Supply Chain Digest Says...   The ILA is also insisting any new contract contain requirements for adding stevedores in conjunction with new automation.     What do you say?   Click here to send us your comments       Click here to see reader feedback

With an extended contract deadline looming, the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents some 23,000 dockworkers across East and Gulf coast ports, is reported to be back to the negotiating table with port and terminal operators. Automation remain the major stumbling block.

This week, CNBC reported that a secret meeting between key members of the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance was held on Sunday, prior to formal negotiations.

In early October, the ILA went on a three-day strike after its contract expired at the end of September, before agreeing to three-month extension of the expired contract to January 15. That temporary deal came after Biden administration officials intervened and helped broker an extension.

That tentative pact included a 62% increase in base wages to $63 dollars per hour over the six years of a new contract, from $39, over the six years of a new contract.

However, the issue of port automation remains a major obstacle to a new deal, with union leaders making public comments in December saying they would strongly fight contract language that opens the door to more automation, such as autonomous cranes. (See East and Gulf Coast Port Operators Say Right to Automate Must be Preserved in New Contract.)

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Port employers and ocean shipping companies say they agreed to a large wage increase on the understanding that the union would consent to gains in productivity that could come with more automation.”

Two ports covered by the ILA contract already use semi-autonomous cranes to stack and organize containers for pickup by drayage trucks, contrary to the current agreement, according to the ILA.

One crane operator using the crane technology can manage the work of several cranes simultaneously.

According to the Journal, the ILA instead wants the container terminals to be forced to hire more dock workers for each crane in operation.

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That would significantly increase operating costs for many terminal operators. Example: the Port of Virginia, which has 116 automated stacking cranes and is expecting to add another 36 of the machines in the next few years.

The ILA is also insisting any new contract contain requirements for adding stevedores in conjunction with new automation.

The Journal quotes one official from the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents port and terminal operators in the talks, as saying that “We are not against paying people for doing good work. We’re just not in the business of hiring people who are going to add no value but purely add cost.”

ILA leader Harold Daggett said last month that the ILA supports technology as long as it “promotes efficiency without replacing the critical role of a human performing that task.”

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