Unionized dockworkers will vote this week on a labor contract that retailers and manufacturers hope will secure peace on the waterfront through September 2030, banishing fears of a repeat of a three-day strike in October that hobbled U.S. trade, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Workers are widely expected to ratify the new contract on Tuesday, which International Longshoremen’s Association leaders are heralding as a “historic” win with a 62% pay increase and “full protection against automation” across East Coast and Gulf Coast ports.
Some port employers are privately heralding the deal, too.
Although the contract gives workers a larger-than-anticipated pay raise, executives say, it also allows companies to more quickly bring in technologies that will increase efficiency and blunt some of the costs of the wage increase. For example, the contract allows companies to introduce some remote-operated cranes, which employers say saves time that workers otherwise spend climbing into and out of equipment.
Shipping executives have lamented that U.S. ports lag facilities in Europe and Asia in automation.
