It would have been terrible timing:
The union representing the striking U.S. dockworkers, the International Longshoremen’s Association, reached a deal Thursday to suspend the strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract.
Workers had begun walking picket lines early Tuesday near ports all along the East and Gulf coasts.
A shutdown lasting more than a few weeks could have led to higher prices and shortages of goods throughout the country as the holiday shopping season — along with a tight presidential election — approaches.
With the strike being suspended, consumers probably won’t notice any significant shortages or price hikes. Had the stoppage persisted for more than a month, it would have been a different story, depending on what you were shopping for. Most holiday retail goods have already arrived from overseas, so there is a buffer. Prices on everything from fruits and vegetables to cars could have headed higher, at least temporarily, if it had dragged on.
I honestly thought that was the intention in doing this in October. The head of that Union is a super Trump supporter and it looked like he was pulling a fast one by calling for the strike just before the election.
At 5:30 a.m. Thursday, before the sun had risen above his Washington home, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was on a Zoom call with two Cabinet secretaries and the executives of the shipping companies negotiating with workers who had gone on strike at critical docks along the East and Gulf coasts, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
With the nation’s economy — and much of the president’s legacy — hanging in the balance just weeks before the election, White House chief economist Lael Brainard told management that they needed to come up with a new offer to the striking longshoremen. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stressed that Hurricane Helene magnified the importance of a deal. Labor Secretary Julie Su expressed optimism that the union would agree to a temporary extension if raises were included.
Then in a surprising move, as the call was wrapping up, Zients told the board members of the U.S. Maritime Alliance that he was going to tell Biden in about an hour that they had agreed to propose a new offer to the union. By that point, the shipping executives had agreed to do no such thing. Zients was saying they would.
“I need the offer today — not tomorrow. Today,” Zients said on the call. “I’m going to brief the president in an hour that you believe you can get this done today.”
Less than 12 hours later, White House officials were celebrating a deal to reopen the ports until January — postponing the issue until after this November’s election. The agreement provides collective if temporary relief to skittish Democrats from the White House to Capitol Hill, while buoying Vice President Kamala Harris, along with Friday’s strong jobs report.
Not that all the unions are grateful for the support of the administration. The national Teamsters refused to endorse, even after the Biden administration fought to fix their pension system. And yesterday the Firefighters did the same.
As Dave Weigel pointed out this morning, there’s no doubt going to be a discussion in Democratic circles about this:
I’m sure the Democrats are not going to withdraw their support for unions. It’s philosophically fundamental to their coalition. And after all, the UAW is going all out to help the Democrats so this isn’t a problem across the board. But Weigel is right. Deliverism holds that you must provide material benefits to people in order to receive their political support. Biden did that in a dozen different ways and not just for unions. And the race is still too close to call. Go figure.
Maybe economic determinism doesn’t actually tell the whole story after all, especially in a rich country like America? Just asking.
For now, the good news is that this potentially crippling strike has been averted before the election. Whew.
