And then, as though there wasn’t already enough going on, we have a dockworkers’ strike
How long will it last? Will there be major shortages? Tune in to find out:
Dockworkers at dozens of ports stretching along the East and Gulf coasts walked the picket line after midnight on Tuesday as they launched a massive strike that threatens to reignite inflation and spark product shortages at the start of the holiday season.
The work stoppage went into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday after the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents 45,000 workers, and the alliance representing ports failed to renew a collective bargaining agreement that had just expired.
For the first time since 1977, 36 ports stretching from strategic seaboard locations as far north as Maine and as far south as Texas – all of which handle an aggregate $3 trillion in the country’s annual international trade – will be idle due to a work stoppage.
They want more pay, and “protection against automation.” The article says that large retailers have stocked up on goods in preparation for Christmas, but after a few weeks if the strike goes on the effects will be felt. And for things like bananas, they will be felt more immediately.
We’ve become accustomed to a great many products imported from all over the world.
And of course, if the strike goes on for a while, it will have political repercussions.
The ILA is thoroughly mobbed up, as it has been for many decades, and they are very adept at exploiting their monopoly power over the ports. In addition to pretty extreme compensation demands, they are furiously resisting automation.
Ports in Europe and especially Asia are highly automated, with large equipment efficiently unloading container ships, tracking the containers with high technology including advanced AI, dispatching containers in a very efficient chain of custody to ground handling systems that have also been optimized for bulk transfers by barge, rail, and truck.
US ports are among the lowest productivity ports in the global supply chain, with outdated and inadequate material handling systems, subject to ludicrous work rules, and overstaffing. Ground transport from the ports is also weak and inefficient, and port labor rules are the common element.
The current administration stresses their fidelity to the union leadership, and will not intervene. The timing of these actions before a national election further cedes power to the ILA in pressing their demands, while the US is blocked from securing and updating critical supply chain infrastructure. Not good…
Dan D:
On the Waterfront.
ban automation. ban self driving cars and robots. problem solved. make sure humans can make a living. especially after importing so many. then deport them all too. even more problems solved.
Before retirement, I was the operations manager at the US office for a Chinese trailer parts manufacturer (yeah, I know). We had containers coming to ports on the west and east coasts daily. The ineffeciencies at the ports is legendary, and I could tell stories till my dying day about it all. I worked there for 11 years, leaving at the end of 2021 so got to experience all the pandemic delays.
Interesting fact: when I started working there at the beginning of 2011, getting a container from China to one of our 4 warehouses, all-in, was around $3000. During the pandemic, at the peak of the shortages, it was around $16000 each, and then finally settled down around $9-$11000 by the time I left.
It was brutal.
My dad was in either Africa, Sicily, or Italy in WW2 when a dock strike was going on in America — he probably told the story to me a thousand times: ‘son, all of the troops over there said to bring those dock workers there, and we’ll go to America and unload the ships.‘
Don’t know the solution, but those are some good jobs – fire everyone on strike, and go full bore for automation. There are other ports that can help, from what I have heard…
If the US wishes to continue competing effectively in world markets, some automation at the ports is going to have to happen. Luddite protests will not change reality.
Hoping that Terry “I coulda been a contender” Molloy will lead his supporters back to work, walking all over Johnny Friendly in the process.
It sounds like the longshoremen’s union wants to do to American shipping what the railroad unions did to American railroads and the steel unions did to American steel.
Now is the time, for better or worse, to take advantage of the Biden/Harris administration’s disarray.
Events are coming at them faster than they can process.
If you want me, I’m hiding under my bed.
Well didn’t congress impose a contract on the railroad workers recently?
My neighbors report that gas stations are out of gas and stores are out of TP. Apparently people are overreacting to the port strike.
I will take steps to stock up, but gradually.
If the strike is still going on when Trump takes office it will by then have done a huge amount of damage to the country. He should then immediately declare a national emergency, fire all the strikers, temporarily mobilize the national guard to get the ships unloaded, and as Karmi said, go full bore with the automation.
Not at expert on this history, but there were (and are) both problems and merits in the labor strife we saw from the 1880’s, trying to balance the interests of bosses vs. workers. And property rights vs. self reliance and free market elements.
Today it strikes* me as legitimate that workers act collectively to ensure reasonable and responsible safety and health issues are in place, with a realistic cost/ benefit analysis as to what is implemented and what is too expensive to do. But when it comes to wage scale vs. skill and talent, that should perhaps not be part of collective bargaining as it distorts labor pricing in the market.
Have not seen any decent reporting on actual wage numbers, but seeking 60% raise over 5 years might be excessive, or merely playing catch up to monetary inflation. But trying to slow the push for productivity enhancements is a fools errand, both as personal workers and as national citizens. [And the case for public sector unions is even more egregious — negotiating with themselves, as it were.] Plus, is anyone aware if this union has taken a position pro or con on the application of tariffs?
*no pun intended
There was an opportunity, spread over a decade or so, during which automation could be phased in and the job structure for longshoremen changed to accommodate the influx of automation; newcomers to the trade could be reduced in number as older, retiring workers departed as automation became more widespread. A smooth, well managed transition, in other words.
