The dockworkers’ union that briefly halted container ports from Texas to Maine last October has overwhelmingly voted to ratify a new labor contract, a deal the union’s leadership said would ensure labor peace for the next six years.
The agreement, described by ILA President Harold Daggett as the “gold standard” for ports worldwide, calls for a 62 percent wage increase over six years to raise the hourly rate for workers from $39 to $63.
The union and port operators also reached a critical agreement on automation, a long-standing point of contention. While the union feared that automated equipment would replace human workers, port operators and shipping companies argued that U.S. docks are falling behind international counterparts that have embraced automation to improve efficiency.
Under the new contract, ports may still introduce automation but must hire additional workers when implementing new technologies. Full automation remains off the table.
“We now have labor peace for the next six years,” said Daggett, who also served as the ILA’s chief negotiator. “It was a tough contract to negotiate and even took a three-day coast-wide strike in October 2024.”
The ILA’s first coastwide strike in nearly 50 years saw tens of thousands of dockworkers walking off the job last October, shutting down some of the nation’s busiest shipping hubs, such as Boston, Newark, Houston, and Savannah, to name a few—during the peak holiday shipping season.
“I’ve studied automation and know just about everything there is to know about it,” Trump said. “The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American workers.”
The study suggests that foreign ports are more likely to adopt automation due to higher cargo volumes, limited labor supplies, different labor agreements, and a greater percentage of cargo moved through transshipments—whereby containers are transferred between ships rather than onto trucks or trains.
When it comes to automation’s impact on the workforce, the GAO study found mixed results. At some ports, the introduction of automated technologies dramatically reduces the number of terminal gate positions. However, at others, automation did not lead to major job cuts but instead transformed the nature of those jobs and the skills required to perform them.
In a video message urging ILA members to ratify the contract, Daggett acknowledged that worker absenteeism had been a major concern during negotiations and that they need to “outperform” automation for the deal to be successful.
“Let’s understand the ILA must continue to demonstrate that we can outperform automation. How can we fight against automation and then tell companies we are not going to show up?”
