Tuesday, October 01, 2024

ON STRIKE ... SHUT IT DOWN

By Bob Walsh


 At Port Houston, the longtime No. 1 U.S. foreign tonnage port, the Bayport Container Terminal continues to bustle with activity.

 
The longshoremen at all the ports between Maine and Texas walked off the job at midnight east coast time last night, effectively shutting down a great deal of commerce.  

The media asked Senile Joe if he would use Taft-Hartley and order them back to work.  He said flat-out NO, that he regarded this as a labor relations issue.  Lunchbox Joe is a good union man (at least sort of).  The longshoremen want a 70% raise over six years with guarantees regarding no further mechanization and computerization of the ports.  I strongly suspect they will get very little action on that issue.  

The talking heads are saying that if this goes on more than a very few days the back-up will be very hard to deal with for several times longer than the strike itself runs.  Also we are getting into the delivery schedule for Christmas.  In a very short while we will have trouble buying cheap Chinese crap for Christmas presents.

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