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[quote=Anonymous]From Globe.com

By Hiawatha Bray

The Port of Boston closed on Tuesday morning due to the biggest longshoremen’s strike in decades. The shutdown could take a significant toll on local companies and retailers that depend on the port for access to international markets.

The strike by 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association was expected to close down Boston and other seaports on the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts, which handle about half of all US seaborne trade. The work stoppage will idle 300 ILA workers at the Port of Boston, which is small compared to other East Coast ports including New York and New Jersey. It normally serves four container ships per week, two from Europe and two from Asia.

The dockworkers union couldn’t come to terms with the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, over pay increases and proposals to automate cargo handling, which could lead to job losses.

Some local businesses, from wine importers to furniture stores, have been on edge in anticipation of the strike.

“It’s costing us money and it’s costing us our international competitiveness,” said David Shipps-Kelly, director of transportation and logistics at International Forest Products in Foxborough, a worldwide dealer in recycled paper and lumber products owned by the family of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Shipps-Kelly said that even a brief strike will drive up shipping costs, which will be passed on to consumers. And the longer the work stoppage lasts, the worse it will get.

In the runup to the strike, companies scrambled to find ways to get merchandise ashore ahead of the upcoming holiday season. Jennifer Mehigan, spokeswoman for Massport, which operates the Port of Boston, said that traffic at the port picked up earlier this year, as companies stocked up on imported merchandise. “We already saw the surge months ago — our spring and early summer volumes were strong,” said Mehigan. “Importers have known about this for quite some time.”

But others waited until too late. Al Brari, owner of AJB Transportation, a trucking company in Beverly, said on Monday that he was getting frequent calls from desperate importers asking him to pick up their loads from the port before the Tuesday strike deadline. “They started on Friday,” Brari said. “Now they’re bugging me every minute.” But Brari said he has only 12 of the trailers needed to haul shipping containers, and all had been spoken for by his regular customers.

Robert Hurley, president of Cynthia Hurley French Wines in Newton, said it would have cost too much to buy extra supplies of imported wines, and pay to have it stored in a warehouse. “It’s not that drastic,” Hurley said. “We have lots of stock.”

Still, he said the strike would hurt. “This is the busiest time of year,” said Hurley. “Absolutely we’re going to lose sales and lose money.”

The Port of Boston is dwarfed by other US ports. Its Conley Container Terminal handled 145,000 shipping containers in fiscal year 2024 ending June 30. The combined port of New York and New Jersey, by contrast, handled a little under 4 million containers in 2023.[/quote]

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