Looks like it's working, if by "working" you mean plugging up the commerce of the country. Check out all the container ships sitting outside LA waiting for clearance to come in and unload!
"Just so readers have a sense of what is at stake, this is what the average dockworker makes: $147,000 a year in salary, plus $35,000 a year in employer-paid health care and an annual pension of $80,000 (according to an association press release). It is the overtime compensation to the total shown here, which grosses to over a quarter of a million dollars, that dockworkers are negotiating to raise or else the key US supply-chains gets it."
Follow the link for the whole story, but just be aware that ZH tends toward the apocalyptic in their articles, so add a couple of grains of salt to what you see.
Something needs to be done to restore balance to this situation...but it's so far out of whack that I really don't know what that would be.
ReplyDeleteWho do you need to kill to get one of those jobs?
ReplyDeleteBrass
Yeah, I thought that too. Not a bad gig, although the cost of living in LA in a decent area is high.
DeleteYou can make do with a quarter million a year.
DeleteThe number of days those guys work makes it possible for them to live well away from LA or Oakland.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I know of one who works two days (for five days pay) and commutes 200 miles one way, sleeping in his camper on work days, and is at home on his five days off.
I will say that the work isn't easy and is hazardous, but not quite so bad as 30 years ago.
They don't lug sacks of beans or rice out of cargo holds any more.