mmmmmkay....care to elaborate?
This piece published, by the way, Wednesday, October 2002. "The six-figure clerks who chart the inflow and outflow of the trucks in the containers frequently by hand say they'll be happy to use these new gizmos, but only if the bar code jobs are unionized," and that's what the fight was over," and I am sure that that's what the concern is here. You say, "What's this God to do with the UAE port deal, Rush? Stick to the issues!" I'm getting there, folks, stick with me. Realize I never get lost in this program. I never lose my train of thought. I never forget what I'm going to say. I always stay on track.
There is no doubt that the concern in these six ports is -- that longshoremen have --0 is exactly over the same thing. We have, I shared with you a story today from the New York Sun about how the United Arab Emirates port company is modernizing and streamlining all of its ports around the world. I told you that the number two -- I say number one port operator -- in the world is owned out of Hong Kong, and they don't want to buy the six ports in question here because they don't want to deal with the union regulations. I doubt that anything is going to change, and I've been saying that all week. But I can understand their fear that things might change, and so that's why they're donating heavily all these years to protect their jobs. That's what the union people do.
So we're faced with the age-old problem of how do we modernize and advance technologically without putting a whole bunch of people out of work. And so there has to be obviously thought attached to all of this. What always happens, I mean I hate to tell you something, but during the NAFTA debate, you know, all we heard about was the Singer sewing machine plant up in New Hampshire, you know, and how people would be put out of jobs. But, you know, economics is what it is -- and the global market is what it is. It can't go back with a wall around the country and pretend that this global economy, interlinked economic dependence is not happening.
You can't turn back the hands of time on things like this. I actually think this. I was telling my staff here during the break, "What I fully expect to happen is if the UAE deal does go through, after all of this tsunami and all the bad PR, the UAE people are going to bend over backwards to show they have no intention of causing anybody here any harm, and they'll probably hire more longshoremen and they'll say, 'Just sit on the dock. You're on permanent break, and we're going to pay you whatever you get paid for it. We're going to increase the number of longshoremen,' and they'll do this for a while just as a PR issue." I know some of you are saying, "What's the difference between a permanent break and a regular job?" Don't make that joke, folks.
"mmmmmkay....care to elaborate?"
Sure... few here want to hear it though.
Most see:
Union=bad
End of story. That's the case recently, but not always the case. Unions came about because they were needed. Company store and all that. The relationship between American workers and management is unneccessarily adversarial. No one wins in that case. But that's how it is, and the balance of power swings like a pendulum.
Eliminate unions, and companies will abuse workers. Doubt me? How does Nike manufacutre tennis shoes in Indonesia?
Ideally a union would be a value add. It would negotiate, and guarantee performance. Modern unions are extortionists.
But if we could abolish unions today, there would be a need for them tomorrow.