Jacksonville is Florida's largest container port. The Blount Island Marine Terminal, pictured in October 2021, is undergoing more than $70 million in investment to help the port process as many as 2.3 million containers on an annual basis. | Photo by Will Brown
Published on February 26, 2025 at 4:26 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
There will be labor peace in Jacksonville harbor and other Eastern ports for the next six years. The International Longshoremen’s Association on Tuesday ratified its contract with the U.S. Maritime Alliance.
The agreement carries an initial $6 hourly wage increase; 62% wage increase over the life of the contract; improved health insurance benefits; guaranteed increases in vacation and holiday time; and job guarantees related to the introduction of automated equipment at container terminals.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
Jacksonville is Florida’s largest container port. In the 2024 fiscal year it processed 1.4 million TEUs of containerized cargo as well as 500,000 automobiles. (A TEU stands for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit — the size of a standard shipping container that’s 20 feet long.)
Longshoremen’s Local 1408 President Warren Smith estimates the contract will bring at least $25 million in additional wages annually to the local membership.
Smith stresses that most of the union membership lives in Jacksonville and spends its money here.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
“That $25 million employs somebody else and gives them an economic opportunity to go out, buy goods and solicit services,” Smith says. “It keeps reverberating; it keeps cycling in the community. We’re always going to be about wages. We are always going to be about increasing our welfare and our way of living. … That is the thing that is going to build our community.”
Local 1408 overwhelmingly supported the passage, with 94.2% of its participating members ratifying the master contract, as well as district and local contracts.
Smith says he expects to the Local 1408 membership to grow during the calendar year through the recruitment of non-ILA dockworkers. He estimates 75% of the dockworkers who unload cargo off vessels are union members.
As consumers shift more toward e-commerce by the year, it places additional emphasis on the maritime industry and dockworkers.
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that consumers spent $308.9 in e-commerce sales during the fourth quarter of 2024. That nearly a 65% increase from the $187.3 billion in e-commerce during the fourth quarter of 2019.
The previous contract between the union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance ended Sept. 30. When an agreement was not reached by then, union membership across the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico declined to work without a contract.
The first maritime work stoppage in the United States since 1977 lasted less than 72 hours. The sides agreed to extend the former contract until January. On Jan. 8, the union and alliance agreed to a contract. The final step in the negotiations was Tuesday’s ratification vote.
The new six-year contract will expire Sept. 30, 2030.
“The men and women of the ILA work night and day to keep cargo moving, ensuring the goods we all use every day continue to arrive on store shelves,” Jaxport CEO Eric Green said in a statement. “The ILA in Jacksonville has been an essential part of our port’s success for many decades, and we are grateful for their many contributions toward the city’s evolution as a leader in global trade.
“Prior to the strike, the East Coast had a reputation for labor peace for many decades, and this agreement restores that for years to come.”
Other contract benefits
Local 1408 members are not Jaxport employees. However, one of Jaxport’s biggest tenants, SSA Marine, employs scores of members. Other companies with sizeable numbers of Longshoremen are Amports, Gulf Terminal International and Jacksonville-based Trailer Bridge.
Though Trailer Bridge’s employment of ILA membership is covered by a separate contract, the Puerto Rico carrier applauded Tuesday’s ratification.
“The ratification of the new master contract supports continuity of supply chains and ensures the goods we be delivered,” a Trailer Bridge official wrote in a statement. “That in itself is something all of us on the waterfront can celebrate.”
The importance of ports
In its Critical Commodities Report released earlier this month, the Florida Ports Council found the state imported more than $1.5 billion annually in medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.
Jaxport is a critical part of that revenue production.
Puerto Rico’s presence as a medicine manufacturer — and the territory’s reliance on Jaxport for more than 85% of its imports and exports, including raw materials finished pharmaceuticals — means the ILA employees who work for Trailer Bridge will have their hands full at the Blount Island Marine Terminal.
The Florida Department of Transportation estimates maritime activity is responsible for 12.2% of the state’s gross domestic product. The same report noted that the state’s seaports helped Floridians generate $56.1 billion in personal income in 2023.
“We are the professional movers of the world,” Smith says. “We move cargo that everybody needs. …Home Depot, Walmart, eBay — these are some of our largest shippers that citizens are relying on. Tile and coffee, all of those things we move.
“You see a cup of coffee and don’t understand the cup came on a ship, as well as the coffee beans. Before a trucker can bring it to you, a Longshoreman has to bring off a ship — safety.”
