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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.
Fire them all. The hereditary sinecures longshoremen enjoy are intolerable. It's unskilled labor. There's an army of people who'll sign up to do it for half the pay.
Whoever does that would need to spend the rest of their life in something like a witness protection program, and probably their family too, maybe even out to cousins and so on. The incentives are not aligned to solve the problem.
I don't believe in surrendering civilizational order to thugs. If longshoremen come around and start to break kneecaps, shoot them until they are dead. It's worked in the past and will again. Violence is a deterrence to violence.
The government is on their side and has been since the foundation of the NLRB.
As we discussed below, the 5th Circuit is working on that problem.
Doesn't matter, the Robed 9 aren't going to allow anything radical. Roberts will always nerf it somehow. Only abortion was an exception.
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