In early 2025, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) reached a tentative six-year contract for 40,000 dock workers who work at East and Gulf Coast ports, preventing a strike that would have shut down more than 30 percent of U.S. shipping traffic just days ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

Automation was the biggest sticking point, and dockworkers feared that as the shipping industry embraced automated cargo-moving machinery, many thousands of blue-collar union jobs would vanish. Following a three-day strike in October 2024, the employers agreed to a 62 percent, six-year wage increase with the understanding that the automation issue would be negotiated.

Negotiators achieved a compromise between modernization and job protection. The contract provides ports more flexibility in rolling-out new technology, but it prohibits employers from retrofitting existing terminals for fully automated operations. Any new automation must be supported by joint union-management committees, and the employers must hire new employees for advanced technologies. New technology alone cannot be a reason to eliminate jobs. Union officials said that the employers agreed to a plan to retrain existing workers to operate and manage new equipment, this was seen as a tremendous victory for job security.

There were significant economic implications, and political implications. A prolonged shut down of 14 principal U.S. ports for the shipping industry could have led to delayed shipments to U.S. factories and retailers, increasing costs everywhere, disrupting lives and costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars. During negotiations, President Trump actively put pressure on employers in negotiations, meeting with dock workers’ leadership, and leveraging his public persona to show support for the union position against job-eliminating automation.

The deal was ratified easily, with the ILA reporting 99 percent approval, but some skeptics contended that the union leadership forced through a contract that still opens workers up to future perils from semi-automation and increased work demands. The agreement also locks-in a further increase for landed dockworkers from $39 to $63 an hour by the end of the term and that many longshoremen in the major ports will earn far more than $200,000 a year before overtime. The ILA’s counterpart on the Pacific Coast, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), is recognized for its more militant activism, as well as its social justice activism that spans beyond dockwork.

by Yididya Sebhatu