Posted on 02/08/2015 12:57:56 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced that loading and unloading operations at all 29 West Coast ports would temporarily be suspended this weekend in response to union slowdowns that brought freight movements at the ports to a near standstill.
PMA members stated that they cannot afford the almost $1,200 per day cost to employ International Longshore and Warehouse Union members to do little work.
After Breitbart broke the story on Thursday that union members of the ILWU planned to “walk out within the week,” the PMA employer group announced they can no longer continue to pay workers the premium pay for diminished productivity.
With ILWU members continuing to withhold the needed crane operators and slow crane movements, shippers and their customers estimated they were losing $1 billion a day. But a complete shut-down is expected to raise the U.S. economic pain to $2 billion a day....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
There is a market in the USA for diesel engines....
Those products can be sold domestically. So don't give me that BS.
Wait, what manufactured goods are waiting to be exported? Another poster pointed out that most of OUR exports are agricultural, bubba. Our people cant buy anything cuz they lost their manufacturing jobs to the Chinese you guys are so in luv with!!!
Nice try, but....strawman argument.
And as far as Cummins 5L V8 engines headed to Nissan? Dont worry bout them either slick...Cummins packs them with dessicants, nothing’s gonna rust. Another cheap strawman...
Wanna know what WE really do export in manufactured goods? They’re called airplanes. Boeing has a 440 billion backlog, and I believe are still the single largest exporter. And know what? The planes fly themselves to the buyers. Cool, huh? That’s how a First World industry works.
BTW, Cummins is trying to move as much production as they can to Mexico. You must know that. The engines will come North on Mexican trucks, driven by homicidal Mexican truckers courtesy of NAFTA and Obammy! if you haven’t played chicken with a KW running with no lights at night, soon you’ll have that opportunity!
Yes, and it’s saturated; again, people are holding off on purchases because of the Obam-economy. Every one of the big diesel engine makers has lots of excess capacity right now, and Cummins finally landed a nice big export order... that it can’t fulfill because of idiot union dock workers.
Who do you think Nissan’s going to call the next time they need diesel engines for their new Titans being built here? Cummins, who couldn’t deliver to their more important (to Nissan) Japanese commercial truck assembly line? Or are they more likely to call their UD Diesel subsidiary, who has operations in Mexico?
The idiot dock workers aren’t just ‘blocking crap from China’ but also screwing over many, many US companies who have made the sacrifices to keep production work in the US. Every day they screw with ship movements is another day for US manufacturers to think, “Well, we tried, might as well just move overseas.” So, yeah, keep cheering on the dock workers. Never mind the good US jobs that those dock workers are destroying. They couldn’t be as important, right?
What!? The diesel market here is saturated?! Guess they won’t be selling all those Titans here, just to folks in Japan...where no one buys pickups?
Yer arguments are nuts!!!
Hey bubba...buy a Ram with a Cummins. They’re great! Lot better then the 1970s when I worked for GM trucks!
Wait - so we don’t import any diesel engines? A port closing works both ways. No diesel engines in to the USA equals higher demand for domestically made engines.
No, he pointed out that most of the exports from *one specific port* are agricultural, not that all of them are.
YOU are the one posting strawmen. Aircraft aren’t even in the top 3 for the US.
From 2013, the last year we have full data for, here are America’s top five exports:
1 . Machinery, engines: $213,108,199,000 (13.5% of total exports)
2. Electronic equipment: $165,604,449,000 (10.5%)
3. Mineral fuels including oil: $148,426,743,000 (9.4%)
4. Vehicles excluding trains and streetcars: $133,640,479,000 (8.5%)
5. Aircraft and spacecraft: $115,380,944,000 (7.3%)
And yes, those dessicants are nice and all, but they don’t permanently prevent rust. They’re meant to last long enough to get to their destination and be installed. So, yes, they ARE sitting on a dock, exposed to nice corrosive salt sea air, slowly rusting.
Facts are a bitch, aren’t they?
Almost all the diesel engines we import are in finished vehicles. Most of those come from Mexico or Europe so they come in on East Coast or Gulf ports and are therefore unaffected. No increase in domestic market opportunities for diesel engines is going to be happening because of these union blockheads.
Oh, by the way, want to know what our top export to Japan is? It’s not food. It’s not ‘menially produced third world goods.’
