Lurking behind the headlines of record-breaking Forest Fires, heat waves, and Landmark Supreme Court decisions, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) reached a tentative agreement on a new six-year contract covering workers at the 29 West Coast ports in the United States. Despite broad pessimism, the deal was struck on June 14, with prodding from Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su (Ms. Su is still waiting for Senate confirmation as Secretary of Labor).

The previous contract had expired on July 1, 2022, but negotiations hadn’t been engaged until May 10, 2022. It seems incredible that the two parties would wait until that late date to begin serious negotiations on a new contract considering the recent history of contentious bargaining in the 2002, 2008, & 2014, contracts – negotiations which featured shutdowns and lockouts. And especially considering the profound impact a July 1 strike would have had on our tender economy. The two most contentious issues were wages and automation. The contract now awaits approval from the PMA members and the ILWU rank-and-file – a process that will stretch-out for at least a couple months.
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The ILWU represents 22,000 dockworkers manning 29 West Coast ports, among the most important are Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Long Beach. In all, the West Coast ports alone handled 44% of total import container volume docked and routed throughout entire United States in 2022. But with the increasing uncertainty surrounding the operations of the West Coast ports, coupled with the arrival in 2016 of the new Neopanamaxes cargo ships carrying 13,000-15,000 TEUs while fitting nicely into the expanded dimensions of the Panama Canal have already siphoned off over 10% of total shipping to the Gulf & East Coast Ports.
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The PMA on the other hand is a non-profit organization that stands for employers of the shipping industry on the U.S. West Coast. The organization represents mostly international shipping companies such as MSC, Mearsk, and CMA CGM. This is because there are very few competitive domestic US shippers, with Matson being at the top of the list, shipping just under 65,000 TEUs with a fleet of just 29 ships and grabbing a decidedly less than robust, 0.2% of the market. Although these shippers have been enjoying record profits, there is little sympathy among the PMA members to the wage increases being demanded by the union, in fact, they had been looking for a 4-year wage freeze in this contract.
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The sigh of relief at reaching the tentative agreement has been short-circuited by the distressing news that the Canadian ILWU members on June 9 & 10 overwhelmingly voted for the leadership to call a strike against the member companies of the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMAE). That contract had expired on March 31, 2023. Talks regarding a new 5-year contract were continued during the 21-day Cooling Off period mandated by Canadian law, which ended on June 21. On July 1, the Canadian IWLU went out on strike.
 
Fortunately, our 100% Natural Biomass Firestarters and our Hydrocarbon Firestarters produced exclusively in The Netherlands (Europe) and Wales (UK) respectively and are shipped into numerous East Coast ports.

However international & domestic shipping are deeply integrated, and any disruption caused by malfunctioning or locked-out ports could have serious consequences for the distribution of all consumer goods and industrial products as we’ve already experienced during COVID. We are following events closely.

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