“He’s a hero to our ILA union and members,” Harold Daggett, head of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), said of the incoming president in a Facebook post. “President Trump gets full credit for our successful tentative Master Contract agreement.”
In a joint statement, the ILA and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) declined to disclose details on the deal, which union members still need to approve.
Both sides previously reached a tentative agreement in October after a three-day strike that included a 62 percent wage increase over the next six years.
But the parties still had to hammer out agreements on workplace issues including the automation of ports, which the union strongly opposed, by the new deadline of Jan. 15.
Trump weighed in last month on the automation issue after meeting with Daggett at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, siding with dockworkers.
“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen,” Trump wrote online then.
Daggett said Trump “demonstrated his unwavering support for our ILA union and longshore workers with his statement ‘heard round the world’ backing our position to protect American longshore jobs against the ravages of automated terminals.”
Biden administration officials helped the ILA and USMX negotiate the first tentative agreement in October, but they were not mentioned in Daggett’s statement. The Hill has reached out to a White House spokesperson to ask if administration officials were involved in the second phase of negotiations as well.
The Hill's Taylor Giorno has more here.
