Port Workers Head Toward Strike

While most of the nation focuses on the federal government's looming "fiscal cliff," others are watching ongoing talks between the International Longshoremen’s Association union and its shipping company employers.

The parties are quickly approaching a Sunday deadline to agree to terms for a new six-year contract. If no agreement is reached, a work stoppage at East and Gulf Coast ports could bring commerce to halt, another blow to a sputtering economy.

Longshoremen and the Maritime Alliance, a group of ocean cargo shipping lines, cargo terminal operators and port associations, have agreed to help with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the federal agency charged with ironing out private-sector labor disputes, according to NJ.com.

If no agreement is reached, a walkout could begin on Sunday, according to the Post and Courier. It would be the first work stoppage for ILA in 35 years, and it will disrupt tens of billions dollars of imports at terminals from Massachusetts to Texas.

The main source of contention are "container royalty payments," which were put in place in the 1960s to compensate port workers adversely impacted when shipping terminals slashed jobs as they converted to more efficient container shipping.

The Maritime Alliance wants to cap the royalty payments and eliminate them for future hires, the New York Times reports. Longshoremen are refusing to make such a concession, and that issue has loomed large over other terms.

Trade and business groups are so concerned about the impending strike, the New York Times reports, that they wrote to President Obama asking that he invoke special powers granted in a rarely used 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to prevent the strike.