The International Longshoremen’s Association and United States Maritime Alliance concluded nearly a year of rocky, on-and-off negotiations with an agreement on a six-year contract for East and Gulf Coast dockworkers.
The deal was announced to the ILA’s 200-member wage scale committee, which will recommend ratification by the 15,000 dockworkers covered by the agreement.
USMX agreed to the deal after the union and the New York Shipping Association worked out remaining details on a supplemental local contract covering 4,500 workers at the Port of New York and New Jersey.
The agreement was negotiated with help from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services. FMCS Director George H Cohen said the agreement was a “monumental result” that “paves the way for six years of stable labor-management relations.”
Details of the ILA-NYSA pact and other local contracts were not immediately available.