After months of difficult negotiations, dockworkers on the West Coast have reached a tentative agreement with their employers on a new labor agreement, and President Joe Biden was extremely pleased with the breakthrough.
“As I have always said, collective bargaining works, and I congratulate both parties at the ports for reaching an agreement,” Biden said. “Above all I congratulate the port workers, who have served heroically through the pandemic and the countless challenges it brought, and will finally get the pay, benefits, and quality of life they deserve.”
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The president heaped praise on Julie Su, the acting labor secretary who he has nominated to lead the agency permanently.
Biden thanked Su for using her “deep experience and judgment to keep the parties talking, working with them to reach an agreement after a long and sometimes acrimonious negotiation. … Julie Su has proven herself time and time again, both as deputy secretary working closely with Secretary Marty Walsh — and now as a leader who helped assure that our supply chains remain strong for America’s businesses, farmers, and working families.”
The deal, of which details were not released Wednesday night, must still be ratified by members of both groups, per CBS News, which added that the union representing the dockworkers, the ILWU Coast Longshore Division, represents more than 22,000 West Coast dockworkers at 29 ports in California, Oregon, and Washington.
The two sides had been negotiating for over a year, and last week, several major ports in California were reportedly shut down.
Su’s future leading the Labor Department remains uncertain as Republicans have derided her agency’s lack of cooperation amid reports of child labor violations involving immigrants. House Republicans on the Education and Workforce Committee have emphasized the problem stems from a failure to curb illegal immigration.
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President Joe Biden nominated Su in late February to take over as labor secretary, and she’s been temporarily filling the role after former Secretary Marty Walsh left in March. However, her nomination has not come to the floor for a vote.
Su’s nomination passed out of committee in April with no Republican votes and has languished ever since. Republican senators who voted against her nomination in committee have also taken issue with her treatment of independent contractors and said she had not established good enough relationships with the business community as California’s labor secretary. Several also highlighted the amount of fraud in the unemployment program in California during the pandemic. Centrist and independent senators are still debating whether to support her nomination.
