Ron Leibman, chair of McCarter’s Transportation, Logistics & Supply Chain Management Practice, speaks with FreightWaves about the holiday season and the potential port strike. He noted that with dockworkers from Maine to Texas threatening to strike on Tuesday, the impact of a work stoppage could be lessened as retailers have been accelerating imports for months. Leibman stated, “Retailers have been forward stocking, expecting this. Now, will that take care of the whole season? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be the same as if they hadn’t prepared.”
Leibman also added that retailers have had ample time to prepare in the event of a longshoremen strike. “If you look at traffic volumes going from the Far East or Asia to here, they’re up. They’ve been up for several months,” he said. “I know clients of mine are already stocked. As far as the Christmas season goes, any smart retailer has been bringing in their goods for months.”
Regarding the potential impact of increased automation at ports on International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) jobs, Leibman said, “The interesting thing about it is, in the ports of Virginia, where they’ve been using some automation in some ways, they have more ILA members now than they did two years ago. Similarly, the West Coast ports, there are more [union] members than there were two years ago.” He added, “So is the direct correlation to automation to no jobs real? Like any other automation you have, it depends how many more jobs there are that people can be retrained for. In fact, if the automation allows more volume through a port, maybe that creates more of these other jobs.”