Determined to thwart the automating of their jobs, about 45,000 dockworkers along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are threatening to strike on Oct. 1, a move that would shut down ports that handle about half the nation’s cargo from ships.

The International Longshoremen’s Union is demanding significantly higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container movements that are used in the loading or loading of freight at 36 U.S. ports. Whenever and however the dispute is resolved, it’s likely to affect how freight moves in and out of the United States for years to come.

If a strike were resolved within a few weeks, consumers probably wouldn’t notice any major shortages of retail goods. But a strike that persists for more than a month would likely cause a shortage of some consumer products, although most holiday retail goods have already arrived from overseas.

A prolonged strike would almost certainly hurt the U.S. economy. Even a brief strike would cause disruptions. Heavier vehicular traffic would be likely at key points around the country as cargo was diverted to West Coast ports, where workers belong to a different union not involved in the strike. And once the longshoremen’s union eventually returned to work, a ship backlog would likely result. Experts say it takes four to six days to clear up every day of a port strike.

“I think everyone’s a bit nervous about it,” said Mia Ginter, director of North America ocean shipping for C.H. Robinson, a logistics firm. “The rhetoric this time with the ILA is at a level we haven’t seen before.”

Current strike waterfront

The longshoremen’s union and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, haven’t met to negotiate since June, when the union said it suspended national talks to first complete local port agreements. No further national contract talks have been scheduled.

Harold Daggett, the union president, warned earlier this month that the longshoremen stood ready to strike once their contract expires on Sept. 30.

“We are very far apart,” Daggett said. “Mark my words, we’ll shut them down Oct. 1 if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve.”

Top-scale port workers now earn a base pay of $39 an hour, or just over $81,000 a year. But with overtime and other benefits, some can make in excess of $200,000 annually. Neither the union nor the ports would discuss pay levels. But a 2019-2020 report by the Waterfront Commission, which oversees New York Harbor, said about a third of the longshoremen based there made $200,000 or more.

Daggett contends, though, that higher-paid longshoremen work up to 100 hours a week, most of it overtime, and sacrifice much of their family time in doing so.

The Maritime Alliance has said it’s committed to resuming talks and avoiding the first national longshoremen’s strike since 1977. It has accused the union of having already decided in advance to walk off the job.

“We need to sit down and negotiate a new agreement that avoids an unnecessary and costly strike that will be detrimental to both sides,” the alliance said in a statement.

In the case of a short-lived strike, industry experts say consumers wouldn’t likely notice shortages of store goods during the holiday shopping season. Most retailers had goods transported ahead of the usual pre-holiday shipping season, and they’re already stored in warehouses.

“It would be an inconvenience, but it’s not going to be ‘Santa’s not showing up,’ ” said Jonathan Chappell, senior managing director of transportation at Evercore ISI, an investment research firm.

Imports to ports are up 10% this year over 2023 on the East Coast and 20% on the West Coast, indicating that some freight was shipped in anticipation of a strike, said Ben Nolan, a transportation analyst with Stifel.

What’s the election got to do with it?  

The longshoreman’s union, Nolan suggested, commands some leverage going into a presidential election, with memories still fresh of jammed ports and clogged supply chains that followed the pandemic recession. Unions also have drawn support this year from political candidates who have been courting the labor vote.

“If ever there was a time that labor can get what they want,” Nolan said, “it’s right now.”

If a strike were to extend beyond a month or so, spot shortages of goods could develop. Some manufacturers could run short of parts, notably in the auto and pharmaceutical industries, which generally don’t stock large parts inventories. Exports of autos and other goods that move through the East Coast also could be affected.

Most analysts don’t expect President Biden to intervene, as he and Congress did to head off a railroad strike in 2022, at least not before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Robinson, of the logistics firm C.H. Robinson, noted that the administration can’t legally impose a contract on the dockworkers before a strike. Still, if a strike were deemed to endanger national health or safety, Ginter said, the president could, under the Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. That would suspend the strike.

But the Reuters news service says an administration official told it on Tuesday that Mr. Biden doesn’t intend to step in to head off a walkout. “We’ve never invoked Taft-Hartley to break a strike and are not considering doing so now,” Reuters quotes the official as saying. “We encourage all parties to remain at the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.”

Analysts say the union’s initial demands included a 77% pay raise over the course of a six-year contract. Daggett, the union president, said sizable pay raises would make up for the inflation spike of the past few years.

And he said it would give workers a share of the billions the companies have earned, especially during the pandemic. Copenhagen-based Maersk, among the world’s largest container shipping companies, made more than $50 billion in profits over the past four years. Earnings, though, dropped substantially in 2023 as pandemic-era consumer demand eased and brought sky-high freight rates back down.

Automation looming large  

Daggett said the union members expect to be waging their biggest fight – against the automation of job functions at ports – well into the future.

“We do not believe that robotics should take over a human being’s job,” he said. “Especially a human being that’s historically performed that job.”

As an example, he pointed to a gate that automatically processes trucks without union labor at the port in Mobile, Alabama. The gate has been in place since 2008.

