The backlog caused by the dockworkers’ 72-hour strike that closed 36 ports from Maine to Texas this week — including the Port of New York and New Jersey — could take between two to three weeks to clear out, said one Wall Street analyst.
Still, that amounts to a “temporary logistics impact and very little economic impact,” said the analyst, Peter Tirschwell, vice president for maritime and trade at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“Since the union had been openly and repeatedly threatening a strike since last November the potential was well known to retailers and other importers who advanced shipments of large volumes of goods beginning around April of this year,” he told NorthJersey.com Friday morning.
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“Thus most holiday season goods are already in the country and so we expect very little if any impact on the holiday season,” he said.
All told, more than 47,000 dock workers from the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike starting at midnight on Oct. 1, demanding higher pay as well as job protections from automation. It was the ILA’s first strike since 1977. That one had lasted 45 days.