Tens of thousands of longshoremen at 14 ports along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico are poised to walk off the job early Tuesday morning if their union and employers cannot reach a new labor agreement by midnight, threatening to disrupt both the economy and the 2024 election.
Negotiations between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) soured earlier this summer, and the two sides remain far apart on key issues with the contract set to expire Oct. 1.
The ILA says it represents about 85,000 longshoremen, and the USMX says the current contract covers around 25,000 port workers. This would be the union’s first strike at all East Coast and Gulf Coast ports since 1977.
The ports handle a majority of U.S. container volume and a quarter of annual international trade in the U.S. — about $3 trillion, according to the business research nonprofit The Conference Board.
“A one-week …