Biden Forces Settlement in Dockworkers Strike. Guess Who Came Out the Big Winner?
Rick Moran
The dockworkers' union has agreed to return to work after the White House intervened and strong-armed the U.S. Maritime Alliance, representing shipping companies, to give the union what they wanted regarding wages.
The dockworkers will return to work immediately under the old contract and the two sides will have until January 15 to hammer out the outstanding issues.
Why Biden didn't intervene to prevent the strike is clear. He wanted the International Longshoreman Union (ILA) to demonstrate its muscle and willingness to shut down the U.S. economy to get what it wanted.
The union wanted a 77% increase in wages. After the companies offered 50%, they got a 62% increase after White House aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients and other senior officials, held a Zoom meeting with the shipping lines at 5:30 a.m. (Good morning. Did I wake you? Sign here.) Meanwhile, acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su visited union leaders in New Jersey, urging them to get on board.
“Collective bargaining works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” President Joe Biden said in a statement after the deal was announced.
ILA President, the bomb-throwing Harold Daggett, claimed the dockworkers deserved a "fair share" of the "hundreds of billions of dollars in profits that shipping companies made." That's not even in the ballpark as far as profits made during the pandemic, considering what the companies had to do to get the merchandise from point to point around the world.
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https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/10/04/biden-forces-settlement-in-dockworkers-strike-guess-who-came-out-the-big-winner-n4933061