ORLANDO, Fla. – Thousands of dockworkers along the East and Gulf coasts are now on strike against the United States Maritime Alliance.
The strike officially began at 12 a.m. Tuesday and follows an impasse in negotiations between the International Longshoremen’s Association and USMX.
Three ports in Florida will be impacted by the strike: Jacksonville, Tampa and Miami.
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News 6 spoke to a retailer in Winter Park who said it’s still early to tell what the local impacts of the strike could be.
“As far as the delay as the supply chain gets depleted and then is needing to be replenished, that’s the key question and nobody knows,” said Siegel’s Clothing owner, John Siegel.
Siegel said his business should be okay through the holiday season despite the strike.
“[It] could impact a lot of different businesses going into the holiday season,” Siegel said. “For us personally, we always get our holiday goods in considerably early. We start getting them in as early as May, and it’s a consistent flow of merchandise all the way through. We’re about 98% complete for our holiday shipments. Initially, it won’t affect us. Down the road, who knows?”
Siegel said if they did feel impacts, it probably wouldn’t be until the end Q1 in 2025 going into Q2.
He said they need to see how long the strike lasts to better understand the impacts.
Dr. Sean Snaith, University of Central Florida Institute of Economic Forecasting director, echoed a similar outlook.
“Well, I think the most important point to make here is that that the impacts are really going to be directly proportional to the length of of the strike,” Snaith said. “You know, the strike for a few days or a week likely is not going to have a major impact. Now, if this drags on and we start talking about months, then then we could start to see, you know, shortages of the number of goods, you know, start to manifest themselves in the economy.”
Snaith said he does not anticipate supply chain issues like what we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I don’t think this at this point is going to be anything as severe as that, because not only were the ports backed up after COVID-19, we had shut down manufacturing,” Snaith said. “So there was a whole length of supply chain disruptions because of COVID-19.”
As far as how the ports in Florida will be impacted, according to a news release from the Jacksonville Port Authority, the strike is expected to impact a third of JaxPort’s business, particularly international container volumes operated by SSA Jacksonville, as well as international vehicle volumes.
On PortMiami’s website, there is an update on the homepage saying the port has First Amendment Zones set up so ILA members can safely engage in peaceful expression and picketing. It also goes on to say cruise ship operations would not be impacted by the ILA strike. According to information from MiamiDade.gov, PortMiami’s top imports for 2023 include fruits and vegetables, apparel and textiles, and machinery.
As far as Port Canaveral goes, News 6 reached out to see if it would be impacted, and we were told Port Canaveral would not be impacted by the strike.
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