How Biden helped end a strike that threatened Democrats in November

It was a stark ultimatum, delivered by President Joe Biden’s most senior aide.

At 5:30 a.m. Thursday, before the sun had risen above his Washington home, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was on a Zoom call with two Cabinet secretaries and the executives of the shipping companies negotiating with workers who had gone on strike at critical docks along the East and Gulf coasts, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

With the nation’s economy - and much of the president’s legacy - hanging in the balance just weeks before the election, White House chief economist Lael Brainard told management that they needed to come up with a new offer to the striking longshoremen. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stressed that Hurricane Helene magnified the importance of a deal. Labor Secretary Julie Su expressed optimism that the union would agree to a temporary extension if raises were included.

And then, in a surprising move, as the call was wrapping up, Zients told the board members of the United States Maritime Alliance that he was going to tell Biden in about an hour that they had agreed to propose a new offer to the union. By that point, the shipping executives had agreed to do no such thing. Zients was saying they would.

“I need the offer today - not tomorrow. Today,” Zients said on the call. “I’m going to brief the president in an hour that you believe you can get this done today.”

Less than 12 hours later, White House officials were celebrating a deal to reopen the ports until January - postponing the issue until after this November’s election. The agreement provides collective if temporary relief to skittish Democrats from the White House to Capitol Hill, while buoying Vice President Kamala Harris along with Friday’s strong jobs report.

But the resolution of the strike also highlights Biden’s distinctive approach to labor unrest, one that has defied even his Democratic predecessors and sparked unease in some parts of the party. Even as White House officials claim vindication about their strategy, questions persist about whether Biden’s pro-union advocacy will be codified as the new Democratic approach - or represents a rare aberration in a long bipartisan tradition of siding more closely with management.

The agreement reached Thursday provides a 62 percent wage increase over six years through dockworkers’ current contract until Jan. 15. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) had initially demanded 77 percent wage hikes, but moderated its ask. Numerous difficult sticking points could scuttle a deal before the new January deadline.

Business groups and even some Democratic allies had wanted Biden to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 to force an end to the strike through a federal injunction. Biden and his team both publicly and privately promised not to go that route, insisting that the owners needed to reach a deal with the union and highlighting their corporate profits since the end of the pandemic. The strategy reflected Biden’s personal determination to support labor even amid immense political pressure.

“By bluntly and unmistakably declaring he would not seek an injunction under Taft-Hartley, the president created space for collective bargaining and made clear they would have to reach a deal,” said Seth Harris, who served as Biden’s top labor adviser for much of his first term. “This has been the formula Biden has followed since very early on in his presidency, and it has worked in most cases.”

The White House’s strategy is not without its critics, both among Democrats and Republicans, who consider it far too deferential to labor unions. Biden has vowed to be the most “pro-union president in U.S. history,” and some economists have said that goal often undermines other priorities. Biden has backed union requirements on federal building projects, which some critics say drive up federal costs, and has defended the Jones Act, a shipping law that critics say makes goods more expensive in Puerto Rico. He became the first president last year to join a picket line, speaking to striking United Auto Workers members.

A strike that could have left some store shelves empty just before the election appeared to epitomize concerns that Biden sided too firmly with labor.

“It does seem to me they’re playing with fire here - pushing this negotiation and the nation’s supply chains to the brink in the hope of a breakthrough is a real risk, and suggests they’re over-prioritizing the labor vote over everyone else in the U.S. economy,” said Scott Lincicome, vice president at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank.

The contract dispute pitted some 45,000 dockworkers led by fiery third-generation New Jersey longshoreman Harold Daggett against the chief executives of global shipping lines based in Europe and Asia. The container lines had reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in profits during the pandemic, and the longshoremen were ready to fight for their share of the bounty.

Biden had been tracking the strike since September, and directed his team after a Sept. 26 meeting to tell both sides to negotiate in good faith. Brainard, Su and Buttigieg began working with the parties involved, with Brainard liaising with management and Su in closer touch with the union, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

But as the deadline approached, there was no sign of progress. Daggett said the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents the shipping lines, had been calling him and making lowball offers. The Wednesday before the deadline, the alliance filed a federal charge against the union with the National Labor Relations Board accusing the longshoremen of failing to bargain in good faith and seeking an order that they come back to the table. It was an unusual tactic for an employer in a labor dispute; it is more common for unions to accuse managers of acting in bad faith.

That Friday, Sept. 27, the president’s aides met with USMX board members at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and stressed the need for them to provide a fair deal to dockworkers, one person familiar with the matter said. Brainard made clear to the board members that the president would not be using Taft-Hartley to end the strike, the person said. Biden was briefed later that day on the lack of progress, and Zients began convening Brainard, Su and Buttigieg multiple times a day to keep tabs on the strike.

Ports up and down the East Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico scheduled extra working hours Saturday, trying to give shippers as much time as possible to move cargo before the strike. On Monday morning, according to a person familiar with the talks, USMX made a new offer, pitching a 50 percent increase in wages over the six-year contract, amounting to an almost $20 an hour boost to the top rate of pay. Brainard spoke to the Asian carriers late that night and the European carriers early the next morning, urging them to increase their offer. On Monday, the president called Daggett and said he had the union’s backs and was pushing USMX to make a fairer offer, the person familiar with the matter said.

The ILA swiftly rejected the offer, issuing a statement saying USMX proposed “an unacceptable wage package that we reject.”

Right after midnight Monday, the strike began. Daggett joined picketers outside Maher Terminals in New Jersey, wearing a hoodie that read “the docks are ours.” In the dark, he delivered a speech laden with F-bombs. “This is going down in history, what we’re doing here,” he said.

Ships almost immediately began piling up offshore. The queue would grow to include 59 container vessels by Thursday morning, according to data firm Everstream Analytics, stranding hundreds of thousands of containers.

Biden doubled down on putting pressure on the shipping firms over the next several days. The White House repeatedly hammered shipping profits since the pandemic. On Wednesday, Biden tried increasing the pressure by saying publicly that failure to reach a deal could exacerbate the impact of the hurricane.

Union leaders were jubilant Thursday night once a deal was secured. Kenneth Riley, an ILA vice president based in Charleston, S.C., said the first year’s raises in the agreement amount to as much as the union had ever won over an entire six-year contract.

“To get in one raise what it took you in the past six years to achieve is monumental,” Riley said. “The administration played a key role here in bringing the parties together and defending American workers and the union workers against foreign giants.”

Will Brucher, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University, said the tentative agreement was an “unequivocal victory for the union,” and the Biden administration’s refusal to invoke its emergency powers gave the longshoremen more leverage.

“The ILA has demonstrated that unions have the ability to fight and win,” Brucher said.