Ports along the East and Gulf coasts are set to reopen Friday after it appears the striking dockworkers’ union has worked out a tentative deal with port owners and carriers.
Port employees represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association will return to work under a 15-week extension of its most recent contract, which expired October 1st.
That will give the union time to hash out the details of a new contract. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night the updated contract will include a 62% raise for workers over 6 years.
The new contract will ultimately have to be ratified by dockworkers from Maine to Texas, who had been on strike since Tuesday morning.
Dozens of picketing workers waved signs and chanted slogans about their fight against automation and a need to share in post-pandemic profits outside of Norfolk International Terminals Tuesday morning.
The strike had raised fears of major economic disruption and supply shortages. JP Morgan projected each day of the strike would cost the U.S. economy $5 billion per day.
Economist Bob McNab from Old Dominion University told WHRO that if the strike had dragged on for a couple weeks, the local effects would have been similar to a federal government shutdown.
“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 previously said.
House Republicans, trade groups and even Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin had called on President Joe Biden to use federal power to prevent or, once it had started, end the strike.
Biden, however, declined to intervene, telling reporters he didn't believe in the Depression-era legislation that gives the president the authority to halt strikes if there's a national security interest.
The three-day strike was the first for the ILA since 1977.
