Dockworkers Vote to Accept New Labor Contract

Dockworkers on the East and Gulf Coasts voted in favor of a new contract on Tuesday, ending labor turbulence at ports that handle a large share of U.S. trade with the rest of the world.

The dockworkers’ union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, said nearly 99 percent of its members had supported the contract, which raises wages 62 percent over six years and guarantees jobs when employers introduce technology that can move cargo autonomously.

The deal was reached after a short strike in October, the first full-scale walkout since 1977, and the intervention of two U.S. presidents.

Officials from the Biden administration pushed the United States Maritime Alliance, the group representing employers, to increase its wage offer, which ended the strike and brought the I.LA. back to the bargaining table. After his election victory, Donald J. Trump backed the union, saying he supported their fight against automation.

“This is an incredible contract package,” Harold J. Daggett, the president of the I.L.A., said in a statement.

Dockworkers have significant leverage in contract talks because they can shut down ports, throwing supply chains into chaos. But labor experts said Mr. Daggett had bolstered the union’s cause by calling a strike and by establishing strong ties with Mr. Trump.

“The only way they would have gotten a deal like this was through striking, showing that they had the economic power and, it turns out, the political power,” said William Brucher, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.

All 41 members of the Maritime Alliance, a group that includes port operating companies and shipping lines, voted for the contract, which covers the roughly 25,000 longshoremen who move containers on the East and Gulf Coasts.

Under the contact, hourly wages will rise to $63 in 2029, from the current $39. That is comparable to the pay for dockworkers on the West Coast, represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, whose wages will rise to nearly $61 in 2027.

With overtime and higher rates for working at night, longshoremen can earn well over $200,000 a year.

The I.L.A. has long opposed the introduction of automated cranes and other machines.

Like the old contract, the new one bars employers from deploying machinery that can operate at all times without a person directing its moves. The West Coast longshoremen’s union has allowed such technology — like driverless container-moving vehicles — at its ports for years.

But the I.L.A.’s new contract does not stop employers from adding cranes that can at times perform tasks — like stacking containers — without direction from a human. And the new contract makes it easier for employers to introduce such cranes.

Still, the union got a job guarantee that management would assign at least one worker for each additional crane. (Now, one union worker might remotely oversee and operate several cranes at once.)