West Coast ports reach union contract, ending year-long labor dispute

After a nearly year-long labor dispute between the International Longshore Workers Union and port operators, West Coast dockworkers have emerged with a tentative new contract that would include a pay raise.

The union and the Pacific Maritime Association, an industry group for port operators and shipping companies, announced they had reached a deal in a joint statement published late Wednesday night. If both parties ratify the agreement, they would end a bitter labor dispute that had temporarily shuttered some of North America’s most important ports of entry.

The new contract includes a wage increase of 8 to 10 percent for the first year, according to a person briefed on the details who was not authorized to speak publicly. The person declined to say how much pay would rise for the remainder of the workers’ six-year contract.

The deal also includes retroactive pay at that increased rate for the hours that dockworkers worked during the eight months without a contract — a major point of contention in the final stages of negotiation.

Delegates from each of the union’s chapters will convene for one week in July to approve the details of the contract, which will then be sent to the Pacific Maritime Association to be ratified in August.

In a statement, International Longshore and Warehouse Union President Willie Adams declined to share the details publicly “until we have completed the ratification process.” Representatives of the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents port owners, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Pacific Maritime Association had accused the union of slowing commerce through coordinated walkouts. And both sides publicly criticized each other during negotiations over issues such as automation and pay, even though they were ostensibly operating under a media blackout.

The dispute did not develop into a strike, but it came close: Canadian dockworkers did vote to authorize one over the weekend.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement that recognizes the heroic efforts and personal sacrifices of the ILWU workforce in keeping our ports operating,” said Adams and Pacific Maritime Association President James McKenna in a joint statement. “We are also pleased to turn our full attention back to the operation of the West Coast Ports.”

The ports at Los Angeles; Long Beach, Calif.; Oakland, Calif.; and Seattle serve as critical gateways for container ships bringing imports from Asia. They collectively process hundreds of billions of dollars in cargo each year for products such as agricultural goods, manufacturing components and consumer electronics.

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Business groups, including the National Retail Federation, have called those supply lines “crucial” to their operations as they urged the White House to broker a deal.

Pay and automation concerns

The biggest long-standing flash point for the union and port management concerned automation — namely, the extent to which port managers can bring in machinery to do jobs currently performed by longshoremen.

But the subject of pay more recently became an unexpected sticking point, according to three people briefed on the negotiations who were not authorized to discuss the proceedings.

Workers wanted the new contract to include retroactive pay provisions to compensate them for the time they worked without a contract, the people said. At one point, a draft proposal leaked to union members seemed to imply that provision had been dropped, leading to sporadic walkouts in Oakland and elsewhere.

According to a study commissioned by the Pacific Maritime Association, the hourly pay rate for ILWU longshoremen ranged from $46.23 to $52.03 in 2022. The average annual earnings for longshoremen totaled more than $194,000, the trade group’s study said.

The Biden administration dispatched acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to help broker a deal, leading to near-daily conversations with negotiators, people close to the talks said.

Su spoke with both parties over the phone every day for several weeks before flying to California on Sunday to discuss negotiations in person, a representative of the Labor Department told The Washington Post. On Monday, she organized meetings with both parties separately, and by Tuesday, both sides came together one more time before the deal was finalized Wednesday.

Su “used her deep experience and judgment to keep the parties talking, working with them to reach an agreement after a long and sometimes acrimonious negotiation,” President Biden said in a statement Thursday. “Above all I congratulate the port workers, who have served heroically through the pandemic and the countless challenges it brought, and will finally get the pay, benefits, and quality of life they deserve.”

It is not the first high-profile labor dispute that has drawn in the White House. Last year, Biden and then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh became personally involved in mediating a rail workers dispute.

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