Longshoreman strike
- Thread starter Spartans9312
- Start date
They turned down a 50% pay increase! Crane operators already make 200K.
When your job is one that is almost certainly going to be displaced by technology in the next 10 years or so, is the best strategy to use all your current leverage to get what you can while you can (knowing doing so may only serve to hasten that fate)…or to backpedal in an effort to delay it?
Honestly, if I’m this guy, I’m probably favoring the first option too. I doubt that any concessions they make would actually delay the transition. The incentives to make it are so large that nothing the stevies do or don’t do seems likely to have any effect.
Honestly, if I’m this guy, I’m probably favoring the first option too. I doubt that any concessions they make would actually delay the transition. The incentives to make it are so large that nothing the stevies do or don’t do seems likely to have any effect.
This kind of crap never happened under Trump’s watch!
I wonder how many people that guy has had anchored to the bottom of the ocean. Mercy. Sleeve of tats. Big gold chain. Sometimes you forget what men look like and sound like when you post on here. Board full of pencil necks and paper pushers
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What a piece of shit.
That guy have a standing invite to Auburn?
If I were President I would drag this asshole into a room and tell him to end the strike or I will make it my job to get funding in our next spending appropriation to upgrade our ports since his strike constitutes a national security threat.
Take the ****ing deal on the table or I help put half your workforce out of a job. And with all his threats, I would have the IRS crawling up his ass and have the FBI investigating for potential racketeering.
Hearing him talk about Covid times and his workers. Can you imagine the disconnect with that guy and stay at home Pete.
Sorry Harry. Had a tiff with my hubby this morning. I got his latte order wrong hahahaha. Maternity leave isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!!! Hahahaha.
With Biden not running again, he may actually have the political latitude to do something like this. The Teamsters letter would indicate some level of expectation of him intervening.
But Harris can't do this.
Use the IRS and FBI to threaten people? Have the President come down hard on one side of a labor negotiation between private parties?
No thanks.
Shouldn't this be covered in the hypocrite bastages thread?
Their real strike reason isn't over pay. They want in the contract that all automation is banned from the docks.
He can use the Taft-Hartley Act to order an 80 day cooling off period. Doing this would suspend the economic pressures until after the election. And while Kamala Harris would probably give him a huge hug for doing it, she could also distance herself from it to minimize the political impact to her.
Ah, the classic Luddite grievance. LOL...that's never going to happen. And, even if it somehow did, any company bound to that pledge would just be displaced by somebody else who isn't.
They're pissing in the wind here.
No no. It's apparently different when calling others hypocrites. You can't be one yourself while calling others a hypocrite. It's not possible.
I get their concerns but manual workers can't hold off against automation for much longer.
It's 2024. People need to develop skills in areas/fields where workers can't easily be replaced by automation and/or AI.
He's providing the sanitation, security, the Sinatra cover band...
His cousin's even providing the calzones.
Yeah, he's invited. 😄
Just read the strike will have a $4.5 billion a day impact on the US economy. Bad news for retail, construction, small businesses, etc.
Oh, it'll be devastating.
Most stoppages are akin to having a localized health issue in, say, your lower back. Shutting down the ports is akin to being strangled. And the ILU knows it.
I'd be pretty surprised if Biden doesn't invoke the TH cooling off period. The ILU's political leverage is considerably higher before the election than it is after the election.
Well, I just saw that Biden is saying he won't intervene -- because he "doesn't believe in Taft-Hartley" (which is kind of a bizarre thing for a POTUS to say...given his pledge to faithfully execute the laws, etc....not to mention the fact that Taft-Hartley also has some provisions that unions favor -- such as federal jurisdiction). But POTUS is under no obligation to invoke the cooling off period.
Should be interesting to see who blinks first in this. I still think it'll be Biden.
Taking this on a bit of a tangent:
We might be approaching an era of technology where that isn’t possible for a large part of our society.
~50% of our nation has an IQ of 100 or lower. Those people might not be able to develop skills that can’t be done be AI/robotics. What happens then?
I’m not saying we are there yet—but it isn’t inconceivable for this point to occur within the next 100 or so years.
Brings up an interesting question: do we start coming up with policies now to deal with such a risk, or wait until it happens (cf. climate policy). Are social/economic policies better developed with an eye towards the long game, or is it better to deal with them in the moment, when you know more but it might be too late?
