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October 2, 2024 - 8:45pm
When the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) went on strike on Tuesday, the union not only shut down commercial ports across the Eastern seaboard. It also added to the sense of widening chaos during the Biden administration. While Joe Biden ran on the promise of a “return to normalcy,” the escalating unrest of his presidency — supply-chain crunches, conflagrations abroad, and a migration crisis — has frustrated the electorate.
The last time dockworkers went on strike on the East Coast was 1977 — an era marked by inflation and economic turmoil. Due to post-pandemic inflation, dockworkers have now demanded a big pay increase, but they are also calling for hard limits on using technology to automate the shipping process. More than pay, automation could be a major sticking point in negotiations. In a recent statement, the union made its position clear: “The ILA is steadfastly against any form of automation—full or semi—that replaces jobs or historical work functions.”
While a day or two of port closures might cause only a few economic ripples, a drawn-out strike could send shockwaves throughout the American economy. In a viral clip, the ILA president boasted of the cascading economic pain a strike would cause — from closed businesses to laid-off construction workers. If they are buffeted by such an economic whirlwind, American voters could blame the White House.
Compounding these political problems, the strike places Biden — as well as Kamala Harris — in a no-win situation by dividing the Democratic coalition. An old-school Democrat from the party’s blue-collar days, Biden was relatively popular with rank-and-file union voters, at least at the beginning of his presidency. Harris, however, has yet to close the deal with many union voters. As CNN analyst Harry Enten recently observed, polling reveals that she has the lowest support from union households of any Democratic presidential nominee in decades. The recent Teamsters non-endorsement only underlines this fact.
All that adds to Democratic woes over the strike. The President could invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to intervene in the strike and open up the ports again. But doing so could push organised labour interests further away from Democrats, and Biden has insisted that he will not use Taft-Hartley. However, a refusal by the White House to take action to open up the ports could also further sour some working- and middle-class voters on the Biden-Harris administration. Because of the ILA’s dominance of East Coast and Gulf ports, this strike pits a single union against working families more generally.
The question of how to handle this strike could also point to some divisions in the Republican coalition. But currently, the GOP has mostly focused on blaming the Biden administration for letting this happen at all. Some House Republicans have argued that the President should exercise the powers of Taft-Hartley to end the strike, but the party’s message is still evolving.
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SubscribeCrisis? What Crisis? As James Callaghan is supposed to have said on returning to Britain during the Winter of Discontent. With things hotting up in the Middle East and a strike by the Longshoreman’s Union as well as the flood of immigration and fentanyl it only needs Harris to say Crisis? What Crisis? to sink her chances of election. The significance of the passage of time might just come back to bite her.