Editor’s note: Soon after publication of this article, the dockworkers’ union agreed to suspend its strike until January 2025.

With ports from Maine to Texas crippled by the first dockworker strike in nearly half a century, Muhammed Conpeh is hoping to avoid a ripple effect in The Bronx.

As a manager at National Farm — a produce wholesaler at the Hunts Point Produce Terminal Market — Conpeh said he’s been closely watching the walkout by more than 47,000 International Longshoremen’s Association workers, who on Thursday stayed off the job for a third straight day.

“I think everybody is affected by it here in the market,” Conpeh told THE CITY. “We don’t want to see this thing keep going even one more day.”

National Farm, a direct receiver of imported fruits and vegetables, is among the city businesses whose operators are holding out hope for an end in short order to the labor struggle between the dockworkers union and its United States Maritime Alliance employers.

“For now we are OK, but we’re a little bit scared for next week,” Conpeh told THE CITY. “If things keep going like this, we’re going to suffer.”

Outside the Red Hook Container Terminal in Brooklyn, a facility affected by the shutdown of container freight operations, striking workers said they are settling in for a potentially lengthy walkout in their fight for significantly higher wages, improved benefits and a limit on the use of automation.

Truckers and other motorists occasionally honked in as striking workers stood on a picket line in front of the terminal. Along with the Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island, the Red Hook facility is among six ports in New York and New Jersey that have been closed by the strike.

“There’s no cause for concern, they’ll still get their food,” said a veteran Brooklyn dockworker who did not want his name published. “They need to complain to [United States Marine Alliance] and greedy companies.”

The Port of New York and New Jersey is not a single entity but rather includes the more than 50 marine terminals across the New York City and Newark, N.J. metropolitan area. 

As a collective, it is considered the largest container port on the East Coast and the third largest in the U.S. Last year the district handled 7.8 million so-called twenty-foot equivalent units, a metric named after the length of a standard cargo container. 

That total trailed only the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, both in Southern California.

According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — the bi-state agency that operates regional airports, bus terminals, the PATH system, bridges and tunnels and the network of ports — its largest food imports in 2023 were beverages, spirits and vinegar, followed by prepared vegetables, fruits and nuts and prepared cereal, flour, starch or milk.

‘By Next Week, We Might Get Nothing’

Officials have stressed that shortages of essential goods are not anticipated any time soon and 

urged people not to rush to grocery stores in order to stockpile food. 

“Most of what we would consider, as consumers, the things we want to go out and buy, are here — they’re in warehouses, they’ve been here for a long time,” Jackie Bray, commissioner of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, said Monday. “So you will not see effects for weeks.”

But officials have also warned of potential disruptions to the delivery of popular products such as automobiles — and bananas.

“I do not want to be in a position to say, ‘Yes, we have no bananas,’ but we could get to that point,” Gov. Kathy Hochul warned Monday, a day before the start of the first dockworker strike since 1977.

At Top Banana, a Bronx-based wholesale vendor which estimates bananas from Central America make up about 85% of its business, that grim possibility has yet to begin taking shape.

Officials with Top Banana, which was founded in 1996 at the Hunts Point Terminal Market, said the company is “as well positioned as we could be” with containers of its namesake fruit already in transit or in storage at the company’s facility at the Port of Wilmington, Delaware. That port last year ed for 27% of banana imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty with the strikes but Dole and Chiquita put the bananas on the ships with the expectation that we would be able to get them off,” Daniel Barabino, Top Banana’s chief operating officer told THE CITY. “It’s a very fluid situation and it’s been very stressful since it started.”

OEC Group, a Queens-based international logistics provider, estimates that for every week the strike lasts, there will be a month of backlogs, with potential for higher prices being ed on to consumers.

“Then you’ll have tankers that aren’t able to get into port with fruits, vegetables, seafood,” said Michael Giambrone, a sales supervisor with OEC. “Everything you expect to have and that you take for granted to be there, it’s not going to be there anymore.”

Officials with National Farm, the wholesaler whose core customers are supermarkets in Queens, said they hope things don’t reach that point.

“We don’t want to get just a few pallets of plantains,” Conpeh said. “Right now, we’re getting containers, but by next week, we might get nothing.”