President Joe Biden does not intend to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to prevent an East and Gulf Coast port strike if union dockworkers fail to reach a new deal with employers by Sept. 30, according to a report from Reuters.
“We’ve never invoked Taft-Hartley to break a strike and are not considering doing so now,” an unnamed Biden administration official told Reuters.
The Taft-Hartley Act is a federal law enacted in 1947 that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. Under the legislation, if it is determined that a port strike would endanger national public health and safety, the president can request a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. This would effectively pause a strike from occurring, and would extend the window for negotiations.
Publicly, the administration hasn’t been clear on potential decesion.
When asked in a Tuesday press briefing about the chances of federal intervention, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals.”
Dr. Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, called the potential invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act a “no-win situation” for the Biden administration.
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“If they allow the strike, there will be impact. Products will not get into the stores, and there will be shortages,” Sheffi told Sourcing Journal. “There will be short-term delays and long-term delays. These ports are closer to major consumer centers than the West Coast ports, so there will be more immediate effect.”
Longer-term impacts of a one-week strike would include four-to-six weeks of backlog to clear, Sheffi noted. Additionally, ships that haven’t yet dropped off product at a port won’t be able to go back to China to pick up more goods on time, compounding the lateness.
But if the White House instead chooses to invoke Taft-Hartley, then the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) dockworkers will remain working on their old contract, which would “be a huge disappointment for the members” after certain promises have been made, said Sheffi. The ILA has also indicated that it wants no part of any federal intervention into the negotiations.
The Biden administration’s looming decision comes in the weeks ahead of the 2024 presidential election, as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both seek the approval of working class and union voters.
For 10 months, The ILA has been steadfast in its determination that its dockworkers will strike across 36 ports from Maine to Texas on Oct. 1 without a new deal. On Tuesday, the union conveyed in a new bulletin that a work stoppage was “more likely” as negotiations have remained at an impasse since the summer. Both parties being “very far apart” on areas including wages and the use of automation at ports.
“I think there will be a strike. The sides are too entrenched,” said Sheffi. “The problem with high rhetoric is that you get tied to it. Let’s say you’re a union leader, and you promise them a 100 percent wage increase—you cannot compromise on 20 percent. It just doesn’t work this way, especially given the fact that UPS and some other organizations got very rich contracts.”
The Reuters report came in the wake of a Tuesday letter from the National Retail Federation (NRF), which again urged the Biden administration to immediately work with the ILA and its employers, the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), to resume contract negotiations and ensure no disruption at the ports if a new contract is not reached by Sept. 30.
The NRF led a group of 177 trade associations in signing the plea, marking the second time the group has called on the administration to push the two parties back to the negotiating table.
Biden has signed off on federal intervention into national labor matters before, thwarting a potential national railroad strike two years ago after Congress passed legislation that forced union workers to accept a new contract.
The last time a president invoked the Taft-Hartley Act was in 2002, during the West Coast port lockout. After 11 days of stoppage, President George W. Bush used the act to order an 80-day cooling-off period, during which the ports were reopened, and negotiations continued for another 45 days before reaching a resolution.
The act was not invoked last summer when West Coast port dockworkers were ironing out a new deal. Unlike the current East Coast scenario, the union laborers out west continued working through the expiration of their contract before a new agreement was reached. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su held joint meetings to facilitate the six-year agreement.
West Coast ports could play a potential role in a strike this year. Although it would be illegal for longshoremen to officially strike, the workers could briefly walk off the job “for a day or two” in solidarity, Sheffi said.
“They’re probably not going to work on ships that were diverted from the East Coast,” Sheffi said. “That’s something that they can do, and say, ‘We are working on ships that are going to the West Coast. But we’re not going to deal with ships that are diverted to bypass the strikers.’”
According to data from container shipping analysis firm Linerlytica, ports controlled by the ILA handled 28.4 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containerized cargo in 2023, or almost 550,000 TEUs each week.
For each week that the strike continues, it would hold up 1.7 percent of the global containership fleet, according to Linerlytica. An extended strike is expected to affect over 4.5 million TEU of the fleet, accounting for 15 percent of global containership capacity.