Read the list for yourself. Notice all the US industry that is getting screwed over by these dockworkers:
1. Medical, technical equipment: $8 billion
2. Aircraft, spacecraft: $7.1 billion
3. Machines, engines, pumps: $5.8 billion
4. Electronic equipment: $4.9 billion
5. Meat: $3.3 billion
6. Pharmaceuticals: $3.3 billion
7. Cereals: $3.1 billion
8. Oil: $2.6 billion
9. Organic chemicals: $2.2 billion
10. Plastics: $1.9 billion
Read the list for yourself. Notice all the US industry that is getting screwed over by these dockworkers: 1. Medical, technical equipment: $8 billion 2. Aircraft, spacecraft: $7.1 billion 3. Machines, engines, pumps: $5.8 billion 4. Electronic equipment: $4.9 billion 5. Meat: $3.3 billion 6. Pharmaceuticals: $3.3 billion 7. Cereals: $3.1 billion 8. Oil: $2.6 billion 9. Organic chemicals: $2.2 billion 10. Plastics: $1.9 billion
Well if those things were not exported then that should drive down the cost of those domestically. A good thing.
The diesel engine market is saturated, yes. There isn’t really any expansion room and orders are pretty much fixed with little growth.
Oh, yeah, guess someone forgot to tell you, the Ram is only made in Mexico now, along with the Cummins engine. GM is using US-built copies of Isuzu engines in their Canada-built trucks, by the way. If you want a US made diesel, you’re down to Ford or Nissan.
Really? We do not make TV, screens in the USA anymore. I wonder what is in this category.
Which would make sense if the industries continued to produce the same amount. Instead they will decrease production, fire US workers, and idle plants instead of producing for export. So, how many of your fellow Americans do you want to put out of work, hm?
Among other things? While we don’t make cell phones, we *do* make all the stuff that makes cell phones work - the tower top antenna units, the base station radios, the switching gear, the list goes on and on.
We don’t make *consumer* electronics any more, no. Infrastructure/backoffice electronics, the stuff Joe Consumer never sees? Oh hell yes.
There’s lots more besides consumer stuff. Think medical, military, equipment controls for ag, mining and petroleum, commercial printers, software, etc. Lots of high end stuff is still American-made.
Good for them!
Note I said “and I believe...” because I have no interest in tracking it year to year. Wasn’t that long ago that Boeing itself constituted 50% of exports. Maybe not in 2014, but maybe again in the future when they really have to start delivering on this INCREDIBLE backlog!!
And you were the one who brought up the silly “they’re all gonna rust” arguments. Undoubtedly they knew about this issue - it’s been going since early 2014 - and made contingency plans if they thought there was going to be a problem. Tell us your INSIDE information at Cummins, bubba!!
I sold more Cummins engines then you’ve probably ever seen and that was 35 years ago!!
Once again, reading things that are not there. I’m saying that there *are* Cummins engines sitting languishing at dockside because of this, not that all of them are. Last I heard (I do contract IT work with a Cummins partner in Texas, shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who) they’re looking at rerouting the remaining Japan contract engines to Mexico to be shipped out that way. Oh, and the US plant that was going to be saved by making those new 5.0s? Yeah, they’re apparently having second thoughts about that too - the idiot union dock workers are now quite nicely making the case to just consolidate production of the 5.0 down in Mexico with the 6.7 that’s already being made down there for Dodge. More American jobs gone in that case - happy now?
Anyone paying attention would have contingency plans.
Navistar recently got screwed by something that they should have seen coming from the government as well. Doesn’t mean they had a plan. See the Maxxforce emissions engine debacle for more info on that.
Further, whether the US company had a contingency plan or not doesn’t matter if the buyer specifies what is to be done as part of the contract and leaves no alternative. Nissan, for starters, is notorious for demanding that stuff heading back to Japan be delivered to the port of Los Angeles so their car carriers can go back in something other than ballast.
Anytime the Scum at PMA want to come to an agreement with the ILWU they can offload their crapware. If the racists at COSCO want to pay what American workers need then no problems. Absent that, they can paddle their Junks right back to China.
Maybe you can get an IT job with them, Bubba! I'm sure the State owned national flag carrier is just DESPERATE to hire you as soon as you can immigrate to the Vibrant Hub known as Shanghai!
Oh wait...you can't. They don't take immigrants, especially if you're um..Caucasian.
Tell ya what, get some surgery on the eyes, use a little skin color cream, change yer name to Wu Chang Spike, and who knows! They may take to ya!
Good Luck! Once yer there, you can blame all those Evil Union Guys back in the Poor Ol' USA who just didn't learn who their Masters were.
I’d have a lot more respect for the union workers if they refused to offload ships but were still perfectly willing to load American goods heading out, so as to preserve their brothers’ (union and otherwise) jobs in the Obaminated economy we currently have. But no, all they’re going to do is screw everyone to feather their own nests. They’re already ridiculously highly paid for what little work they do.
As for my employment prospects... not a problem for me. I happen to speak about eight languages and have gotten contracts all over the globe. I’m not Caucasian either though I was born right here in the States at a MCAS.
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