U.S. dockworkers agreed to return to work after port operators sweetened their contract offer, ending a three-day strike that threatened to disrupt the American economy. The breakthrough Thursday came after port employers offered a 62% increase in wages over six years, according to people familiar with the matter.

The agreement ends a strike that had closed container ports from Maine to Texas and threatened to disrupt everything from the supply of bananas in supermarkets to the flow of cars through America’s factories.

The new offer, up from an earlier proposed raise of 50%, came after the White House privately and publicly pressed the large shipping lines and cargo terminal operators who employ the longshore workers to make a new offer to the union.

President Biden applauded the agreement, saying in a statement, “Collective bargaining works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

The International Longshoremen’s Association and port operators, in a joint statement, said they had reached a tentative agreement on wages and union members would return to work. They said the agreement would extend the prior contract, which expired at the start of this week, through Jan. 15, 2025 while the two sides negotiate on other issues, including automation on the docks.

The latest offer would raise the base hourly rate for ILA port workers to $63 from $39 over six years, the people familiar with the matter said. One of the people said the offer is being made on the condition that dockworkers go back to work and agree to efficiency gains.

The offer is less than the union demand for an increase of 77% over the term of the contract but a far larger increase than most major labor contracts, including a contract reached last year covering the separate union representing West Coast longshore workers. Many U.S. dockworkers currently earn more than a $100,000 a year, with baseline hourly wages boosted by work rules and overtime requirements.



The revised offer is a victory for Harold Daggett, the pugnacious leader of the ILA, who led his members on their first coastwide strike at U.S. ports in nearly 50 years.

Shipping lines “got real rich during Covid when everybody stayed home while my people went to work every single day and some of them died on the job,” Daggett said as the strike began Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. “We make their money and they don’t want to share it with us.”

The cost of the higher wages will be borne by cargo owners and shipping lines that manage the port terminals. Global giants such as Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk and China’s Cosco Shipping operate many of the boxships that unload at U.S. ports.

The shipping lines, which reported record profits during the pandemic, will have to decide how much of the added costs to pass along to their customers, which are the big retailers, manufacturers and farmers that import and export through the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports.

The strike came about five weeks from a presidential election where both main candidates are wooing working-class union voters. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have voiced support for the workers, stressing that the carriers are mostly foreign-owned.

Top White House aides have been in frequent contact with the employers, reiterating that Biden doesn’t plan to use his federal power to break the strike.

“This is the first strike in 50 years—these people know how to get to yes,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Thursday, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One. “They just need to get to yes.”

The walkout had shut down some of the country’s main gateways for imports of food, vehicles, heavy machinery, construction materials, chemicals, furniture, clothes and toys.

Many manufacturers and big retailers, with their busy fall shopping season just starting to kick in, said they could withstand a short strike because they brought in products earlier than usual this year and diverted other cargoes to West Coast ports. But executives said a walkout lasting a week or longer would push up shipping costs and might trigger product shortages.