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 the Gulf of Mexico at midnight Tuesday, just hours before Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, squares off in a debate in New York with former President Donald Trump’s pick for the No. 2 job, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
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.
As 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 in 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 getting support from the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and other labor organizations — by forcing an end to the dispute.
Various agency heads briefed President Joe Biden and Harris that the potential for disruption — including in fuel, food and medicine — would be minimal in the short term, the White House said Tuesday. The White House also said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and national economic adviser Lael Brainard are in direct contact with the USMX and the ILA to keep the negotiations moving forward.
The Trump and Harris campaigns did not immediately respond to requests 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 on 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 s— 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 dockworkers.
“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 at 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 accused Trump on X of engineering the strike to benefit himself.
A Democratic strategist who works with labor unions shot down the 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 the USMX expired.
Politically, Daggett has made 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, Daggett met with Trump at his 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 he released in July, after the first assassination attempt on Trump. Daggett noted at the time that he and Trump are both from Queens, New York, and from the same generation.
At that point, Harris had not yet joined the race, and the Democratic Party was imploding after 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.”
Trump blamed the administration for the strike but stopped short of endorsing it in comments to Fox News on Tuesday.
“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. It backed Biden in 2020, and its political action committee has given far more heavily to Democrats than Republicans in congressional contests. In 2022, the ILA donated the maximum of $10,000 to Democrat Tim Ryan in his losing Senate race against Vance.
While Daggett says 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.”