Interesting. You should post more of these kinds of informative tweets...and fewer of the performative ones you usually post.
He is acting like a mobster (and there is a history there), I would be looking into him. And that wouldn't be a threat I share with him, I would want to know if he is dirty. If he is, he would go down.
These dickheads were offered a 50% pay increase and turned it down. Over $50 an hour in pay. If their labor strike shuts down commerce to the country, I believe it is the President's duty to get something done. And in the case of the negotiation, when they have already been offered a 50% pay increase, they are the ones being unreasonable. I would (metaphorically) bury him.
Ronald Reagan: Hold my...um...just a sec Nancy, what do I want them to hold again? Oh yeah, Hold my beer!
I deal with union leaders regularly. Not all of them are like this guy, but some of them are. As many things as they point fingers at for the collapse of unionization that's taken place over the past 50-60 years, the one that they almost never consider is themselves (or their predecessors).
I honestly don't think they understand the concept of Pyrrhic victories, losing by winning. If they do, it's an afterthought. Ultimately, they're mostly politicians who, like other politicians, are primarily driven by keeping their jobs...which is to say their own short-term interests, not their members' long-term interests.
You'd like to think the authorities would always be trying to guard against corruption...in unions, business, finance, politics and everywhere else it tends to thrive. If they only do it because of the strike, that's not a good thing.
As @twenty02 pointed out to me, pay isn't really their issue. They want a contract that prohibits the automation of the ports -- which is something they're not going to actually be able to stop.
As far as I know, there isn't all that much he can do beyond requiring an 80 day cooling off period. But, for now, he's saying he won't do that.
The PATCO strike was an illegal strike under Taft-Hartley. And it wasn't between two private parties. It was between the PATCO union and the FAA. That's why it was illegal and Reagan was empowered to fire them.
In retrospect, that was a very misguided strike. But I think they were convinced that it would so devastate the civil transportation sector that people would be so frustrated and force the Reagan Administration to give into their demands. It didn't work out that way for them.
And for all this it’s a potentially bad, bad look for Biden and, ultimately, Harris.
If this drags out - supplies dwindle, prices increase, medical items that can be critical post-Helene - then this can well approach “October Surprise” status.
And Trump is the king of the visual. Standing on the dock, cranes and mountains of containers behind him - “I will fix this!”
Are you advocating for more social net policies? I wonder how this all plays into the thought that we need more immigration in America, it clearly seems as if job will be or could be at a premium in the coming years so why flood the land with individuals if we are looking at a situation where many will be job less?
I could cut my staff by 1/3 tomorrow if we wanted just by putting our capital in AI and letting many go. I don't think it is the right thing to do, and thankfully neither does the Executive team but the option is out there. I often think, if corporate taxes are raised would it give corporations more incentive to look to AI to offset the increase and depreciate the cost to save on payroll while also showing a lower profit?
“I’ve been dealing with these guys for 50 years. I know how they operate. Harris. She wants to talk to HR about Dei while we can’t get our food and meds”
Yeah, it has the potential to create a helluva political problem for Kamala Harris. But the good news for her is that she's not POTUS. Biden may have to make a tough decision -- he's in a no-win situation. But, since she doesn't have to make the decision, she's free to be ambiguous (and she's proven to be an expert at that) and appear to take both sides at once.
But this assumes that it drags on for a period of time. Hopefully it won't. We haven't had such a major port strike in almost 50 years.
I'm not advocating anything right now. Just pointing out things humanity is going to need to consider in a future that might be closer than we recognize.
My post was a joke and I am aware of the differences in the two scenarios.
Heck, as a DM I hired a guy in the late 90's who was one of the fired air traffic controllers. To say his life went downhill from there would be an understatement. He hadn't worked since then but had to get back into the workforce due to family health concerns. The manager had reservations as the guy seemed a mess and compounding that he was grossly overqualified for the position. But I called him back to talk with him and in the first few minutes I knew I was hiring him. Literally, the guy was one of the best hires I ever made. We would talk now and again about that strike and it's effects on his career, and you would think he would harbor ill will over it, but he didn't for either side.
Wow, if I knew how much they paid I would have practiced a lot more on the Claw Machine.
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