A historic United States port strike has been suspended and a tentative agreement was reached “on wages,” according to the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance.
“Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume,” the ILA and USMX said in a joint statement Thursday evening.
The tentative agreement would increase workers’ wages by 62% over the life of the 6-year contract, sources familiar confirm to ABC News.
This represents a significant increase from the shipping industry group’s offer of a 50% wage increase earlier this week. The union had been pushing for a 77% pay hike over six years.
The tentative agreement would bring the hourly wage for a top dockworker to $63 per hour at the end of the new contract, up from $39 per hour under the expired contract.
Congrats to the longshoremen!
Half the problem is how many are “critical workers” and can’t outright strike. In my field, for instance, I’m union, but it wouldn’t be very good to strike in a traditional sense. We’re fire/ems, so the only people to really suffer from a strike would be the people who are calling 911 for help. So here we are, working 54 hours a week and making $42,000 a year.
They asked for 77% pay raises over 6 years and negotiated for 62%. This is a decent deal. Any victory for labor is a victory for all our us. Sure there is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a win.
Hence the “ish.” It’s a victory. It could be a better one. That’s a 15% difference from what they wanted.
Pretty substantial compared to the average American raise or pretty substantial compared to what should be fair and livable?
if you made $100k on the docks today, by 2030 you should make $162k. this is an excellent win for them.
That’s a big fucking if considering dock workers can make a hell of a lot less than that. In fact, the top rate is only a little over $80,000 a year.
If you work a ton of overtime, you can earn over $100,000. The average pay is a bit over $50,000.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-do-dock-workers-make-longshoreman-salary/
Would you care to elaborate why you say that isn’t a huge pay raise? It seems quite significant to me.
Dock workers can make as little as $14 an hour. A 62% pay rise would bring it up to $22.68 an hour. Over 6 years. Sure, $40,000 a year is better than a lot of jobs. It’s still atrociously low considering the amount of back-breaking labor that can be involved.
good for them!
now, let’s all point and laugh at the schmucks that learned nothing from 2020 and stockpiled TP this week.
Further proof that unions work and should be more widespread.
That’s a much better outcome than I expected from this. Here’s hoping the trend continues.
Fuck yeah a win for humanity.
