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Notes -
Automation is coming for our jobs, old economy edition:
On Tuesday, the 45,000 or so longshoremen who work at the East Coast ports of the United States will go on strike. Or, at least, there's an 89% of this happening according to Polymarket.
This is a bit of an interesting development for a few reasons.
Though blue collar, these longshoreman are extremely well paid. With overtime, 1/3rd of the union members earn over $200k per year.
The demands of the union are also pretty strident. They are seeking an increase of 80% over 6 years.
Furthermore, the union is demanding that no further automation happens at the port. Obviously, the ports hate this since. They are incredibly inefficient compared to European and Chinese ports.
These ports handle 60% of the goods coming into the United States. Even a 2 week shutdown will snarl supply chains into 2025. Shipping prices, already elevated due to the Red Sea shutdown, will soar to levels never seen. Anything too bulky to fly in will see shortages.
This is all before an election season. The Biden administration could in theory wield the Taft-Hartley Act to break the strike, much like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. But breaking a union, even a very well-paid one, is not a great look right before the election.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. As of right now, the union and the ports couldn't be further apart.
My guess is the ports get bent over after a week or so and the costs get passed on to the consumer. The Biden admin will probably force both sides to come to the table. I've heard "we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way" has worked recently. They might ask the union to push this until after the election. The union would be foolish to accept that right now since their leverage will never be higher.
Where are you getting this from? Per an NPR article, the current top rate is $39/hour. With time and a half and regular double time on Sundays and Holidays you'd have to average 70–80 hours per week to hit 200k. While I'm sure there are some guys who can keep up with such a schedule for a full year, even the most hardened blue-collar guys I know can't work that much. And the way they talk about the guys who do, they're the ones who end up dying of heart attacks three weeks after retiring.
Biden has already said that he won't invoke Taft-Hartley, and that he's encouraging the sides to reach a resolution. This is the correct move from a political perspective; he can't force a contract upon management, so Taft-Hartley is the only card he has to play other than (possibly) mediator. Republicans have been trying to court unions in recent years (and have been pretty successful among the rank and file), but most of them still harbor many of the sentiments expressed downthread. Hell, even Trump complimented Elon Musk on his supposed union-busting tactics. If there is a strike it will take a hell of a lot of restraint for Trump, or any other Republican, to blame Biden for not sending them back to work. Putting this fornt and center within a month of the election isn't a good look.
Of course, I don't think Trump is stupid enough to make that kind of error. More than likely he does his usual schtick where he invokes his self-ordained status of Master Negotiator and says that if he were president then this strike wouldn't have happened because he would have been able to mediate an agreement. At which point Kamala Harris informs him that if he's so great at it then he could end the strike immediately be leaving the campaign trail to mediate a deal. There is, of course, zero chance that Trump actually does this, and if he tries, there's little chance that he'd be able to do anything (if the parties involved even let him get near the dispute), at which point he has to move on to do something else. But my guess is that no one will make a big deal about this.
I used Perplexity, although some of their source data may behind paywalls. The numbers jive with other sources I have seen on Twitter, which have asserted median wages above 150k, with foremen making up to half a mil.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-much-do-ila-east-coast-lon-VkXsWI_qRN..SODTx.9QUg
As Biden himself knows, "encouraging" can take many forms. His admin honestly doesn't give a care for the Constitution, so they might just executive order a resolution, and then let the legal system throw it out in 24 months. The election is in 5 weeks.
But I'll confess I don't know what will happen. My heuristics are this:
The sides seems really far apart
But, it's a political football. The uniparty will do what it takes to resolve this in a way favorable to Kamala's election chances.
#1 and #2 seem at odds with each other. So the most elegant solution is delay tactics, therefore I think delay is the most likely. Possibly there will be a symbolic strike for a day or two. Low confidence all around.
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