
Dock Workers End Strike!
Washington, Oct 3 (EFE).-
United States President Joe Biden celebrated Thursday that dock workers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association union reached a preliminary agreement with the US Maritime Alliance shipping employers’ association to end their strike.
“I want to thank the union workers, the carriers, and the port operators for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding,” he said in a statement released by the White House.

He said collective bargaining “works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” after the association announced the end to the strike that began Tuesday at ports in the eastern US and the Gulf of Mexico.
US Vice President Kamala Harris also praised the agreement.
“As I have said, this is about fairness – and our economy works best when workers share in record profits. Dockworkers deserve a fair share for their hard work getting essential goods out to communities across America,” Harris said in a White House statement.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced he would soon “continue to coordinate closely with stakeholders in the US supply chains to support an orderly process of returning these ports to their operations and to promote a good outcome in subsequent contract negotiations.”

The preliminary agreement, effective immediately, ends the strike of some 45,000 dockworkers, who were protesting for better working conditions and wages.
The workers achieved a 62 percent wage increase, below the 77 percent increase they were demanding for the next six years, but higher than the 50 percent the organization had initially offered them.
For the first time since 1977, the US faced a port shutdown affecting 36 strategic terminals such as Elizabeth/Newark, Baltimore, Savannah, Houston, New Orleans or Miami, which carries between 43 percent and 49 percent of the country’s maritime trade.

Financial company JP Morgan had estimated that each day of strike could generate losses of about $5 billion. The closure of the Houston port, the most important in the Gulf of Mexico, could cause daily losses of $100 million in imports and exports, according to data from the Miter Corporation, a think tank based in Virginia.
The government had ruled out that the shutdown would have an immediate effect on the economy or prices, but consumer goods, automotive, energy and agricultural products sectors could have been the most affected if it were prolonged. EFE
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