East Coast dockworkers ended their strike after reaching a “tentative agreement on wages” with the United States Maritime Alliance, the International Longshoremen’s Association and USMX said in a joint statement Thursday.
The two sides have extended their current contract and will keep negotiating until Jan. 15 to finalize a new one.
“Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease, and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume,” USMX and ILA said.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news of the agreement, said the “breakthrough” came when USMX offered a 62% wage increase over six years.
The two sides will still have to come to an agreement on difficult issues such as automation and container royalties.
The ag and food industries were concerned over the impacts of a strike. About 40% of U.S. containerized agricultural exports move through East and Gulf Coast ports, agricultural groups told President Joe Biden in a letter last week.
“[If] containers are the majority of your export business and the majority of that’s going through the East Coast, you’re now in a really tough situation,” National Grain and Feed Association President Mike Seyfert told Agri-Pulse on Monday. “Your supply chain’s been shut down — the supply chain you built your operation around — and now you’ve got to try and find an alternative market. That’s not always an easy thing to turn on a dime to do.”
Mike Steenhoek, the executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, welcomed news of the ports' reopening, noting it was a "particularly unfortunate" time for a strike due to the "nation’s current economic challenges and the 'all hands-on deck' need to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Helene."
"Having a reliable system of ports is clearly in the best interest of the American farmer," Steenhoek said.
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