Big strides down a short pier?

The strike by the International Longshoremen's Association looms like Armageddon's mushroom cloud. Let's clear the air.

Harold J. Daggett Jr., the union's president, is in the pole position to make the global economy his plaything. But he isn't playing. He means business. Every day his East Coast and Gulf Coast members withdraw their labor, the U.S. economy will take a $5 billion hit. It won't be pretty. The damage will be exponential. It will take an estimated four to six days to clear up one strike day’s backlog.

But he is not holding the country ransom. The other side is. The union's constitution does not require authorization for him to call a strike. The national ILA hasn't gone on strike since the year Elvis and Groucho Marx died.

President Biden has a classic Hobson's Choice. He can easily halt a strike by invoking the Taft-Hartley Act, but not without incurring the wrath of unions nationwide and losing credibility as the self-hyped most pro-union president in history. 

“Voters aren't going to like living in a country kneecapped by a dockworker strike,” notes Axios. Longshoremen have good and when taunted, unforgiving memories and the presidential election is likely to be a squeaker. It would be foolhardy to call the union's bluff, because they don't bluff. Would they be cutting off their noses to spite their faces, if they abandon the Democrats.

People do it all the time. Lamentable chapters of history prove it.

The United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board requesting "immediate injunctive relief.” They did so a few days before the expiration of the current contract, which they knew all along would be the strike date in the absence of a settlement.

It's the workers who deserve relief. Although the USMX earns and exports billions of dollars from American ports, they are inveterate stiffs when it comes to justly compensating the rank and file. Based on a 40-hour workweek, the East Coast and Gulf Coast workers are paid around $34,000 annually less, and $16 an hour less, than West Coast port workers.

Even an abbreviated strike would be a heart attack to the supply chain. Auto, pharmaceutical and construction industries would be first affected, and truck drivers and warehouse and factory workers would be immediately impacted. The limbs of commerce will be paralyzed.

Our railway system is insufficient to take up the slack and the West Coast could not make up the difference. Nearly half of the incoming and outgoing U.S. cargo is processed in three dozen ports. Even if we're not already living in a "banana republic,” we may soon have no bananas left and shortly thereafter, no republic either.

Harold Daggett Jr. was born in West Greenwich Village and grew up in Woodside, Queens. He is neither the first nor will he be the last over several generations in his family to prominently serve within the ILA. He fights hard, especially against job-killing automations, which is literal dehumanization of the workforce, and strengthened ties to workers councils around the world.

Union-phobic , conspiratorial racketeers in the "right-to-work" camp have smeared the ILA with charges of "dirty tactics," unwholesome relationships and unsavory control of jobs. Such avowals are a familiar default tactic of worker-busting gangs. Anything to shift focus from the task at hand: negotiating a contract.

Politico notes that Daggett's compensation package is much more than that of his counterparts at the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers, for example. He's still in the poorhouse compared to most corporate CEOs, including those who have run their companies aground. At present rates of pay, it would take almost a half-century for Daggett to catch up with what Boeing's CEO pulls down annually.

The recently expired ILA contract was in effect for six years. As all sentient Americans know, inflation has catapulted the cost of living over the rainbow of untenability. Creditors demand to be paid regardless of workers' no-fault inability to do so.

According to the Associated Press, Maersk, just one major container shipping company, "made more than $50 billion in profits over the past four years.” There's loot aplenty.

More than 170 industry groups are pleading with the Biden administration to intervene, but so far, it has not. According to NPR, the union "may be seeking a $5 an hour increase in each year of a six-year agreement, raising the top hourly wage from $39 to $69 by the end of the contract.” The last agreement offered only a $1 an hour increase in four of the six years.

Longshoremen are colorfully depicted in literature, film and folklore, sometimes with embellishments and with the taking of questionable liberties. These guys are rough-hewn but have their own brand of elegance. It is perilous to try to bully them or treat them as an underclass. Eric Hoffer, the famous and oft-quoted 20th century social critic and political philosopher, was a longshoreman once by trade and forever at heart.

It is essential for our prosperity and the peace of the nation for workers to support each other,  even when their job descriptions or circumstances are different and seem hard to relate to. When one union's strike causes inconvenience and pain to other workers, this is harder, but no less imperative. There is persistent, perhaps eternal enmity against organized labor, blue-collar, white-collar or no-collar.

Even when we don't feel it at the moment, it's happening like cellular changes on our bodies. Our enemies' designs are underfoot. 

Have you heard of Schedule F? Near the end of his administration, President Trump issued an executive order, since rescinded, to reform federal employment regulations, one effect of which would reclassify some federal career civil service positions to "excepted," which would weaken workers' due process protections and make them more vulnerable to termination. 

According to the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), which tracks bills in Congress, H.R.3115/S.1496, called the Public Service Reform Act, sponsored by Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) and Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), "would make all federal employment at-will and enable workers to be removed for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all. The legislation would also abolish the Merit System Protections Board and limit removal appeals to claims of whistleblower retaliation and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints before the US Court of Appeals.”

The ILA is doing us all a favor by giving us an opportunity to stand by them and stand up for them.