A historic United States port strike has been suspended and a tentative agreement was reached “on wages,” according to the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance.
“Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume,” the ILA and USMX said in a joint statement Thursday evening.
The tentative agreement would increase workers’ wages by 62% over the life of the 6-year contract, sources familiar confirm to ABC News.
This represents a significant increase from the shipping industry group’s offer of a 50% wage increase earlier this week. The union had been pushing for a 77% pay hike over six years.
The tentative agreement would bring the hourly wage for a top dockworker to $63 per hour at the end of the new contract, up from $39 per hour under the expired contract.
Congrats-ish. That’s not exactly a huge pay rise.
They asked for 77% pay raises over 6 years and negotiated for 62%. This is a decent deal. Any victory for labor is a victory for all our us. Sure there is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a win.
Hence the “ish.” It’s a victory. It could be a better one. That’s a 15% difference from what they wanted.
Adding to what everyone else said, this is still a tentative deal. This is not the final form of the contract they’ll sign.
Not necessarily. Prudent to start with an offer higher than your actual goal so you have room to bargain downward.
Absolutely. This is collective bargaining 101. Look at the historic UAW strike of 2023 and what they asked for at the start. Discounting that it was the first trilateral strike against the big three automakers union history, they asked for an historic amount of benefits and workplace changes.
-46% pay increase over contract duration
-Restoration of pension
-Retiree healthcare
-Healthcare benefits for all
-Cost of living adjustments
-End to the wage tiers system that divides the laborers into different “classes” of workers
-32-hour workweek with no loss in pay
If you don’t go for audacious, you will get far less than you need.
They got:
-25% pay increase in wages over the 4.5 year contract, 11% at outset
-Cost of living adjustments
-$5k bonus
-Elimination of the tiered wage system (Fucking huge)
If they never went to bat for the audacious, they never would have gotten the tiered system removed. Now they have far more solidarity and collective bargaining power for the next negotiation. All because of audacious demands and striking unilaterally across the big three.
This is just one contract negotiation and strike. Much work to still be done.
This is what, 8% annually or so? Seems petty substantial to me.
Pretty substantial compared to the average American raise or pretty substantial compared to what should be fair and livable?
You need to know the base wage before saying that. If they are getting a fair and livable wage now, and this raise is twice what inflation is over time, then this is great. If they are below a fair and livable wage, then this might be enough to get them up, depending on how far below they are.
The base wages which I’ve already told to others? They are not getting a fair and livable wage.
That would require more than just the pay rate to judge. It seems to be a decent bump up, but I was under the impression that some of the concern that led to the strike was how automation was going to affect their job. $63/hour isn’t all that great if you have half the hours, or no job at all because they needed only half the workers.
If preserving jobs regardless of technology were a criterion, we’d still have farriers in every town. Things change. Good on them for getting a pay raise, though. It’s hard and essential work.
I was also under that impression.
if you made $100k on the docks today, by 2030 you should make $162k. this is an excellent win for them.
That’s a big fucking if considering dock workers can make a hell of a lot less than that. In fact, the top rate is only a little over $80,000 a year.
If you work a ton of overtime, you can earn over $100,000. The average pay is a bit over $50,000.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-do-dock-workers-make-longshoreman-salary/
OK.
point wasn’t what you start with. point is what you end with.
don’t like base pay? strike again.
Yes. That’s exactly what I hope they do in January.
Would you care to elaborate why you say that isn’t a huge pay raise? It seems quite significant to me.
Dock workers can make as little as $14 an hour. A 62% pay rise would bring it up to $22.68 an hour. Over 6 years. Sure, $40,000 a year is better than a lot of jobs. It’s still atrociously low considering the amount of back-breaking labor that can be involved.
They seem to be okay with the labor since they are also against automation.