The ILA completed its meeting in New Jersey during the first week of September with the outcome being strong support for strike action from October 1st, 2024, just about two weeks from now.
Since then, there have been many statements from both sides about the willingness to negotiate in good faith but how the other side is being unfair. It’s been many decades since the ILA was on strike, perhaps indicating a general tolerance of the ebbs and flows of professional agreements but that now they are not going to back down.
Our contacts are telling us that a strike seems likely at this point, however as negotiations proceed this could change.
The timeline to get product volumes on ships that will arrive at east and gulf coast ports before October 1st has just about expired. The options available for large product volumes now are routing shipments through west coast ports, Canada, or Mexico.
West coast ports will inevitably become capacity-restricted, plus there’s discussion in the market that the ILA could attempt to have other labor groups, not covered in its region, join the work disruption. How this might play out is very much unknown, but it adds to an already very complicated situation.
For shipments that absolutely must arrive in October, we are urging our customers to examine alternate supply chains such as airfreight.
