I appeared on Bloomberg TV's Bloomberg Surveillance the morning after the International Longshoremen's Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) reached a tentative wages agreement that suspended the longshore workers' strike against East and Gulf Coast ports. I explained why the parties reached a partial deal and discussed the Biden-Harris Administration's role in the temporary resolution, among other issues.
Watch the full interview here:
Honestly, I was surprised that the strike ended so quickly. The settlement was made possible by the USMX making a huge concession to the ILA on wages. This 61.5% wage increase will result in East and Gulf Coast longshore workers earning slightly more than their West Coast counterparts by the end of their six-year contract. The deal was reached to increase wages $4 per hour each year of the deal, which was a level proposed to the parties by Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su and other Biden-Harris Administration mediators. The USMX must have realized that the International Longshore Workers Union deal with the Pacific Maritime Association last year set a wages floor below which the ILA would not agree to suspend the strike.
The ILA joins a long list of unions that have delivered huge wage increases to their members over the last few years, including the Teamsters at UPS, the UAW at the Big Three automakers, and SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild in Hollywood. Is it better in a union? Only if you want to get paid something like what your work is worth.
There are some big issues left to be resolved. We discuss some of those in this interview, especially automation. We also discussed whether a union president who just won a massive pay increase for his union's members is paid too much, especially when compared with average CEO compensation that is 20 times higher than his salary (among S&P 500 companies). My answer: it's up to the members whether he is worth what they pay him.
I hope you enjoy the interview. I welcome your comments on anything I said, the strike, the settlement, or any topic you would like below.
