Today is the deadline for the ports and the port workers to reach an agreement. Does anyone think this is going to happen or will they be headed to Washington? I guess that's a pretty good threat, "Get it together or you'll have to come be bored to death."
I really hope it does. The ships are stacked up like Legos.
Hopefully so. The worst thing that could happen is that they lose their jobs and they get replaced like President Reagan did to the air traffic control personnel. I wouldn't think President Obama would go to that extreme though.
That kind of
en masse replacement would be extremely difficult, especially when it comes to shipping unions. Reagan pulled it off because the job still paid high enough that there were more people with the proper education level seeking employment than there were positions - and air traffic then wasn't anywhere near as severe as it is today.
But dock workers are among the strongest unions, for a variety of reasons. I once lived in Florida, a "right-to-work" state where unions are prohibited from making contracts requiring all workers to be in the union. Despite that, the Miami docks were still solidly union-organized - I can't think of another union in the state when I lived there ('89-'90) that wielded anywhere near that kind of power. I have a job now that is unionized, here in New York - the same job in Florida is non-union, pays about half my salary and has practically no benefits whereas my union has a lot of benefits, some that people haven't even heard of. (Example - my union has a law firm on retainer to help members, free of charge, with certain legal issues like minor arrests, property purchases, divorces, wills, etc. I've NEVER seen another entry-level job have a benefit that even resembled that.)