, covering 14,500 waterfront dockworkers belonging to the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), was overwhelmingly approved by ILA members on Tuesday in a coast-wide ratification vote conducted at ports on the East and Gulf Coasts. ILA President Harold Daggett and other union officials had campaigned hard for approval of the contract, which negotiators agreed on last month.
The ratification ends more than a year of contentious, on-and-off negotiations between port employers and the ILA highlighted by threat of the first coast-wide strike since 1977. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service joined the talks and brokered two short-term extensions that averted threatened strikes in September and December. During the negotiations much attention was given to the pending local agreement in the Port of New York and New Jersey, between the ILA and the New York Shipping Associations. Those local negotiations were particularly problematic, but ILA members up and down the coast voted for both the master contract and their respective local agreements, including ILA members of New York and New Jersey accepting both the master contract and their local agreement by a better than three to one margin.
Bargaining has not yet concluded on local agreements for the ports of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Hampton Roads, but those port areas are permitted to continue negotiating their local agreements, which are expected to be completed by early next week.
The United States Maritime Alliance, an alliance of container carriers, direct employers, and ports associations serving the East and Gulf coasts will vote to ratify the master contract next Wednesday, April 17. The contract settlement comes a year before the expected opening of the expanded Panama Canal where a surge in commerce at Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports is expected.
