Will another East Coast dockworkers strike further snarl supply chains during the upcoming presidential transition? Michael LeRoy is the Labor and Employment Relations Alumni Professor and an expert who studies labor issues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about the implications of the potential strike.
East Coast dockworkers have signaled their intention to strike on Jan. 15, just days before the presidential transition from President Joe Biden to President-elect Donald Trump. Wasn’t this particular labor dispute settled in October?
The dockworkers and maritime port operators tentatively settled the wage part of their negotiations last fall, but the sticking point is that port operators want to automate more jobs. The dockworkers are fiercely protective of preserving jobs, even those that require pencil and paper tallies of freight. So this part of the negotiation will be contentious, and a labor strike is a growing concern for mid-January.
President Biden could have intervened last fall via his emergency strike powers but chose not to. If the strike were to start during his final week as president, he would likely stay out of the dispute and let the union and port operators bargain, even if it were to lead to an impasse and work stoppage. And besides, this is a political hot potato. President Biden might be tempted to punt it to the incoming administration.
What could an incoming President Trump do?
He could initiate the emergency strike provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. He’d need to convene a board of inquiry, which is not that difficult to do but could take longer than usual due to the presidential transition. The board of inquiry would study the dispute for a few days and then recommend that the new administration seek a federal court injunction. According to my research, more than 97% of the national emergency strikes had this outcome.
Would invoking the Taft-Hartley Act essentially settle the strike? The answer is no, because an injunction could only last 80 days.
I should note that labor is always outraged when U.S. presidents intervene in labor disputes. The most famous example of that is, of course, President Ronald Reagan ordering air traffic controllers back to work in 1981.
For the new Trump administration, such a move also would strip the veneer off any talk that Trump 2.0 is pro-worker.
Would the change in administrations hamper this emergency-injunction process?
Definitely. Even under normal circumstances, invoking emergency powers would be a problem because you need experienced lawyers who know how to present a case to a court for this type of extraordinary injunction. With the politics swirling around the U.S. Department of Justice, reports say that many career attorneys are leaving, which would inevitably slow down the process.
In any event, judges don’t have to grant these petitions, and, at least once, a federal judge in Chicago didn’t go along and grant the petition. So it’s by no means a slam dunk.
If a presidential transition could slow the process of getting a court order, what potential real-world effects could this labor impasse have?
Since we’ve never had a national emergency strike that coincides with a presidential transition, it’s hard to predict. But any work stoppage on the docks would create almost immediate interruptions in the nation’s export and import trade.
Inflation typically spikes within days on the rare occasions that we have a national emergency strike — and with the incoming Trump administration promising tariffs on everything that our nation trades, the inflation spike could be even more pronounced than usual.
On the export side, one big issue is that crops don’t get shipped on time. Foreign buyers sometimes find alternative sources outside the U.S., which could hurt future exports.