by Cornpop Sutton 
, A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Saturday, September 21, 2024, 21:42 (308 days ago)
In the "another major story that the media won't cover" department:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5O4oWVgObc
Fun!
They'll be covering this soon. Here's what we can expect. Lets hope it doesn't happen.
https://rumble.com/v5g9f22-what-happens-if-u.s.-seaports-shut-down-in-october.html?e9s=src_v1_upp
by Cornpop Sutton , A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Saturday, September 28, 2024, 16:35 (302 days ago) @ JoFrance
edited by Cornpop Sutton, Saturday, September 28, 2024, 16:39
The administration doesn't want to force workers back to work (Taft-Hawley) apparently because it gives the Democratic image of being pro-labor a huge black eye. But if they don't do anything the economy goes down the shithole.
So "Biden" in quotes has to pick from two alternatives either of which will displease someone.
The dockworkers have a point: they enable huge shipping profits with a lot of personal sacrifice. But they resist automation which is non competitive for shippers.
No matter what is done to help the situation - let it play out w/o action, or invoking the law to break the strike for 80 days - it will make the present administration look horrible and/or do-nothing. Biden and Harris will be associated with visually obvious chaos.
Trump wins here. He can basically say anything to critique the situation. That whatever the administration does he will claim that he could have prevented an economic disaster while not busting the union. It doesn't matter, he just has to carp and take the moral high ground and lay out a strawman case that favors him.
That's mendacity of course but at this point they've tried 3X to kill him, so whatever works.
The dockworkers have a point: they enable huge shipping profits with a lot of personal sacrifice. But they resist automation which is non competitive for shippers.
This is bullshit. They earn way above-market wages due to their ability to hold the rest of the economy hostage. Their job can be automated using modern tools and the docks can operate safely with a fraction of the workers they have now.
The union is insisting on a ban on automation at the docks, as a way of job security. If automation was in place, they would have no leverage in a strike as they would be unneeded.
They should pull a Reagan and break the union like with the air traffic controllers.
by Cornpop Sutton , A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Tuesday, October 01, 2024, 03:03 (299 days ago) @ FSK
I meant that the jobs seem to be hard physical jobs. Or are they?
The ILA president talks like a mobster - "we'll bury the US economy." Now that he's announced his intentions, the race to fully automate the ports will begin.
You can't fight technology.
The dockwoker's union used to be a lot of people and thus had a lot of influence. Due to automation, it's now a small group of people earning way above-market salaries. As automation increased, the union negotiated for better salaries in exchange for decreasing the number of workers. They're able to keep their high salaries and benefits by holding the rest of the economy hostage during a strike.
Trump should pull a page from the Reagan playbook. Break the union, hire replacements, like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. Trump isn't President right now, so he can't do this.
by Cornpop Sutton , A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Saturday, September 28, 2024, 20:02 (301 days ago) @ FSK
edited by Cornpop Sutton, Saturday, September 28, 2024, 20:10
On the one negative side, breaking a union is politically unfavorable these days. Unions have gained back some political power. It seemed to matter some, for instance, that the Teamsters rank and file likes Trump.
But agreed 100% about the value proposition of longshoremen. It is steeply declining with AI and automation and like every union before them they are in denial that they're noncompetitive. The president of that union talks exactly like a gangster. They're ripe for a come-uppance.
I looked it up a little more. There's a clause in the longshoremen's union that forbids certain uses of automation, as a form of job security. Nowadays, it's possible to make the entire port nearly 100% automated. Those shipping containers can't be lifted by hand anyway, they have to use a crane.
If I was representing the employer, I would make a "no layoffs until retirement" promise to the union in exchange for allowing automation. In the long run, it's cheaper to use automation and just pay off the workers for the rest of their lives.
by Cornpop Sutton , A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Sunday, September 29, 2024, 01:14 (301 days ago) @ FSK
The longshoremen that is. They're basically screaming "we WANT to be obsolete and expensive".
Pure denial. I like the Reagan approach to this more and more. Or rolling them off into retirement.
Altho air traffic controllers were federal employees which made the Reagan approach easy. It appears that dock workers are employed by a variety of entities, none of them federal.
The strike is over......at least until January.
by Cornpop Sutton , A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Thursday, October 03, 2024, 23:42 (296 days ago) @ IT guy
ILA - International Luddite Association.
That ILA union president Harold Daggett is a fucking circus freak. I hope he gets interviewed on TV on camera. He would be entertaining to watch. Kind of an exaggerated Jimmy Hoffa mentality.
He probably kicks dogs and then pours battery acid on them.