MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Following White House pressure, dockworkers strike “to cripple US economy” suspended

A United States dockworkers strike involving 45,000 striking at East and Gulf coast ports reached a deal Thursday to suspend a three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract.

The union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, is to resume working immediately. The temporary end to the strike came after the union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies, reached a tentative agreement on wages, the union and ports said in a joint statement.

Allegedly the ports increased their wage offer from about 50% over six years to 62%. But any wage increase would have to be approved by union members as part of the ratification of a final contract.

The union went on strike early Tuesday after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at 36 ports stretching from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday shopping season at the ports, which handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.

The walkout raised the risk of shortages of goods on store shelves if it lasted more than a few weeks. Most retailers, though, had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the dockworkers’ strike. The effects of the stoppage would have crippled the US economy, and just a month before a critical presidential election.

“With the grace of God, and the goodwill of neighbors, it’s gonna hold,” President Joe Biden told reporters Thursday night after the agreement.

In a statement later, Biden applauded both sides “for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.” Biden said that collective bargaining is “critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

The union had been demanding a 77% raise over six years, plus a complete ban on the use of automation at the ports, which members see as a threat to their jobs. Both sides also have been apart on the issues of pension contributions and the distribution of royalties paid on containers that are moved by workers.

Just before the strike had begun, the Maritime Alliance said both sides had moved off their original wage offers, a tentative sign of progress.

The settlement pushes the strike and any potential shortages past the November presidential election, eliminating a potential liability for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. It’s also a big plus for the Biden-Harris administration, which has billed itself as the most union-friendly in American history. Shortages could have driven up prices and reignited inflation.

However strangely enough a piece in The New York Post might have also had an impact on the union's leadership decision. Union boss Harold Daggett, had vowed to “cripple the US economy,” if ports don’t ban automation and raise dockworkers’ wages sharply, but in the NY Post piece his extravagant life style was exposed, beginning with a Bentley convertible parked outside his sprawling mansion in New Jersey this week, as exclusive drone photos obtained by The Post revealed.

Apparently Daggett seems to have besides his convertible British Bentley, a five car garage connected to his 7,136-square-foot, Tudor-style home by a covered skyway. The hulking, two-story mansion — located on a 10-acre property in Sparta, a leafy enclave 50 miles west of New York City — encircles a spacious backyard patio with an amoeba-shaped pool.

A gate on the far side of the patio opens toward what looks like a free-standing sauna surrounded by a spacious wooden deck. A expansive swath of forest surrounds the property on all sides. The residence and gardens have an estimated real estate market value of some 6 million US dollars.

Daggett has fought US federal accusations of having Mafia ties, (Genovese crime family), became president of the International Longshoremen’s Association in 2011, a job that comes with a salary of US$ 728,000 annually on top of an additional US$ 173,000 from ILA-Local 1804-1.

In 2005, he was accused of steering union benefits contracts to firms that paid kickbacks to organized crime at a Brooklyn trial, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. During the course of the trial, one of Daggett’s co-defendants — Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Genovese associate — disappeared. His body was found weeks later decomposing in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey diner.