The International Longshoremen’s Association and employers at a swath of U.S. ports have agreed to begin working toward a new six-year labor agreement next month—after a presidential election that could have a sizable impact on negotiations, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The employers expect to meet with union officials in mid-November, according to a shipping industry official.
“It makes no sense to go into conversations without knowing what we’re working with in terms of the U.S. government, which played such an active role to get us to this point,” the official says.
Driven by concerns over wages and the threat of automation, some 50,000 dockworkers from Maine to Texas went on strike Oct. 1. About 700 dockworkers at the Port of New Orleans and about two dozen at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge were on strike before a tentative deal was reached Oct. 3.
That tentative deal, which would give dockworkers a 62% wage increase over six years, was reached after the White House put pressure on the employers and some of the world’s leading oceanic shipping companies to sweeten their original offer of a 50% pay hike.
The two sides have until Jan. 15 to reach a definitive agreement.
Read more from The Wall Street Journal, and read how a prolonged dockworkers strike would impact Louisiana’s economy here.
