Vote Scheduled for Union Members to Ratify ILA Master Contract

 

The International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Exchange have each approved the tentative contract agreement reached last month for the dockworkers at U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports. With these steps in place, the contract will be presented in the next two weeks to the rank-and-file followed by a vote scheduled for Tuesday, February 25.

Speaking in front of the union’s Wage Scale Committee and more than 200 delegates, ILA President Harold Daggett said, “I believe it is the greatest ILA contract, and the greatest contract negotiated by a labor organization.”

The ILA delegates after the presentations unanimously approved the tentative agreement that is in the form of a Memorandum of Settlement between USMX and the ILA and supplements and amends the current Master Contract. That cleared the way for a ratification vote by the ILA rank-and-file members.

USMX separately reports that its membership unanimously approved the Master Contract at its membership meeting last month.

Terms of the contract have not yet been announced and in particular the agreement about automation and semi-automation at the terminals. Wages issued reported settled with a better than 60 percent increase as well as terms for benefits.

The terminal operators were pushing for productivity improvements noting that the ports lack space for expansion and need to keep pace with increased volumes and demand. Reports said they have proposed to keep the existing language which forms a committee to review any proposed new systems or automation while calling for systems the ILA described as semi-automation.

The ILA was adamant that it would never accept any automation or semi-automation. The leadership called for a rollback on previous agreements. 

“This was the hardest and most complicated contract to bargain possibly in the history of the ILA,” said Daggett. “With the changes we’ve seen across our industry, we knew what this contract meant for securing the future.”

The ILA struck for three days in October while the Biden administration pressured the employers to make wage concessions. In December, President-elect Donald Trump came out strongly supporting the ILA and its position against automation.

A final agreement on the contract terms was announced on January 8, a week ahead of the deadline and after several breakdowns and contentious allegations from both sides. If approved, the new agreement and all its benefits, are retroactive to October 1, 2024. The new contract would be in effect until September 30, 2030.