More than 45,000 dockworkers, members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), in 14 ports along the East and Gulf coasts of the United States — from Maine to Texas — went on strike October 1. It’s their first walkout since 1977.

The entire working class should embrace their cause. The labor movement can help win the battle for public opinion and a fair contract. A victory in the strike will reverberate across the country and help everyone trying to improve wages, benefits, and job safety.

EDITORIAL

The ILA is rightly demanding wage increases of $5 per hour every year during a six-year contract as a starting point for negotiations with the employers, the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX). The union is also demanding improved benefits and job protections, in the face of the shippers’ plans to use automation to eliminate thousands of longshore jobs.

The USMX has refused to bargain in good faith for months. On September 26, four days before the strike deadline, the USMX filed a frivolous “unfair labor practice” charge against the union.

“The ILA regards the suit as another publicity stunt by the employer group,” countered the dockworkers union in a press release that day. Pointing to the shipping companies’ billions in profits, the union said the employers “fail to adequately compensate the ILA longshore workforce for their labor” and “are engaging in a real ‘unfair labor practice’ and have been getting away with [it] for decades.”

One company alone, Maersk, one of the largest shippers, made more than $50 billion in profits over the last four years.

“The shippers are gouging their customers that result in increased costs to American consumers. They are now charging $30,000 for a full container, a whopping increase from $6,000 per container just a few weeks ago,” the ILA pointed out in a September 30 press release.

“Meanwhile, ILA dedicated longshore workers continue to be crippled by inflation due to USMX’s unfair wage packages,” the union explained.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the editors of the Wall Street Journal, some Republican Senators, and others have called on U.S. president Joe Biden to invoke the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act to end the ILA strike and tip the scales in favor of the USMX.

Biden set such a precedent when he stabbed rail labor in the back by using a different anti-labor law to impose a national contract the majority of rail workers voted down in 2022. However, the White House has so far declined to take similar action in the ILA strike. The labor movement should oppose any such moves.

The employers, and their supporters in Congress and the media, are raising the imminent specter of looming shortages, especially for fruit like bananas, and higher prices for all affected consumer goods — from cars to toys and food — if the dockworkers strike lasts more than a week. They also claim many dockworkers are overpaid, making six-figure salaries.

ILA president Harold Dagget, reported the Washington Post, “contends… that higher-paid longshoremen work up to 100 hours a week, most of it overtime, and sacrifice much of their family time in doing so.”

Working people can make do without bananas for a while to help our ILA brothers and sisters take back what they deserve.

The top hourly rate for most ILA dockworkers is $39 — which translates to a gross annual income of about $81,000. But those with less than six years on the job earn half that. These are barely living wages in cities like New York where inflation has recently led to skyrocketing rents and other necessities.

And, as the ILA has explained, it is the giant shippers’ price gouging that is the main culprit behind already inflated consumer prices.

These are the facts all workers need to know.

The dockworkers strike is part of a growing list of encouraging signs for the U.S. working class: an uptick in labor struggles that have won some important victories after decades of setbacks and defeats. These include efforts led by young workers to unionize employers such as Amazon and Starbucks, as well as the successful contract fight waged by the Teamsters at UPS in 2023.

The most important recent working-class accomplishment was registered in the national strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW) against the Big Three auto manufacturers a year ago. Following that victory, the UAW expanded its organizing efforts in non-union plants, especially in the South.

About 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 751 in the Seattle area launched a strike against Boeing, the aerospace giant, on September 13. This walkout, now in its third week, is another indication that more workers are using the leverage they correctly see they have to reverse some of the countless concessions employers have forced on working people over the last half century.

With similar goals, another 5,000 IAM members went on strike against Textron Aviation on September 23 in Wichita, Kansas. Workers there manufacturing Beechcraft and Cessna planes are demanding better wages and benefits.

As UAW president Shawn Fain recently put it, “A united working class is the only effective wall against the billionaire class’ race to the bottom.”

It’s in that spirit that the dockworkers’ strike, like the walkouts at Boeing and Textron, deserves the active solidarity of the entire labor movement and the support of all working people.

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