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By Connor Wright
Conley Terminal – ILA members picket the terminal entrance on Tuesday morning, after launching their strike the night before.
SOUTHIE – Port of Boston dockworkers went on strike at the Conley Terminal in South Boston last night. Five locals of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) joined the picket line together, representing some 300 workers across all Port of Boston facilities, a local ILA official told Working Mass.
The strike is part of a larger coastwide strike of East Coast longshore workers. Workers at Conley Terminal are joining almost 45,000 fellow ILA members on strike at ports all along the East Coast, after their master contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) expired at midnight on Monday.
The ILA is striking over wages and to prevent further automation of the ports, a longstanding issue for workers in the industry. The master contract has protections against “fully automated” ports that replace large numbers of workers with machinery, but employers have been pushing the interpretation of that language. The union cited violations in an Alabama port as part of their rationale for striking.
“Even though the ILA’s members worked tirelessly during the pandemic to ensure that the nation’s commerce flowed and continue to sacrifice time with their own families so that goods can arrive in the homes of other families throughout the world, still, due to corporate greed, employers refuse to compensate the ILA’s members fairly,” the ILA said in a written statement to Working Mass.
“Over the last several years, the net revenues of these companies have grown astronomically from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars while the ILA members’ wage increases do not even cover the cost of inflation. The ILA is fighting for respect, appreciation, and fairness in a world in which corporations are dead set on replacing hardworking people with automation.”
“We are prepared to fight as long as necessary,” ILA President Harold Daggett wrote in a statement posted on Facebook, “to stay out on strike for whatever period of time it takes, to get the wages and protections against automation our ILA members deserve.”
The last coastwide dockworkers strike was in 1977. For most ILA members this is their first time on strike.
Connor Wright is a member of Boston DSA and a labor reporter for Working Mass.
Photo Credit: Henry De Groot
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