Just need to vent...

'Economic Doom?'

Yeah.
Right.....

I guess a 50% pay increase wasn't enough for the ILA......


(Disclosure)
I was recently victimized by my labour union who went on a 30-day strike for a 19% over 5 year pay increase - or about what inflation has cost the average worker over the last 3-4 years.
No.
I did not cross the picket line - UNLIKE many of the dues-paying members.
We're still working without a contract under a tentative, non-ratified agreement.

The dockworkers strike means, of course, that the 75% pay increase that the ILA is demanding is either unarmed robbery by already VERY highly paid employees..........or folks just trying to keep up with the debilitating effects of inflation.

Your call.

What do ILA members make?
What is Taft-Hartley?
Who signs the ILA member's checks?



-things that make you go HMMMMM.....

 

Who wouldn't want a 50% - 70% raise in pay. Look at the bright side. It will only feel like a 10% - 20% pay increase to them - after the cost of goods skyrockets - costs passed on for all the goodies coming through the ports.
LOL
History repeats itself. This latest form of piracy not to dissimilar from the days of old, along the Barbary Coast - where anyone from the USA entering the Mediterranean had to pay, or else.
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At age 74, I've noticed how many of my peers who did a lot of manual labor in their work seem to suffer infirmities in old age. The back pain, limping, and other afflictions of a hard life. The resolution I would like to see:

• Wages tied to productivity and profitability
  • Solves the automation demand as that is how higher wages can be paid for.

Regardless, about 1/3d of my monthly retirement income comes from pensions the unions demanded. About 2/3d comes from Social Security. Then I've got my "mad money" stock.

Bob Wilson

 

I take that as that you've never been to a US port and are unfamiliar with *what is reported to be* ILA wages and (more importantly!) their working conditions.
Fine.
I actually have some familiarity with this since one of the US Navy's NECC missions is port security.

So....
If we presume that ILA workers are in the $20-$40 per hour range for a standard 5-tier union wage scale ($40k-$80k) their base would increase to about $140,000 under the 50% pay raise over six years that they recently snubbed.

Keyword:
Base.
Apply my (unionized) base to net ratio (2:3?) and you would see an average ILA worker making - what?
200k?
All for relatively unskilled, and surprising non-labour intensive work - and I say this as a telecommunications worker whose work is perhaps a little more skilled (a bright 8th grader could easily do it) and also a little less labor intensive (12' ladders but no stacks of Conex boxes.)

This will be a relatively short labour action once the folks in DC 'do the math.'
Hint:
Ports are sometimes operated by private entities but as we learned in Baltimore a few months ago they are owned by dot.gov.
The CHICOMMs do not have this problem, because.......they do not suck at math.

LASTLY:
The owner's manual for humans states that our life expectancy is 'four score and ten.'
Retirement norms for most people who have to rely on so-called Social Security is 65-67 - because machines wear out.

People in their 60's cannot be expected to perform manual labour as efficiently as some kid in their 30s.
I've always told my CFO that you can pretty much determine a military retiree's former job by watching them walk.
People who were out on the sharp end of the stick and folks with low ASVAB scores move a little differently.
HOWEVER (comma!!!)
People who polished seats with their backsides for the 40-50 years of their working years ALSO have medical (AND MENTAL!!!) infirmities.

So....
65-70 is probably a good range for so-called Social Security.
That means what it means.....

 

Protection from automation. It's a weird concept. A memory from traveling the sites in & around Mexico City during the mid 1980s, I watched several acres of mostly tourist open spaces being swept with a hand broom by one person. The advent of ride-on sweeper vac's was well on its way by then. Yet there he was. It was definitely a what the heck moment.
.

 

President Reagan handled a very similar situation concerning Air Traffic Controllers with ease.

While not Federal Employees-Longshoremen work does affect nationally security and our country's health - reference Taft-Hartley.

When is the last time you heard of labor problems with Air Traffic Controllers.

If you want to solve the Post Office economic problems in one day- decertify the Postal Workers Union and all the problems would be gone with this group - the Post Office could finally get on the path to stability and profitability to stand on its own two feet economically.

 

Note that longshoremen on the west coast are currently paid more.

 

Can't that be accounted for by the hideously high cost of living on the west coast - near the docks? A one bdrm apartment averaging over $2,700 ?
Cost of Living in San Francisco, CA [2024]

That doesn't even account for higher sales tax & lots of baby wipes to get the poo off of your shoes - walking around the surrounding area

Snapcrap app aims to provide exposure to San Francisco's public poop problem - Los Angeles Times

.

 

NYC and New Jersey aren't exactly cheap places to live. The by far busiest East Coast port is there.

East makes $39/hr after 6 years on the job(the $81k amount). West goes to $55/hr.

edit: The West signed a new contract last year, so that $55 will be increasing by $2/hr for 5 years. They were also against automation. The Canadian branch also went on strike.

 

Any union in America that is so large they have the power to cripple the nation needs to be dismantled or broken apart into smaller unions.

