Longshoremen strike

[Urban Ranger]

I am surprised that there have been no discussions on the strike. Are you people not interested?

[JohnT]

No, we're not.

[Urban Ranger]

What a conincidence. Counterpunch has written an editoral on it:

October surprises are built into our system, since elections come in November. Cliffhanger movies in Hollywood's old days could not have staged it better. Leaving aside hurricanes roaring out of the Gulf of Mexico, we now have, aside from the thump of the war drums: a lockout of some 10,500 dockworkers at every port on the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego, with the owners and big retail chains like Wal-Mart begging Bush to help them break the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). In the event of a strike Bush could start by imposing a ninety-day back-to-work order under the Taft-Hartley law.

He could escalate by trying to place the longshore workers under the aegis of the Railway Labor Act rather than the National Labor Relations Act. The former allows the government to close down a strike by fiat and impose a settlement.

Another line of attack would be to try to undercut the ILWU's strategic ace in the hole, its status as a bargaining unit for every port on the Pacific Coast. Before Harry Bridges won that right for the union back in the 1930s, the owners could simply whipsaw the different bargaining units by shifting shipments from a struck port to one still operating.

The Administration has already had Tom Ridge hector ILWU leader James Spinosa with a phone call declaring that a stoppage would be injurious to the country. Implication: that the dispute would be cast as a terrorist attack by longshoremen against the national interest. The White House has also threatened to bring in the Navy to work the ports.

How tempting it must look for Bush and his political managers! Amid the war cries against Saddam they could stage a reprise of Reagan's onslaught on the air traffic controllers, with Bush waving the flag and deriding the longshoremen as Al Qaeda's auxiliaries, overpaid and bent on resisting modern technology that could fortify America's competitiveness on the battleground of world trade. He could even wave some appliance from Wal-Mart, made by a Chinese teenager working for 20 cents an hour, and proclaim that 50 percent of its retail price could be blamed on the greed of the dockworkers.

Actually, the longshoremen stand as a good symbol of what organized labor can do: get its members a decent wage (after thirty years or so of dangerous, skillful work they can maybe hope to earn what an MBA in his mid-20s, two years out of the Wharton School, would demand on walking in the door at a Wall Street firm); display a social and political conscience; and advertise the unfashionable idea that blue-collar work does not have to mean a starvation wage, looted pension fund and no healthcare. If you want the latter, drive, as I have, down the streets of Odessa, Texas, which is where George Bush formed his notions of what constitute workers' rights and a livable wage, and which has a murder rate that regularly battles Miami for first place on the national charts.

[DRoseDARs]

Well, without being as blunt as JohnT the whole matter just never caught my interest; I'm too busy with college work to be bothered with following it instead of larger issues: Iraq, Nevada Ballot questions 2 and 9, and this damn headache I've had for about fifteen hours now...

...But you are certainly welcome to get the dicussion going.

[axi]

Workers who refuse to work for breadcrusts are terrorists now?

I wonder how much this "civilian conscription" is different from slavery. People get forced to work, in both cases, don't they?

[DanS]

The article just a tad biased, don't you think?

Let them fight each other. If they can't get their sh!t together, then all of that business will go to Mexico.

[DinoDoc]

Re: Longshoremen strike

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Are you people not interested?

Not particularly.

[chequita guevara]

Technically it's not a strike, it's a lockout. It's the owners who've brought shipping to a standstill, not the workers.

Bush would shoot the Republicans in the foot in the November elections if he intervenes. The Republicans are trying to court the Teamsters, and Hoffa has said in no uncertain terms that if Bush intervenes it would end. On the flip side, the lockout is costing the economy $1 billion a day and could kill the "recovery."

The sticking point between the two organizations is over new hires. A lot of older jobs would be replaced with IT positions. The union is fine with the new technology, but wants new hires to be union positions. The companies don't. Despite my obvious bias, the union isn't being unreasonable. The companies are the bad guys here.

[Adam Smith]

Well, folks, I just finished helping write an extensive report on containerization, and I am working on pretty much full time these days on figuring out the economic impact of the strike.

So far it looks like it is costing the economy about $1 billion per day in lost output. Over the next week or two that will grow to $2 billion per day as auto manufacturers and other firms with just-in-time production see their available inventories drawn down because of the strike.

By the way, it would be nice if Counterpunch had a clue what it was talking about. West Coast dockworkers are already among the highest paid industrial workers anywhere in the world, period. In 2001, maritime clerks averaged $118,825 in compared with $80,000 for longshoremen and $158,000 for foremen. The union rejected a contract which would increase average salaries for full-time longshoremen and marine clerks to $114,500 and $137,500, respectively, plus full benefits. Its a little hard to start singing "Solidarity Forever" over that.

More importantly, this strike is about TECHNOLOGY. A large poprtion of the traffic moving through West Coast ports is in 40 to 48 foot long containers. Trans-Pacific ships carry two to three thousand containers each. Huge crains offload the containers and put them on trains or trucks for the remainder of their trip. US ports require a four man crews to offload a container. In modern container ports like Hong Kong and Singapore, the work is done more quickly by ONE person with a robotic computer system in the cab of the crain. US ports require clerks to manually reenter date, time, container number, etc for containers entering and exiting a port. In the Far East and in Europe, data acquisition is done entirely by video scanner, which is much faster.

US container traffic is expected to grow rapidly as trade expands. Containers are a very efficient way to handle cargo. But it is difficult to expand ports due to environmental considerations. It is therfore important that existing ports be used efficiently. Its a hard to support a bunch of overpaid Luddites who think otherwise.

[DinoDoc]

Bravo!

[Lefty Scaevola]

The governemnt has shown no inclination to intervene. It seem like some lefist commentators are egging them on to do so.

[boann]

dang they need to come work for REAL WORLD
wages and see what the rest of the frigging world
is living on.... gawd...
100,000 a year blue collar worker and got complaints...

[Felch]

Originally posted by axi
Workers who refuse to work for breadcrusts are terrorists now?

Read up on it. They earn anywhere from 80,000 to 160,000 a year.

My mom has a master's degree and earns only 40,000. These guys aren't complaining about wages.

The real problem is that they worry about losing jobs to increased efficiency and new technology. And frankly I think that's bull****.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by axi
Workers who refuse to work for breadcrusts are terrorists now?

I wonder how much this "civilian conscription" is different from slavery. People get forced to work, in both cases, don't they?

Get your facts straight, first. The average wage for full time Longshoremen is around $89,000 per year. For their data entry clerks, it's around $115,000 per year, and for foremen, it's $155,000 per year.

Still want to ***** about the oppressed workers, or would you like to come on over and apply for a job?

The "civilian conscription" is no such thing. They can quit. They're given the choice of return to work, or get fired and replaced. Again, in a market economy where a lot of people would like jobs that paid half that much, cry me a ****ing river.

BTW, it's not a strike, it's a lockout, and contrary to the countercommie editorial, business isn't out to break the ILWU, they want the goddamn ports reopened because the shipping companies and port management, not the ILWU, have shut them down, and their action is now affecting tens of thousands of other workers whose jobs are dependent on items delivered though those ports.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The sticking point between the two organizations is over new hires. A lot of older jobs would be replaced with IT positions. The union is fine with the new technology, but wants new hires to be union positions. The companies don't. Despite my obvious bias, the union isn't being unreasonable. The companies are the bad guys here.

Union IT guys? And union work rules and bureacracy in an IT environment? God, man, think about it. *shudders*

The companies are the "bad guys" to the extent of forcing a lockout, but in terms of their overall position, the ILWU are both spoiled, and out of touch with reality.