Dockworkers going back to work Friday after port strike ends amid tentative agreement

Dockworkers along the East coast from Maine to Texas are going back to work Friday after their port strike was suspended, averting a major blow to the US economy and offering relief to shoppers.

"The dock workers are going back to work, and in the next 90 days they're going to settle everything," President Joe Biden said.

Strikers are celebrated a tentative agreement that raises their pay 62% over the next six years. However, the agreement does not address issues of automated machinery.

Both sides will continue negotiating that, as well as benefits, up until a new deadline of January 15.

"Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume," the International Longshoremen's Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance said in a joint statement Thursday evening.

ILA members current base salary is $81,000 annually, but some can earn $200,000 with overtime. But the tentative agreement will increase top dock workers hourly pay from $39 to $63.

The CEO of the National Retail Federation celebrated the suspension, writing, "The sooner they reach a deal, the better for all American families."

Consumers were already on edge after the strike was announced.

A prolonged work stoppage could have rekindled inflation for some goods and triggered layoffs at manufacturers.

Panic-buyers cleared toilet paper from shelves at some big box stores, despite the fact that the disruption would not have affected domestically-produced tissue paper.

Tens of thousands of U.S. dockworkers had walked off the job early Tuesday morning, clogging dozens of ports along the East and Gulf coasts.

ILA members started to set up picket lines at shipping ports up and down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday in the union's first coastwide strike in nearly 50 years.

The work stoppage, which was the biggest in nearly a half century, threatened shortages on everything from bananas to auto parts.

The last time East Coast and Gulf Coast workers went on strike, in 1977, the work stoppage lasted seven weeks.

In 2002, a strike among workers at West Coast ports lasted 11 days before then-President George W. Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act and ended the standoff.