Lots More on Potentially Massive East Coast Port Strikes

Joe Weisenthal (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

Tracy Alloway (0:10)

This strike is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S, strike is bananas. Remember bananas, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (0:19)

Are you talking about the fruit or something else here?

Tracy Alloway (0:21)

Well, I'm talking about the fruit.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

My kids eat bananas. I remember bananas.

Tracy Alloway (0:26)

Okay. Are you worried about the banana supply chain?

Joe Weisenthal (0:31)

I can't believe we're dealing with this again. Oh my God. There's another port issue. I did a deadlift. One, two, three.

Tracy Alloway (0:41)

Hegemony. Okay, go. Hegemony. barges.

Joe Weisenthal (0:46)

This is an after school special, except.

Tracy Alloway (0:48)

I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

Joe Weisenthal (0:54)

Where's the best squid ink pasta?

Tracy Alloway (0:56)

these are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

Joe Weisenthal (0:59)

No, I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast. And people will say, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore. We do have.

Tracy Alloway (1:11)

Cha-ching. The perfect guest. You're listening to Lots More, where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now.

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

Because even when the Odd Lots is over, there's always Lots More.

Tracy Alloway (1:22)

And we really do have the perfect guest. So it looks like the International Longshoremen's Association, the ILA, there's going to be a lot of acronyms. They're kind of struggling to work out a deal with the United states Maritime Alliance, USMX. And so we might have disruption at the ports. It's 2020 all over again.

Joe Weisenthal (1:46)

The entire East Coast, from my understanding, every port on the East Coast, which I think has all kinds of influence from bananas to cherries to auto parts, could be on strike as soon as October 1st. Craig, what's going to happen? What's going on?

Craig Fuller (2:00)

A lot of people asked years ago, how could you set up a media business based on the supply chain?

Joe Weisenthal (2:07)

There's just endless stuff isn't there?

Craig Fuller (2:09)

This always happens, but nobody cared before 2020 Everyone's aware that these supply chains are vulnerable and these issues happen. They've always, it's always been this way. It's just that up until recently, no one really paid attention to them because they didn't experience them personally. But this stuff is always taking place. We are up to a new union contract. The ILA is insisting that if their demands aren't met, that they're going to strike. And that would be potentially catastrophic to supply chains if it goes on for a long period of time.

Joe Weisenthal (2:39)

We are, of course, speaking Tracy. We are speaking with Craig Fuller. He is the founder and CEO of freightwaves. And to his point, Tracy, I don't think we ever once talked to him before 2020, and now we've probably talked to him like seven times or something like that.

Tracy Alloway (2:53)

Yeah, I think that's very true. Okay, so Craig, what are the main sticking points here? Because the coverage that I'm reading about like the tensions between the ILA and USMX, I see issues on wages, issues on benefits, issues on port automation. When I read the list, it kind of feels like there's disagreement on everything.

Craig Fuller (3:17)

Pretty much. At the end of the day, I think it comes back to the fact that labor has more leverage today than they've had in decades. It's really a couple of things. One is you have a very friendly administration to labor, probably arguably the most labor-friendly administration in decades. It's in the White House currently. You have a lot of leverage because of a supply and demand problem, is that there just aren't enough workers that want these types of jobs. And that gives them an enormous amount of leverage in these contract negotiations. But fundamentally, their arguments are that they don't want automation and they want significant pay increases, is really what it comes back to. Those are the fundamental disagreements here, is really economic and really technology, and it's concerned that it's taking jobs or potential jobs away from their members.

Joe Weisenthal (4:07)

Setting aside the politics, and we know the politics are going to be very complicated for a democratic administration that's prided itself on being a friend of labor but also doesn't want to have a massive economic disruption just a few weeks out from the election. But setting all that aside, maybe we can talk about that a little bit more, does the government have tools to stop a strike in the same way it apparently can sometimes with potential rail strikes?