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BNSF issues embargo for westbound container shipments
It’s incredible how the actions of one union can have such an impact on the nation’s economy; and even more incredible that it’s allowed to happen in the first place.
Clarification: not intended to be an anti-Union comment so much as a what-is-in-the-best-public-interest comment. I live in a Commonwealth, after all. Some unions have anti-strike clauses in their agreements, like teachers, where a strike can impact 100s of thousands of people. Any union representing workers where a strike would have national implications should include such language.
Their is a means and method to move things forward. However, that will take the same legislation that is now in place for air traffic controllers and the very railroads that serve these ports. It is time that ports are brought into the mix of transportation workers that are vital to the national interests. While I agree their is more than one factor contributing to the mess of southern California more so than the other west coast ports. I also believe the unions are doing irreputable harm to their livehoods starting the day that the panama canal expansion is complete. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports and are willing to take advantage.
Having worked in the logistics field in the past and intermodal, especially handling cargo from West Coast ports. I can tell you that the ILWU is famous for work slow downs that impact port productivity, if any of these so called workers(they do almost no manual labor anymore since almost everything is containerized) have the best benefits packaged out there. They get every holiday imaginable off, they’re either doing clerical work or operating the container cranes at the port(not that those are easy, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist). The shipping companies would like nothing more than for the PMA to stand up the ILWU and put it in it’s place, but I think they’re weak. Personally, I’d have started hiring and training replacement workers long before the contract was up and then locked out the ILWU and bring in new hires that work for the PMA. The ILWU is just money grubbing, that’s all they’ve ever done in every contract negotiation…and I’ve known people that are longshoreman on the West Coast, back when it took real work, even they don’t like the direction the union has gone in.
I hear a lot of bashing of the union in these posts, but not much about the ports failures to address staffing issues, claiming pay rates for employees that are fantasies, failing to address real safety concerns, and a whole host of other things. For the record I am not a port worker, or in a union or ever have been in one, from what I have heard in most labor disputes there are two sides and often incompetent over paid management is an issue as well.
Container crane operators make six-figure salaries, for what can be described as real-life, 3D Tetris. Sign me up!
Thoughtful words, Troy
I wonder what the ILWU ‘brothers’ of the Teamster’s Union think about this. Locomotive crews not being called to man the annulled intermodal trains; drayage and OTR drivers not needed to move containers… “Solidarity Forever”? Methinks not. Well, it is a good time to go skiing!
Coincidence? Sorry, Troy. New York has taken over the #1 spot for highest total taxes on gasoline. CA is relegated to #2. Sorry, Edward. CT remains #3. Why is this relevant? I think the mindset of the politicians, ‘kow-towing’ to the unionists, affects the resident’s opinions adversely.
Not much of a wait and then the wider Panama Canal opens and ships start going to East Coast ports and they start hiring and expanding. You never get an ILU strike to hit all the coasts at once. On top of that the new Mexican ports built by the Chinese will open and bypass the West Coast backups.
Don’t the dock workers get it that alternatives to West Coast ports are being developed as we speak? This just makes it easier to drop west coast as a port of call.