WASHINGTON — A dockworkers strike threatens to harm shipping, manufacturing, pre-holiday retail inventories — and Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency.
The International Longshoreman’s Association went on strike at 14 ports along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico Tuesday at midnight, just hours before Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, squares off in a New York debate with former President Donald Trump’s pick for the nation’s No. 2 job, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
The dockworkers are demanding a pay raise and restrictions on the use of automation at ports, which they say could lead to job losses. They have been at an impasse with the United States Maritime Alliance, or USMX, which represents shipping and port operations companies.
At a time when polls show Harris trailing Trump on the question of who is best suited to handle the economy, the work stoppage puts Democrats in a bind. As the party in power at the White House, they are more likely to be held responsible for any significant economic disruption. But, with voters already casting ballots in some states, they can’t afford to alienate union allies — the ILA is receiving support from the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and other labor organizations — by forcing an end to the dispute.
Biden and Harris were briefed by various agency heads that the potential for disruption — including in areas of fuel, food, and medicine — would be minimal in the short term, the White House said Tuesday. The White House also said that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard are in direct contact with USMX and the ILA to keep the negotiations moving forward.
NBC News reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.
ILA President Harold Daggett pointed to the potential commercial and political effects of the strike as his main point of leverage in an interview with Fox News Tuesday.
It is “time for Washington to put so much pressure on them to take care of us because we took care of them,” Daggett said. “People never gave a shit about us until now when they finally realized that the chain is being broken now. Cars won’t come in, food won’t come in, clothing won’t come in.”
Biden has so far rejected calls from business groups and some congressional Republicans to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to put workers back on the job while negotiations continue.
“I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” Biden said Sunday. He followed that up Tuesday with a statement calling on USMX to “present a fair offer” to the dock workers.
“It is time for USMX to negotiate a fair contract with the longshoremen that reflects the substantial contribution they’ve been making to our economic comeback,” Biden said, seeming to put the onus on USMX rather than the union.
And in an echo of Daggett’s assertion that dockworkers should be paid back for “taking care” of the shippers and port operators, Biden pointed to laborers’ actions to support commerce during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic and in some cases profits grew in excess of 800 percent compared to their profits prior to the pandemic,” he said. “It’s only fair that workers, who put themselves at risk during the pandemic to keep ports open, see a meaningful increase in their wages as well.”
The political risk for Harris is obvious enough that Democrats on the social media platform X accused Trump of engineering the strike to benefit himself.
