Port Strike Impact: How the ILA Walkout is Disrupting the Economy and Supply Chain

As of October 1^st, around 12 a.m., a port strike had officially begun. Around 45,000 port workers had decided to join together to plan this strike into order. The reasons behind this strike? Port workers who are in the ILA (International Longshoremen’s Association) want a raise of 77% throughout their 6-year contracts because inflation is currently on the rise, and they want a total ban on automation since they fear of losing their jobs and getting replaced by robots.

This strike will affect everyone but those who are in the eastern and gulf coast will suffer the most compared to those who are in the west. Ever since the strike has started, many people were wondering if there is going to be a shortage on necessities like food, pharmaceutical products like Tylenol, or other items like toilet paper. Because people are highly concerned and worried about any shortages happening, this led to people panic buying and clearing the store out of certain items such as toilet paper.

How does this strike affect the economy? Well, the longer this strike goes on, the longer it’ll take for imported items to arrive and get shipped off to their destinations and it’ll impact businesses and people. Let’s say that if items start getting shipped from the west to the east and gulf coast, the prices of those items will skyrocket due to how limited it is and how high the demand will be, which only impacts the consumers. Because of this, there is a high possibility of people not being able to afford those necessary items and having to abandon other items in order to just barely get by the day or even weeks.

How worried should we be? It will take a couple of days or possibly weeks until we start seeing those effects of the strike taking place. The first we will notice is the lack of fruits and other foods but sure enough everything will go back to normal once there is an agreement between the ILA and the USMX (United States Maritime Alliance) which will most likely be until January 15 if they don’t settle for the proposed agreement so until then they are discussing negotiations.