A litany of supply chain issues and potential price increases could hit America just weeks before a presidential election as a result of a strikes by port employees set to begin Monday night if a contract is not signed. Docks from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico could be shut down for the first time in nearly 50 years. 

At the heart of the International Longshoremen’s Association and management disagreements are a negotiation over pay increases and automation that would improve efficiency.

Currently, East Coast employees make a base salary of $81,000, significantly lower than the $116,000 base that West Coast longshoremen are paid. Management says that a 77 percent pay increase over six years — which is what the union originally requested — would fuel inflation nationwide just as the Federal Reserve is beginning to cut interest rates. 

The other objection the ILA is raising is management’s use of automation and robots to improve efficiency at the ports. In 2018, the management and labor group agreed to not use any “fully-automated terminals” or “fully-automated equipment at the ports. In June, the ILA said they had found out some firms had been using automated systems to process trucks out of the port of Mobile, Alabama. They are now seeking a total ban on automation at their ports in order to protect union jobs. 

“Mark my words, we’ll shut them down October 1 if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve,” the president of the ILA, Harold Daggett, said in a speech in early September. 

In a sign of how acrimonious the process has grown, the management with whom the union is negotiating, the United States Maritime Alliance, has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday, saying that the ILA is engaging in bad-faith negotiations.

Leadership at the union called the NLRB complaint a “stunt” in order to shift blame for a potential strike to the tens of thousands of employees who will head to the picket line should the strike kick off on Monday. 

“The ILA regards the suit as another publicity stunt by the employer group, and countered that foreign-owned companies, represented by USMX set up shop at American ports, earn billions of dollars in revenues and profits, take those profits out of country, and fail to adequately compensate the ILA longshore workforce for their labor are engaging in a real ‘unfair labor practice’ and have been getting away with for decades,” the ILA said in a statement. 

According to the Journal of Commerce, the chief executive of the U.S. Maritime Alliance, Dave Adam, met with Biden administration officials on Friday, including the acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in the hopes of avoiding a strike. 

The Labor Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the meeting and what progress, if any, had been made. 

The Biden administration played a critical role in averting a strike by rail employees in 2022, shortly after the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment that put national attention on railway safety and pay. In December of that year, President Biden signed the rail contract over the objections of the unions, though just two months later, his Labor Department had secured the sick leave that employees originally wanted. 

The ILA represents more than 85,000 employees from New England to the Gulf of Mexico to Canada to the Bahamas. If a contract is not signed by Monday night, more than a quarter of those union members — around 25,000 — are expected to go on strike along the East Coast. 

The last time such a strike occurred was in 1977, which resulted in weeks of supply chain issues and lack of deliveries. The strike was not resolved for nearly two months, and if such a time frame were to replicate itself this year, the supply chain fallout and potential price increases could have a major impact on the presidential election.