A union representing tens of thousands of longshoremen is promising to “hit the streets” on October 1 if its contract demands aren’t met, in what would be its first coastwide strike in nearly 50 years. 

The International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents more than 85,000 longshoremen across North America, has vowed to strike from Maine to Texas if it doesn’t have a new Master Contract in place with its employer association, the United States Maritime Alliance by the end of this month.

“As our current six-year contract nears — its expiration date on September 30 — there’s a real chance we won’t have a new agreement in place,” ILA’s president, Harold Daggett, said in a video statement. “We could be hitting the streets at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, October 1, 2024.”

He said that they “never shut the ports down during Covid,” as longshoremen went to the docks everyday “up and down the coast to keep those ships going.” 

“We kept going to keep these companies alive,” Mr. Daggett said. “Mark my words. We’ll shut them down October 1 if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve, container royalty, top notch healthcare and no automation terminals or semi-automated terminals.”

The United States Maritime Alliance, which represents employers of the maritime industry in ports from Maine to Texas, said in its latest update last week that there has been “no further progress” on the negotiations and that it “we remain committed to the bargaining process and need the ILA to return to the table.” It said the “unnecessary and costly” strike would be “detrimental to both sides.” The alliance has insisted that its current offer represents “industry leading wage increases” and “higher starting wages,” among other promises, which the longshoremen’s union has called “misleading” and “propaganda.” 

The strike is forecasted by the National Retailer Foundation to be a “major disruption” if it happens, which says that many retailers are attempting to mitigate some of the effects by bringing products in ahead of the strike or shifting products to the West Coast. 

“Imports at U.S. ports followed by the Global Port Tracker report prepared for NRF by Hackett Associates have been at or above 2 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units since April, and September is expected to see 2.31 million TEU — import levels not seen since 2022,” the group’s vice president of supply chain and customs policy, Jonathan Gold, notes. “If a strike does occur, that means operations at the covered ports stop. Neither imports nor exports will move, vessels will start to back up outside the ports, containers will sit and industries from retail to manufacturing to agriculture will be impacted.”

The effects on the economy would be “significant,” he writes — noting that an 11-day West Coast port closure back in 2002 was estimated to cost $1 billion per day and took months to recover from. 

Any coastwide dockworker strike is expected to have an effect on supply chains for multiple industries.

“For retailers, that means holiday shipments might not arrive on time,” he notes. “Manufacturers might not receive parts, materials and supplies needed for production, which will lead to assembly lines shutting down. And farmers won’t be able to get their products to overseas markets, which could lead to lost sales.”If a deal isn’t reached a strike results, the options are “limited,” he notes, but President Biden could seek to intervene, through a “federal mediator” or through the Taft-Hartley Act as a last resort, which would “implement an 80-day cooling off period to open the ports, and urge the parties back to the table with the help of mediation.”