Port Strike Puts Biden In Tight Spot As Election Approaches

The longshoremen’s strike that bottled up U.S. ports from Maine to Texas has put Joe Biden in a tough political spot five weeks out from the presidential election.

Tens of thousands of dockworkers walked off the job early Tuesday morning in a contract dispute with the group representing port employers. The work stoppage could deal a serious blow to commerce since the workers handle everything from fruit to auto parts coming into the country via container ship.

A long-lasting strike will pull Biden in opposite directions: The union-friendly president would surely like workers to secure a strong contract with good raises, but he’d also want to avoid any economic damage that could drag down Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats this fall.

“Joe Biden became president in part to put more power in workers’ hands, not to take power away from them,” said Seth Harris, a professor at Northeastern University who previously advised Biden on labor issues. “But… there’s going to be mounting and increasingly intense pressure on him if the strike lasts for weeks, and certainly months, to intervene.”

The president could step in and seek a court injunction that would force workers back onto the job for an 80-day “cooling off” period in which talks would continue. But Biden said just ahead of the strike that he had no intention of invoking the Taft-Hartley Act, the 1947 law that empowers the president to intervene in work stoppages that affect national security.

“It’s collective bargaining,” Biden told reporters Sunday. “I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley.”

Biden weighed in on the side of the dockworkers again on Tuesday, noting that ocean carriers made record profits during the pandemic supply-chain squeeze.

“It’s only fair that workers, who put themselves at risk during the pandemic to keep ports open, see a meaningful increase in their wages as well,” Biden said in a statement.

The union representing East and Gulf Coast dockworkers, the International Longshoremen’s Association, has called for a $5 per hour raise in each year of the six-year contract, which would bring hourly wages from $39 per hour to $69 by 2030. The union is also demanding protections against automation it says the carriers will use to kill good-paying, middle-class jobs.

The group representing employers, the United States Maritime Alliance, did not comment on the strike but said Monday there had been movement from both sides in negotiations shortly before the walkout.

Presidents have used Taft-Hartley 37 times to intervene in labor disputes over the past eight decades, according to the Congressional Research Service. Biden has never done so, but he did sign a bill passed by Congress to preempt a rail strike and force a deal on those workers in 2022. (Railways fall under a separate collective-bargaining law than the ports and most private-sector businesses.)

Joining the bipartisan push to prevent the rail strike undermined Biden’s reputation as the most pro-union president since at least Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as it took away the rail unions’ leverage in negotiations. Employers that can rely on an injunction would feel less pressure to reach a deal at the bargaining table.

This time, Biden would surely like to avoid injuring his administration’s standing with organized labor, especially as most major unions, with the exception of the Teamsters, are rallying behind Harris’ candidacy.

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, who worked in Biden’s Office of Management and Budget, noted that the ports strike is happening in a different economic context from the rail standoff, when inflation was high and the pandemic-era supply chains were still squeezed.

“That’s another important way in which these negotiations are different,” said Hertel-Fernandez, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “It gives the administration a little more breathing room.”

Economists generally say a short strike is unlikely to stoke inflation because global supply-chain problems have been mostly ironed out. Still, the work stoppage will lead to layoffs in sectors adjacent to the ports, like transportation and warehousing, and the economic risks will rise if it drags on.

Industry groups and Republican lawmakers have been telling the White House to step in and end the strike. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation have all asked Biden to invoke Taft-Hartley and force the longshoremen back to work, since those groups’ members all rely on imports that will be sitting out on idle ships.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking Republican of the Senate’s labor committee, blasted the administration on Tuesday for “failing to use its authority” to seek a court injunction, and tried to yoke the strike to the Democratic nominee. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had the tools to prevent this strike and can still take action to avoid economic disaster,” Cassidy said in a statement. House Republicans leading key infrastructure and maritime committees issued similar statements Tuesday.

For now, it seems clear the administration wants to help resolve the dispute behind the scenes rather than through the courts. The White House said Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and other members of Biden’s Cabinet have been working with both sides to reach a resolution. (ILA President Harold Daggett said on Fox News on Tuesday that Su has been “terrific” in urging the Maritime Alliance to reach a “fair” deal.)

Northeastern’s Harris said Biden is right to resist calls to intervene directly since an injunction would neutralize the union’s “most powerful weapon.”

“The big question is: Will he be able to sustain that position in a month when, if the strike continues that long, the economy is going to feel a meaningful bite from the strike?” Harris said. “My bet is yes, because he really believes that private parties should figure out how to solve their shared problems through collective bargaining.”