breaking news in the looming strike for union workers at major shipping ports along the east coast thousands are set to hit the picket line this Tuesday the international long shoreman's Association ordering a strike after talks demanding Fair wages hit a standstill news nation's Caitlyn Becker joins us live from Port Elizabeth New Jersey uh Caitlyn what are we learning here major development since the last time we spoke yeah truly Jesse I was not expecting to hear this today we're thir 6 hours before the deadline and the Ila sent out a communication announcing that they're absolutely going
to strike they're going to walk off the job when their current contract expires now it's a six-year contract each of these contracts are 6 years and the expiration date is midnight on Monday so 1201 Tuesday these workers are going to walk off the job there's going to be a full-on work stoppage up and down the east coast and parts of the gulf now the Ila has not released any details specifically about exactly where these picket lines are going to be they said that's going to come likely sometime tomorrow however they did note what the major
issue was and it really came down Jesse to wage stagnation they said that the US Maritime Alliance that is who they're in talks with or were in talks with just wouldn't come to an agreement about what they called wage subjugation that they said had been happening for years now I have to tell you that from the US MX perspectives um they have said time and again that they were offering industry-leading wages more than the 32% which was the last hike that their West Coast counterparts got for their contract last year but the Ila wanted a
77% wage hike and they just couldn't come to an agreement now these two groups haven't been at the negotiating table for months these talks stalled back in June so this is something kind of an eventuality that we were all expecting and the Ila president has said in the past that they'd been planning for this for a year so the impacts could be far ranging though Jesse can we talk about that because what we're referring to just to make it clear for our audience is essentially the entire East Coast what is the impact on customers come
Tuesday could be pretty large probably Tuesday itself we won't feel it but the ripple effect according to retail experts are things that we could certainly feel and you said pretty much the entire east coast and I actually want to read you the list of the 14 ports that are going to be impacted they're of course the port of new New York and New Jersey which is where I'm at right now as well as the ports of Boston Philadelphia Baltimore Norfolk Wilmington Charleston Savannah Jacksonville Miami Tampa mobile New Orleans and Houston that's a massive massive number
of huge huge cities and every single good you can think of Flows In and Out of these ports so as I said the ripple effect could be pretty large we could be seeing increases in shipping costs delays in shipments this backlog that we're going to that's going to sit untouched not being able to be loaded and unloaded because that's specifically what we're talking about here the loading and the unloading of these shipping containers and one of the things that the Alli the um the union had a problem with was the thought that their jobs could
be automated in the future I think we're hearing that in a lot of different Industries and that's of course a sticking point here as well now full automation is off the table there is a current ban for that already and the usmx said they're going to keep that however they wanted to negotiate semi Automation and these big cranes that you see behind me at this port those are things that could potentially be semi-automated or fully automated and that means these workers could potentially lose their jobs in the future so in addition to of course all
of the shipping issues and the ripple effect that that could have with Commerce as we ramp into the holiday season all these people are going to be out of a job too so hopefully the strike won't last for too long and these two can come to an agreement on each side kind of getting what they want and we do know that the White House had tried to get these two sides back to the bargaining table because they wanted to avoid this exact situation that we are going to find ourselves in on Tuesday however the Biden
Administration has said that they support collective bargaining and they've never tried to intervene in a strike in the past and they are not going to now Jesse what a distressing situation uh news nation's Caitlyn Becker thank you so much for following it and explaining it to us as well really appreciate it thanks for watching go to join nn.com to find newsnation on your screen and don't forget to click the red subscribe button below to get more of news nation's fact-driven unbiased coverage