The Maritime Alliance has said it offered, as part of a new contract, to keep current provisions that bar fully automated terminals and block the use of semi-automated equipment without an agreement from both sides on protecting human jobs.

Experts say it’s not altogether clear whether automation would lead to layoffs.

A 2022 study by the Economic Roundtable of Los Angeles that was funded by the West Coast dockworkers union found that automation cost 572 jobs each year in 2020 and 2021 at partially automated terminals at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

But another study that same year by a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, that was commissioned by port operators and shippers concluded that between 2015, when Los Angeles-area ports adopted some automation, and 2021, paid hours for port union members grew 11.2%.

At the huge Port of Rotterdam, one of the world’s most automated ports, union workers pushed for early-retirement packages and work-time reductions as a means to preserve jobs. And in the end, mechanization didn’t cause significant job losses, a researcher from Erasmus University in the Netherlands found. Still, he predicted that automation could cut port jobs by 25% in the future.

U.S. ports trail their counterparts in Asia and Europe in the use of automation. Analysts note that most U.S. ports take longer to unload container ships than do those in Asia and Europe and suggest that without more automation, they could become even less competitive. Shippers might send more cargo to Mexican or Canadian ports and then on to the U.S. by rail or truck, said Eleftherios Iakovou, associate director of supply chain resilience at Texas A&M University.

He suggested that the two sides discuss the use of automation to augment the functions of human workers rather than to displace them.

Any final reckoning over automation, though, remains a long way off. For shippers to abandon U.S. ports, Mexican ports would have to become more efficient at the same time that U.S. ports became “prohibitively inefficient,” said Stifel’s Nolan.

“I do think there’s some validity to it, but it’s not a this-decade kind of issue,” he said.

In the meantime, if there is a strike, analysts say West Coast ports could pick up at least some additional freight that might be diverted from Eastern ports, especially from Asia. But they couldn’t handle it all. Neither could the U.S. rail system.

“The East Coast has grown a lot,” Nolan said. “There’s just no way to get around it.”

It’s official, the Florida Python Challenge this year has a winner.

The $10,000 grand prize went to Ronald Kiger, who removed 20 Burmese pythons from the Florida Everglades during the 10-day hunt, which was meant to bring awareness to the threat that these pythons pose to the ecosystem. Last year, he was the direct runner-up to the grand prize winner.

Representatives from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced Kiger’s win in a Tuesday morning meeting in Duck Key. This year, more than 800 people from 33 states and Canada participated in the challenge, and hunters removed 195 Burmese pythons from the wild.

The rest of the prize money was divided amongst competitors in the contest’s three categories: novice, professional and military. Donna Kalil was one python away from a tie with Kiger. Kalil, a contractor with the South Florida Water Management District, got a $2,500 prize for catching 19 pythons in the professional category.

“I’m not afraid of that python,” Kalil recently told CBS News. “I’m afraid of it getting away.” 

Also in the professional category, Marcos Rodriguez caught 16 pythons for the prize of $1,500, and Quentin Archie won a $1,000 prize for catching the longest python in this category at 8 feet 11 inches.

Thomas Hobbs won $2,500 for leading the novice category by catching 16 Burmese pythons, while Dennis Krum caught the longest python in this category and also in the entire competition, at 9 feet 11 inches.

Jeff Lince caught five pythons, winning $2,500 in the military category, and Antonio Ramos won $1,000 for catching the longest python in this group at 9 feet 7 inches.

The challenge occurred in mid-August. Hunters were tasked with humanely killing the Burmese pythons and turning in the carcasses to any of the contest’s three check stations in South Florida.

The challenge wasn’t just meant for hunters to win the share of about $25,000 in prizes. It also served to raise awareness about the dangers of Burmese pythons, like how they affect native snakes, can spread diseases amongst native animals and have high mercury levels that are dangerous for human consumption.

“Over 14,000 pythons have been successfully removed by FWC and South Florida Water Management District contractors since 2017,” said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in a news release. “This collective effort continues to have a direct positive impact on the Everglades and our native wildlife through removal and awareness.”

This year’s competition was a little bit smaller compared to last year. In 2023, more than 1,000 hunters participated and 209 pythons were removed.

“Every invasive python that is removed makes a difference for Florida’s environment and its native wildlife,” South Florida Water Management District Governing Board Member Bergeron.  

Hunters contracted with the state’s wildlife commission and the South Florida Water Management District work year-round to remove the invasive pythons from the wild. A female python can lay about 50 to 100 eggs at a time, which is why the competition is held during hatching season in August. According to the wildlife agency, about 22,000 pythons have been removed from the state since 2000.

The Burmese python population exploded in the mid-90s after being imported from South Asia as exotic pets. Burmese pythons are usually between six to nine feet but can grow over 15 feet long. They are non-venomous and generally do not attack people or pets, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History, but pose a threat to wildlife indigenous to the area.

Native bird, rabbit, raccoon and deer populations have been decimated, and even gators have fallen prey to the constrictors. They have no natural predators.