ILA Strike Watch 2013: 1 Week Until Strike Deadline
The potential ILA strike of roughly 14,500 dockworkers at U.S. East and Gulf ports is per week away. At the specter of an occasion that may trigger main disruptions to the availability chain within the U.S. and price our nation’s financial system a billion {dollars} a day, there are inquiries to be requested.
What’s the standing of the negotiations between the ILA and USMX? Does the strike appear possible?
With the February 6th deadline of reaching an settlement drawing so shut, the media is suspiciously quiet on the subject of information in regards to the negotiations. Perhaps it’s a easy downside of a scarcity of reports to report on the topic.
The ILA and USMX have been fairly tight-lipped in regards to the negotiations of late. So too, has been the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS).
The final actual replace launched by any of the events concerned was on January 17th from FMCS stating, “The USA Maritime Alliance and the Worldwide Longshoremen’s Affiliation performed negotiations through the three day interval January 15-17, 2013. In these negotiations the events made progress and have agreed that the negotiations will proceed below our auspices.”[1]
USMX shared the FMCS announcement on their Labor Updates Web page the identical day with nothing extra so as to add.
Definitely, you’ll be able to’t blame the events for not commenting “because of the sensitivity of those negotiations” as FMCS Director George H. Cohen put it in that January seventeenth information launch. Nonetheless, the silence does depart everybody ready and questioning how issues are going.
Throughout this lengthy, dragged out negotiation interval, talks between ILA and USMX have had an inclination to interrupt down and finish abruptly. When that occurred in December, the strike seemed eminent. There have been no plans to satisfy earlier than the then strike date of December 30th; however at practically the final minute, ILA and USMX agreed to increase the grasp contract to February 6th so negotiations might proceed earlier than a strike shut down ports.
Because the February 6th date is now approaching, the sense of urgency, even perhaps of panic, from retailers and companies that straight rely upon the East and Gulf Coast ports that was current final time doesn’t appear to be current. Nonetheless, it isn’t as if nobody is getting ready for the opportunity of a strike. Many retailers have elevated their stock in case the availability chain is disrupted.
CNBC reported:
The affect of a possible strike has already been seen in financial knowledge, in keeping with delivery consultants. The most recent January 2013 import volumes confirmed a projected 2.3 % improve over the identical interval in 2012. Specialists say the rise is an indication retailers are involved in regards to the end result of the negotiations, in order that they’re rising stock to organize for a shutdown of practically half of the nation’s main ports.[2]
Nonetheless, there’s a distinction within the tone of shops getting ready for the opportunity of a strike and the pressing letters to President Obama urging him to forestall a strike that have been despatched because the deliberate December strike date approached.
It might be that after months of strike threats, we’ve grown numb to the thought of a strike. Perhaps as a result of the strike has already been postponed a pair instances, we count on that to occur once more if a contract decision is just not reached. Probably, the potential strike has grow to be previous information so reporting on it has gone down, placing it much less on folks’s minds.
Finally, I believe the true change as we method the proposed strike date is that we have now passable—even when not completely full—solutions to the questions of the standing of negotiations and the chance of a strike.
The most recent updates which have been made on negotiations have been constructive and whereas we’ve tried to stay optimistic in regards to the state of affairs regardless of how dire it seemed right here at Common Cargo Administration (though all the time getting ready to maintain your import and export wants even within the worst case situation), we have now cause to consider the strike is just not more likely to occur.
For more information on why the ILA Strike is unlikely, click on right here.
For a free freight fee quote, click on right here.
