Enough is enough on West Coast port labor dispute

Press Telegram ^ | 1-25-2015 | The Los Angeles News Group Editorial Board, Long Beach Press Telegram

[Citizen Zed]

West Coast dockworkers and their employers need to stop holding the economy hostage and sign a labor contract.

Escalating the dispute with slowdowns is causing pain far from the docks, where an estimated $500 billion of cargo is handled annually between the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

The fallout from the severe congestion is reverberating across the United States.

Retailers, meat exporters ... the list of businesses suffering losses due to the backlog at the port goes on and on.

There are tens of thousands of peoples’ lives directly touched by the dispute but most people have no clue what the hold up is about.

Dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports have been without a contract since July.

Both sides say many of the basic contract issues like pay and health coverage have been worked out.

What’s at issue is the trailers — known in the transportation world as chassis — that trucks haul the cargo containers with.

For decades, shipping companies owned and maintained these truck beds, but when the economy soured during the financial crisis, they moved to get out of the business.

Those truck beds went into private hands and it came just as the shipping industry was simultaneously rolling out jumbo-sized carriers that packed about 25 percent more cargo on board.

More cargo was coming on the docks and the truck beds were no longer in the hands of the shippers.

Fast forward to the labor dispute.

Right now, the companies that lease out the trailers keep their maintenance at the terminal and are mostly contracting with dockworkers to fix their fleet.

Those are jobs that dockworkers represented by the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union don’t want to lose and as long as they are at the port, they likely will remain in their hands.

[Citizen Zed]

What would Reagan do?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” ― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_West_Coast_waterfront_strike

[MinnesotaLibertarian]

There are tens of thousands of peoples’ lives directly touched by the dispute but most people have no clue what the hold up is about.

Make sure they find out. Union thugs generally receive little sympathy once exposed.

[drypowder]

there are plenty of unemployed to take those port jobs if obozo would just fire them. Since obozo is pro union I’m sure he has a tingle up leg over this. Reality: No union SOB should ever be able to hold this country hostage like what is going on here.