Port strike update: Port workers go back to work as talks continue under tentative agreement

Longshoremen along the East Coast from Maine to Texas go back to work Friday after suspending their port strike, averting a major blow to the U.S. economy and offering relief to shoppers.

“The longshoremen are getting back to work and will get everything sorted out in the next 90 days,” said President Joe Biden.

The strikers will be given a tentative agreement that will increase their salaries by 62% over the next six years. However, the agreement does not address automated machine issues.

Both sides will continue negotiations on this and the benefits until a new deadline of January 15th.

“Effective immediately, all current work activities will cease and all work covered under the framework agreement will resume,” the International Longshoremen’s Association and the US Maritime Alliance said in a joint statement Thursday evening.

ILA members’ current base salary is $81,000 per year, but some can earn $200,000 with overtime. However, the tentative agreement will increase the hourly wage of top longshoremen from $39 to $63.

The CEO of the National Retail Federation celebrated the suspension, writing: “The sooner they reach an agreement, the better for all American families.”

Consumers were already nervous after the strike was announced.

A prolonged work stoppage could have led to a new rise in inflation for some goods and layoffs among manufacturers.

Panic buyers cleared toilet paper from the shelves of some large stores, even though domestically produced tissue paper would not have been affected by the disruption.

Tens of thousands of U.S. longshoremen walked off the job early Tuesday morning, clogging dozens of ports along the East and Gulf coasts.

ILA members began picketing shipping ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. This was the union’s first coast-wide strike in nearly 50 years.

The work stoppage, the largest in nearly half a century, threatened shortages of everything from bananas to auto parts.

The last time East and Gulf Coast workers went on strike in 1977, the stoppage lasted seven weeks.

In 2002, a strike among workers at West Coast ports lasted 11 days before then-President George W. Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act and ended the standoff.