Nearly a week after the International Longshore and Warehouse Union announced it had ratified a new six-year contract with the Pacific Maritime Association, President Joe Biden is welcoming members of both groups to the White House to congratulate them on making a deal.
The hard-fought contract between 22,000 workers and the 29 West Coast ports that employ them took more than a year. In June, ILWU workers at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle and Hueneme shut down facilities for a day, prompting the Biden Administration to send acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to San Francisco to help with negotiations.
In an interview with Spectrum News in July, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka praised Su for her role in negotiating the contract by keeping “everybody moving forward for the last 72 hours to reach that tentative agreement.”
On Wednesday afternoon, President Biden will deliver remarks about his administration’s work to empower workers while strengthening the nation’s ports and supply chains. Hailing the hard-won labor deal as “a prime example of Bidenomics at work,” the contract reflects “workers empowered and bargaining together for the wages, benefits and quality of life they deserve, and company owners recognizing those unions’ right to organize,” a White House official said.
Wednesday’s White House gathering is the president’s latest effort to cast himself as pro-labor at a time when multiple unions across the country are striking — or threatening to do so.
The 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America and 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild have been striking since summer with no end in sight. While a strike among 340,000 United Parcel Service workers was narrowly averted this summer, a strike among the 150,000 members of the United Auto Workers is seen as increasingly likely and could begin next week.
Prior to the President making remarks, a White House official praised port workers for helping to rebuild supply chains that were severely damaged during the COVID pandemic, overburdening West coast ports and driving cargo levels to record highs. In early 2021, shortly after taking office, President Biden launched a task force “partnered with the private sector to move record levels of cargo through the ports while lowering shipping and rail costs,” according to the Council of Economic Advisers.
That partnership helped reduce the backlog of anchored cargo ships that dominated headlines last year, while also reducing East-West ocean shipping prices, the White House said. As part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Biden Administration will invest $17 billion in port infrastructure to continue to expedite commerce and strengthen the supply chain.
