The ever-present rumble of tractor-trailers hauling cargo containers to and from Norfolk International Terminals was absent from Hampton Boulevard Tuesday.
It was replaced by the sounds of dozens of striking dockworkers wearing blaze orange and highlighter yellow, bearing signs and chanting outside the port gates.
“No automation. We work around the clock. All we’re trying to do is feed our families,” one shouted into a megaphone to the passing cars.
Dockworkers up and down the East Coast walked off the job as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, following months of deadlocked negotiations over a new labor contract.
As a result, ports from New England to Texas - which handle most of the nation’s container cargo - have been shut down.
It’s the first International Longshoremen’s Association strike since 1977, and it could have major economic impacts for consumers and businesses. JP Morgan estimates the shutdown will cost the U.S. about $5 billion per day.
One of the two big sticking points in negotiations between the ILA and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and carriers, is pay.
In a written statement handed to media by union members on the picket line, the ILA says its workers kept the docks running and cargo moving throughout the COVID pandemic, and they should share in the profits ports and carriers have reaped.
The other rallying point for the ILA is about automation replacing jobs. Many on the picket line bore signs that read “workers over machines” and “automation hurts families.” The ILA is currently seeking a total automation ban in the new contract.
“Employers push automation under the guise of safety, but it is really about cutting labor costs to increase their already exceptionally high profits,” the ILA said in the Tuesday statement.
Statements from the Marine Alliance and ILA leadership early Tuesday indicate that the two have continued to trade proposals, but they’re still far apart on those two key issues.
Economist Bob McNab, a professor at Old Dominion University, said the wider impact of the strike depends entirely on how long it lasts.
“If there is a disruption that is less than a week, then it will essentially sort itself out. It will be like a bad storm that disrupts economic activity around the port,” McNab said. “Butafter a couple weeks, we'll look back at it and kind of look at it as a bullet that was dodged.”
“If this is a prolonged strike, if this stretches into two, three or more weeks, then we are looking at significant disruptions in economic activity in the region and the state and the nation.”
In the first week or so, McNab said the Target shelves and Amazon orders won’t look much different. But soon after that, imported goods like shoes, clothes, out-of-season food and car parts will become increasingly scarce.
For Hampton Roads, McNab likened the strike’s impacts to federal government shutdowns. Shorter shutdowns aren’t a huge issue, but Hampton Roads has weathered longer ones that caused a lot of pain for thousands of federal employees, contractors and their families.
If the strike does stretch on for weeks, McNab said he expects President Joe Biden would step in to end the strike and avert a recession before the presidential election.
Biden has said he won’t intervene, despite pressure from House Republicans and trade groups.
“I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” Biden told reporters over the weekend, citing the 1947 law that empowers the president to intervene in major strikes that would threaten national security.