That point has long since passed and it’s now time to immediately and with prejudice revamp the operational structure overnight. The longshoremen’s labor management structure had its chance and threw it away, now let’s automate the absolute crap out of container movement RFN.
Trump couldn’t fire all the strikers, because unlike air traffic control they don’t work for the government, but he could stop the strike for 60 days. Biden could do that now.
I saw a sad comment on our local Next Door app. Some guy claimed that the leader of the Longshoremen’s union has ties to the Genovese crime family (maybe, I don’t know), and further that he is “close to Trump” and he and Trump have orchestrated this strike to damage the country and help Trump’s election prospects. That’s it! Trump is behind everything bad!
How far are we from self-navigating and self-mooring ships and tugs? How about self-operating cranes? And self-driving trucks? And by “self-” I don’t mean simple automation, but highly skilled, efficient and safe operation that is equal to that by any human, beyond most, and 24 X 7, without breaks.
I don’t know what the answer is. Try asking King Chanute.
the end result is most if not all of this will be automated, the ila don’t seem to have learned anything from the last four years, the previous contract had a 1% per year increase, because that was the inflation target back then,
@ Kate > “he and Trump have orchestrated this strike to damage the country and help Trump’s election prospects.”
Considering that a number of unions have membership that supports Trump while their leadership supports Harris-Biden, that’s not an unreasonable conspiracy theory.
And as usual, old connections have “mysteriously” surfaced, although the labor leader and Trump have talked recently.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/business/3174921/ila-president-harold-daggett-shady-past-lavish-lifestyle-port-strike/
@ mkent > “It sounds like the longshoremen’s union wants to do to American shipping what the railroad unions did to American railroads and the steel unions did to American steel.”
The Law of Unintended Consequences is a close relative of Karma.
What the ILA has going for them is that you can’t really off-shore port operations like you can manufacturing steel.
The railroad story is a long and frustrating one of leadership obtuseness.
As one analyst noted (wish I remembered who): the railroads thought they were in the business of running railroads, rather than of providing transportation.
Chris B’s prescription is emotionally appealing, but that’s a statist-socialist solution that we should shun completely, and if Trump DID announce that as his prospective policy, he would immediately lose union supporters in other sectors.
IMO, having not intimate knowledge of the issue at all, I agree with Cavendish that a managed transition should have been the goal of business and labor, and that other jobs for aspiring longshoremen could have been found.
Coding the automated cranes springs to mind.
The bottom line, however, is that the Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies to labor unions no less than to governments or businesses: eventually the goal of the leadership is to maintain their power and perks, regardless of the effects on the institution they are leading.
https://americandigest.org/pournelles-iron-law-bureaucracy/
Gerard understood.
This is one of the better stories I’ve seen on the strike, and has a more-or-less up-to-date statement from Trump basically supporting the union, although I think there would be some “nuance” should he be elected.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/kay-ivey-trump-weigh-in-on-dockworker-strike-while-union-vows-to-continue/ar-AA1ry0CR
I hold the position (independently of but in agreement with Cavendish) that the longshoremen (and women, presumably the clerical staff mentioned in the story) should have embraced and controlled the transition to automation long ago, because that’s been the way of the world since the Luddite era, and standing athwart history yelling “stop” has never had much success in the long run.
Also, they are not going to get a lot of sympathy from the people over this issue.
Raising prices for everyone else and forcing supply chain disruption in the midst of all the other chaos are not crowd pleasers.
And on the gripping hand, I haven’t yet forgotten the stories from the Pandemic Era of the backed-up ships in the port harbors due to the antediluvian working conditions and lack of automation. We used to call that kind of bad press a wake-up call, but the ILA slept through it.
Fighting for higher wages is usually acceptable to the public, especially when the ire is directed toward greedy capitalists with record-breaking profits (sic), but for the unemployed who have seen their own jobs going to illegals (on and off-shore) and who don’t live on the coasts and probably wouldn’t be hired if they did, why should they support the ILA members boosting their own profits on the backs of the consumers?
IF they are getting any accurate news from the Regime Media about the situation in the first place.
Very interesting set of comments.
I suspect, but do not know for certain, that the ILA may be looking a little deeper into labor developments, which comes across as crassly “protecting their rice bowl.” Protecting one’s own interests is the default setting for humans, at inspection here is only the degree.
If/When Trump is elected, and by potential extension, Vance in 2028 and 2032, the direction will be to “Re-Americanize” industry and commerce, resulting in a steady reduction of containers coming into ports, offset – slightly – by more going out. All those containers will still be on the move, but interstate rather than internationally, and ILA members won’t get a cut of that. Establishing barriers to staff reduction now via contract is, for the ILA and its members, a smart move. Unfortunately for them, their timing is wrong; Americans have spent four years being economically raped by Biden/Harris policies and citizen tolerance for featherbedding is at a pretty low ebb; people have come to realize that dimes and quarters “someplace over there” translates quickly to dollars “right here in my pocket.”
There’s Insufficient Spine in D.C. at the moment to apply a reasonable solution to the issue because “reasonable resolution” is dependent upon enough Positional Strength to apply leverage, and D.C.’s numbers on that are heavily negative, but regardless of November 5’s results, one way or another, resolution will ocur.