A historic port strike in the United States has been suspended, according to the International Longshoremen’s Association and the US Maritime Alliance.

A preliminary agreement was reached “on wages” and an extension of “the main contract until January 15, 2025 to return to the negotiating table to negotiate all other outstanding issues,” the ILA and USMX said in a joint statement on Thursday evening.

“With immediate effect, all current work will cease and all work under the framework contract will resume,” the statement said.

“I want to applaud the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance for coming together to reopen East Coast and Gulf ports. “Today’s tentative agreement on record wages and an extension of the collective bargaining process represents critical progress toward a strong contract,” President Joe Biden said of the agreement.

“I want to thank union workers, carriers and port operators for their patriotic action to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of essential supplies for the recovery and rebuilding from Hurricane Helene. Collective bargaining works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the center out and from the bottom up,” he continued.

Tens of thousands of American longshoremen walked off work early Tuesday morning, clogging dozens of ports along the East and Gulf coasts.

ILA members began setting up picket lines at shipping ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, in the union’s first coastwide strike in nearly 50 years.

The ILA, the union representing 50,000 East and Gulf Coast dockworkers under the disputed contract, demanded higher wages and a ban on the use of certain automated equipment.

“ILA workers at the port deserve to be compensated for the important work they do to keep American commerce moving and growing,” the ILA told ABC News in a statement Monday. “Meanwhile, the ILA’s dedicated longshore workers continue to be crippled by inflation resulting from USMX’s unfair pay packages.”

After the strike, President Joe Biden called for a fair offer from the USMX, an organization that negotiates on behalf of the dockworkers’ employers. In a statement released Tuesday, Biden highlighted the strong profits shipping companies have enjoyed in recent years, as well as the sacrifices longshoremen have made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amid the strike, USMX said Wednesday it remained “committed to negotiating in good faith to address the ILA’s demands and USMX’s concerns.”

A prolonged work stoppage lasting several weeks or months would have reignited inflation for some goods and led to layoffs among manufacturers as raw materials dried up, experts said.

The last time workers on the East Coast and Gulf Coast 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.