Punching In: East Coast Ports Brace for 45,000 Worker Strike

Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.

A Fall for Strikes | Blue States Require Pay Ranges for Job Seekers

Ian Kullgren: Those of you who can’t get enough of transportation strikes are in luck; there’s a big one brewing on the East Coast with the International Longshoremen’s Association that could halt nearly half of all US imports. At the same time, Boeing Co. workers are on strike and the United Auto Workers are going toe-to-toe with Stellantis NV.

Feeling Déja Vu? It was little more than a year ago that West Coast dock workers finally reached a collective bargaining agreement after more than a year of tense negotiations. Now, a walkout of 45,000 dock workers may be coming to East Coast ports for the first time since 1977, and importers are sprinting to get millions of dollars of goods to shore before ports from Maine to Texas shut down.

A strike seems almost inevitable when the contract expires Oct. 1. The ILA is said to be demanding an eye-popping 77% wage increase over six years, making the West Coast Workers’ 32% raise look like chump change.

Talks are not going well. In fact, they’re not going at all. As of late last week, the union and the United States Maritime Alliance, the group that represents East Coast port companies, weren’t even meeting at the bargaining table. ILA rejected the port operators’ wage offer, saying in a Sept. 17 statement that the employers had “taken advantage of low-entry wage and a tiered progression system for thirty years.” Meanwhile, the USMX blamed the ILA for the lack of bargaining.

A work stoppage puts Democrats in a political pickle barely a month before the election. In theory, President Joe Biden could break a strike through the Taft-Hartley Act, since shipping is considered a pillar of US commerce. George W. Bush did that in 2002, ending a lockout of more than 10,000 West Coast longshoremen. But a Biden administration official told Reuters last week that the president wasn’t considering doing so—meaning Vice President Kamala Harris could be left to take the brunt of any economic fallout if she wins the White House.

Two dock workers talk next to stacked containers at the Port of Baltimore in Baltimore, Md., on Oct. 14, 2021.

Photographer: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Chris Marr: State laws requiring employers to post pay ranges in job ads will cover about 30% of the US workforce by Jan. 1.

Efforts to mandate pay transparency have steadily spread through states with Democratic-majority legislatures since Colorado first enacted one applying to job postings in 2021. California, Hawaii, New York, Washington state, Washington D.C., and a handful of cities require that job postings include a pay range, with some also mandating a description of benefits or other compensation such as bonuses.

The laws are aimed at shrinking the wage gap for women and workers of color by giving them more upfront information during job searches and salary negotiations. The gap for women working full-time widened in 2023 for the first time in two decades. Women’s average earnings fell to 82.7% of men’s earnings from 84% a year earlier, the Census Bureau reported this month, as the data showed higher income growth last year for men than for women.

Maryland’s updated transparency requirements take effect Oct. 1. The state’s existing law, like similar statutes in Connecticut, Nevada, and Rhode Island, required employers to provide job candidates with a pay range either upon request or at a particular point in the hiring process, but not in the job ad.

Up next are Illinois and Minnesota, where the job ad requirements take effect Jan. 1, followed by Vermont and Massachusetts later in 2025. Similar measures are under consideration in a handful more states. In New Jersey, the state Senate passed a pay transparency bill (S2310) unanimously in June, teeing it up for an Assembly vote before it goes to Gov. Phil Murphy (D).

Maine lawmakers came close to passing a bill in the past two sessions, giving it votes of approval in both the House and Senate before it got stuck at an appropriations process hurdle.

Like the New Jersey bill, several pay transparency measures have won “yes” votes from Republican lawmakers, but thus far no GOP-majority legislative chamber has passed one of these bills.

Perhaps the most bipartisan effort to date came this year in Vermont, where a Democratic-majority legislature passed the measure (H.704) and Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed it in June. A Virginia pay transparency bill didn’t fare so well, as Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed it in March.

We’re punching out. Daily Labor Report subscribers please check in for updates during the week, and feel free to reach out to us.