Longshoremen at key US ports threatening to strike over automation and pay

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. For every day of a port strike, experts say it takes four to six days to clear it up.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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. He 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.

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.

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.

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.”

FILE - A container ship makes it way toward the Port of New York and New Jersey in Elizabeth, N.J., on June 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - Container ships are docked at the Port of New York and New Jersey in Elizabeth, N.J., on May 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

Longshoremen at key US ports threatening to strike over automation and pay

Longshoremen at key US ports threatening to strike over automation and pay

FILE - Cranes at the Port of New York and New Jersey appear behind the Statue of Liberty, Nov. 20, 2022, in a photo taken from New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is providing its long-awaited assessment on one of the more contested aspects of Roman Catholicism in recent years: the reported “apparitions” of the Virgin Mary in an otherwise unremarkable village in southern Bosnia.

Following nearly 15 years of study, the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, is headlining a news conference Thursday on what the Vatican called “the spiritual experience of Medjugorje.”

In 1981, six children and teenagers reported seeing visions of the Madonna on a hill in the village of Medjugorje, located in the wine-making region of southern Bosnia. Some of those original “seers” have claimed the visions have occurred regularly since then, even daily, and that Mary sends them messages.

As a result, Medjugorje has become a major European pilgrimage destination for Christian believers, attracting millions of people over the years. Last year alone, 1.7 million Eucharistic wafers were distributed during Masses there, according to statistics published on the shrine’s website, a rough estimate of the numbers of Catholics who visited.

However, unlike at the more well-known and established Catholic sanctuaries in Fatima, Portugal or Lourdes, France, the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje have never been declared authentic by the Vatican.

And over the years, local bishops and Vatican officials have cast doubt on the reliability and motivations of the “seers,” because of concerns that economic interests may have been driving their reports of continued visions.

Religious tourism has become an important part of the local economy, with an entire industry catering to pilgrims – hotels, private accommodations, family-run farm businesses, even sports complexes and camping sites -- and popping up around Medjugorje. Their growth has contributed to the surrounding municipality's financial well-being after the Bosnian war in the 1990s devastated the economy.

All of which has led to intense speculation about what, exactly, the Vatican will say Thursday, with journalists parsing the significance of the fact that the Vatican didn’t refer to “apparitions” or “visions” in its announcement of the briefing, but merely “the spiritual experience of Medjugorje.”

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed an international commission of theologians and bishops to formally investigate the reported apparitions, tapping his vicar of Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, to head it.

Pope Francis received Ruini’s report in 2013 or early 2014. In a sneak-preview, Francis in 2017 said the key of the Vatican investigation was to distinguish between the original reported visions in 1981, and the current claims of continuous apparitions, on which Francis cast doubt.

“I prefer Our Lady to be a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time,” he said at the time. “This is not the mother of Jesus and these alleged apparitions have no great value.”

But in an airborne press conference returning home from Fatima, Francis added that it was undeniable that people go to Medjugorje and are converted from sin. “This isn’t a magic wand. You can’t deny this spiritual and pastoral fact,” he said.

Francis went on to appoint two personal envoys to oversee the shrine and the needs of the faithful there, and in 2019 explicitly allowed official church pilgrimages, while making clear that such permission didn’t amount to a decision about the authenticity of the reported visions.

Whatever is announced Thursday, it is unlikely to be a point-blank declaration of authenticity about the Medjugorje phenomena. That is because Fernández earlier this year announced the Vatican was no longer in the business of declaring alleged visions, weeping statues and stigmata as authentic or not.

He released a new criteria for examining such reports and said the Vatican would not make definitive declarations unless the reported event is clearly a hoax. The aim is to prevent the faithful from being harmed by people trying to make money off of their beliefs, he said.

The new criteria envisages six main outcomes, with the most favorable being that the church issues a noncommittal doctrinal green light, a so-called “nihil obstat.” Such a declaration means there is nothing about the event that is contrary to the faith, and therefore Catholics can express devotion to it.

Whatever the outcome, it will surely impact Medjugorje, which lies in the municipality of Citluk, one of the smallest in Bosnia with some 18,000 residents but economically well-off. The municipality has declared that tourism is key for its development, largely thanks to Medjugorje, and hosts various festivals and gatherings each year organized by Christian humanitarian organizations drawn to the place.

Municipal workers say 2024 could be a record year, because Christian pilgrims are tending to stay away from Israel because of the war, and are opting for Medjugorje instead.

“Medjugorje means a lot, all economic sectors lean on Medjugorje,” said Ante Kozina, the tourism association chief. “It is a growth generator for the entire municipality.”

Gec contributed from Belgrade, Serbia.

FILE - Pilgrims walk on a rocky terrain to say their prayers on the Hill Of Appearance in Medjugorje, 100 kilometers south of Sarajevo, June 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Amel Emric, File)

FILE - Pilgrims prays at the "Hill of Apparitions" in the southern-Bosnian town of Medjugorje, 100 kilometers south of Sarajevo, June 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Amel Emric, File)

FILE - Bosnian Roman Catholic women pray on the occasion of the feast of the Assumption in Medjugorje, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, on Aug. 15, 2000. (AP Photo/Hidajet Delic, File)