And, FWIW, putting your Union boss out in public to argue for your demands is an okay idea BUT their President is paid $900,000 a year, drives a Bentley, and pictures of his ginormous estate in New Jersey, with a 5-car garage, are all over the internet...probably not a good look!

And, now, FEMA is saying they are broke after spending almost a BILLION on illegal immigrants so don't expect them to do much to help the millions of AMERICANS effected by the hurricane. (But they are really good at preventing people from flying drones in there to record the dead bodies that are in trees.)

 

The Donkeys made a very rare......mistake(?) in letting the former President near a microphone and he took Taft-Hartley off the table - at least for now. I don't know if somebody in the food chain is trying to pressure Harris into something or they just reverted to type and backed the ILA's play.
I wouldn't put it past the Mumbler-in-Chief to still be a little salty after the palace coup - but it is a little beyond his current and drastically diminished mental capacity to see where his would-be successor, the ILA strike, and the economy lie in one of her Venn diagrams.

Unusually, I went to a Navy Commissary two times during the last two days - and I saw stocked shelves yesterday somewhat depleted today and freshly posted and large signs with strict limits on dog food......paper towels......and (you guessed it!!!) toilet paper.
Fun times ahead.

The left coast unions are run by Commies.
The ones on the east coast are still operated by the mob.

They're doing a heckuva job!!
One does not need to watch a political debate to see in-your-face media bias -eh?

Good Thing NC isn't a battleground state.....

 

he - AND JFK could both make the media look like they were leading with their chins.
LOVED it.

That's another vent, in & of itself. WHY on earth people can't stockpile a few extras. Even if it's just a few more cans of soup ... extra band-aids, TP & a few extra boxes of oatmeal. It's a start.
.

 

The chili looks delicious.

 

look at you !! You da Man!
now ... if only a few million more in North America would let you lead by example


now if i could only stop the better ½ from prepping like she was getting ready for the zombie apocalypse ....



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Isn't a big portion of their problem, a result of putting them on different pension plan accounting rules than any other entity in the U.S.?

 

Like railroad union retirements

 

Fake news. CONGRESS appropriates separate monies to FEMA's Shelter and Services Program (SSP) to provide funding to non-federal agencies to spend on humanitarian services for non-U.S. citizens; and to the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), which mostly covers costs for previously declared domestic disasters. For the fiscal year just ended Monday, SSP used $640 million. I don't yet see just how much DRF spent that same period, just that is was recently $2 billion short of needs, and FEMA is asking for $22.7 Billion for DRF for the new fiscal year. But Congress completely left it out of last week's continuing budget resolution. Did Mike Johnson say why?

Don't you remember when P45 'stole' a quarter billion from DRF to fund his pet border projects back in 2019? Don't you remember when ex-P45 torpedoed the bipartisan border & immigration agreement several months ago so that he could use it as an election issue now? He'd rather use it as an election club than to really solve it.

And now we learn that P45 initially refused disaster aid for Orange & Riverside County California wildfires in 2018, relenting only after learning that there were more registered Republican than Democrat voters in Orange county. So when His Pettiness falsely complains about Grandpa Joe not providing hurricane aid to GOP counties, he is just projecting his own behavior.

Trump approved California wildfire aid in 2018 only after reviewing Orange County voter data, former official says

 

Speaking as one of the harshest critics of labour unions in this forum, MOST of the USPS's problems are not on the labor side of the ledger.
The USPS is one of the few entities on the planet that actually loses a little money on each transaction but tries to make up for it in volume.

I actually get it.
They do not 'get' to deliver to every rock and rill in the US - they HAVE to.
In other words......they're infrastructurally significant.

.....for now.
Just like phones USED to be.

That means what it means.

When I left active duty back for the first time back in '92 just getting a job in the USPS was like winning the lottery.
There was a point-driven veteran preference system, but unless you had some hearts and stars in your resume, or you were demographically interesting, you didn't stand much of a chance.
I went on to win another lottery with Big Phone - but that's another story with pretty much the same ending.

Employers do not suck at math - at least not the ones who have to live on their profits.

It's still a good deal to work for the USPS, but not nearly like it used to be, because as mentioned above your bennies are radically different than they used to be under the old system.
If you're a new hire you're gonna bust your backside and gain some experience and then (if you're smart and hungry) you're either going to be driving for Brown or FedEx or you're going to be a manager - or you will leverage your earnings into getting ejumacated and launch into another career.

In other words - TODAY working for the USPS isn't like winning the lottery.
It's like getting a job.

20 years from now dock workers, won't be.
Containerized shipping means that everything from the wet side to the road side will be automated.

Sorta like MY industry.

I fix phones for a living.
Anybody out there still have a phone?
It's called Progress for a reason.....

 

Not everything in the phone industry can be automated. Someone still has to load the LMR 600 or 900 onto the truck, maintain the UPS & someone has to be the tower monkey - or strap into the bosun's chair.

is it? The oldest trick in the book on BOTH sides is to make yourself look like you're a problem solver by sponsoring a bill that has all kinds of garbage attached to it. The other side refuses to support it & you look like the hero.

are there no dems in Congress?
haven't both sides used executive orders to bypass our constipated Congress?
when was the border wall Construction halted?