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.
A Democratic strategist who works with labor unions shot down these Trump-centered theories about the strike, however.
“They’ve been talking about this strike publicly for nearly a year now because it’s when their contract expires,” the strategist said.
The dockworkers strike began at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, when their contract with USMX expired.
Politically, Daggett has demonstrated some marked shifts. In 2020, the group endorsed Biden, calling him a longtime defender of unions.
“Joe Biden’s friendship and support of the ILA goes back decades from his time as a U.S. Senator from Delaware,” Daggett said in a statement at the time.
At that time, Daggett forcefully condemned Trump for appointing “anti-union and right-wing conservative judges who look to further weaken labor laws protecting workers,” and warned that Trump espoused anti-union policies.
Then there was a Mar-a-Lago visit.
In November 2023, Daggett met with Trump at the former president’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to talk about labor interests.
“We had a wonderful, productive 90-minute meeting where I expressed to President Trump the threat of automation to American workers,” Daggett said in a statement that he released in July, after the first assassination attempt on Trump. Daggett noted at the time that he and Trump are both from Queens and from the same generation.
At that point, Harris had not yet joined the race and the Democratic Party was imploding following a devastating debate for Biden in late June.
“President Trump promised to support the ILA in its opposition to automated terminals in the U.S.,” Daggett said in the statement. “Mr. Trump also listened to my concerns about Federal ‘Right To Work’ laws which undermines unions and their ability to represent and fight for its membership.”
In comments to Fox News Tuesday, Trump blamed the administration for the strike but stopped short of endorsing it.
“The strike was caused by the massive inflation that was created by the Harris-Biden regime,” Trump said. “Everybody understands the dockworkers because they were decimated by this inflation, just like everybody else in our country and beyond.”
The longshoremen’s union has not endorsed in the presidential race, but it backed Biden in 2020 and its political action committee has given far more heavily to Democrats than Republicans in congressional contests. In 2022, ILA donated the maximum of $10,000 to Democrat Tim Ryan in his losing Senate race against Vance.
While Daggett says that he has a relationship with Trump that dates back decades — when both men lived in New York — he does not have similarly long ties to Harris.
A former senior official at another major union acknowledged the peril for Democrats but said Daggett’s goal is to win a better deal for the workers, not push the presidential election in Trump’s direction.
“His timing is horrible, but the contract was expiring. He didn’t set the date,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting friends in the labor movement. “He wouldn’t take a strike just for political purposes. There’s no way. He’d only do it for his membership.”
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