The East Coast Port Workers Strike Isn’t ‘Political’

BREAKING: The strike worked, in part due to intervention of Labor Secretary Julie Su and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Workers will be returning to work while a few minor points are negotiated. It sure is nice having a pro-labor administration!

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I haven’t seen such focused bullshit since the days of COVID. Everybody’s doing it. 

Democrats are saying the International Longshoremen's Association strike at east coast and gulf ports is a MAGA plot to disrupt the economy just prior to the election. Republicans  –who in real life would sic vicious dogs on a picket line– are trumpeting misinformation about product shortages and pretending to support the strikers.

A few instances of panic buying have been reported, and I expect the loons of the right to spread those accounts. 

I'll bet that the meme going around about shortages of toilet paper came from overseas. 

The vast majority of toilet paper — over 90%, according to some estimates — is made in U.S. factories. The rest comes largely from Canada and Mexico and is transported via rail or truck, not by ship.

While it’s true that consumer tp uses fibers imported from Brazil, commercial tp is made from recycled paper, and could be substituted.

The other thing that stinks about the toilet paper myth, is the “magic wand” theory of product distribution. Somehow, a days-old strike is causing shortages of a product with a robust distribution chain. 

You might be familiar with the “magic wand” theory of politics if you’ve heard politicians in California claim they can end the homelessness crisis. Or that felony sentences for shoplifters will deter retail theft.

You know what’s really shitty? The way East Coast dockworkers have been exploited in recent years. Shippers have experienced exponential growth in sales and dollars; most people think of that kind of growth as just quicker than normal. 

Imagine dropping 1 ml of water into a football stadium and then doubling that amount every minute. You might think it would take weeks or days to fill the facility to overflowing, but you’d be wrong. It would take 44 minutes.

I’ve seen some clips of militant port workers’ picket lines, and they’re often accompanied by USMX (an alliance of terminal operators and foreign based shippers) propaganda saying the ILA turned down a 50% wage increase prior to the strike.

What they don’t say is that the offer was presented on the cusp of the previous contract’s expiration in the hope that it would weaken union solidarity. And the offer was about money, not the rest of the things included in port workers’ contracts.

The dollar amounts involved in port workers’ wages get bounced around a lot in coverage of the strike, the most popular one being that they are already making good money. Typically cited is the top dollar pay grade (which takes six years to get to) and pay from someone who puts in large amounts of overtime - which can come to a hundred grand plus.

The reality of life on the docks is much, much different. For one, full-time east coast workers are paid tens of thousands of dollars annually less than their west coast counterparts. Roughly speaking: west coast = $123,000 annually, east coast = $81,000 annually.

Average wages for East Coast port workers are nearly 12% lower than they were 20 years ago after adjusting for inflation.

ILWU negotiated a successful new contract last year covering 29 west coast ports with the assistance of Labor Secretary Julie Su in 2023, that included a substantial wage increase, a raise in pension payments, guaranteed hours, a retroactive bonus for working during COVID and language about cooperation in port modernization.

Two thirds of east coast port workers are on an on- call basis, with no guaranteed employment if no ships are being worked. ILA members qualify for benefits only based on the hours they worked the previous year, making them vulnerable if there’s a downturn in work. The union maintains that USMX has installed automated equipment in some locations in violation of the existing labor agreement.

Mass media coverage of the ILA has revived claims about the union being run by organized crime, along with criticism of the autocratic style of strike leader Harold Daggett. What’s not included in these write ups is the increase in rank and file militancy across all unions. 

The ILA may need reforming, but I’ll bet this strike is motivated by pressure from below. This strike has been years in the making. It's about people demanding a fair share and a good life for their families.

The trollist things you might see on social media include whining about living with a shortage of consumer goods and the inevitable “common sense” guys questioning why we need unions in the first place. Or the conspiracies about Trump and the union leader sabotaging the Biden administration.

As always, labor writer Hamilton Nolan has thoughts about the long term impacts of good contracts: 

• What is less appreciated about this process are all of the gains that go to working people for years and years after each strike. Union contracts, not guns, are the strongest tool that the working class has for seizing back economic power from the rich. 

• Every time an employer is made to understand that its workers will shut it down unless they get their fair share, a union contract is signed that gives the workers an amount of money closer to the actual value that they produce than they would have otherwise gotten. If there is one single fact that I could magically make every working person in America understand, it is this: Without a union, without the ability to negotiate with your employer collectively, you are always leaving money on the table. Always. 

• If you and your coworkers are not united into a single group you cannot negotiate as a single group and you cannot go on strike as a single group and therefore you lack the leverage to force your employer to pay you what you are worth and you enable them to instead pay you a lower amount, which you are forced to accept because you cannot impose a meaningful penalty on them for doing so. You have no union? You get less. This is a law of the workplace

This morning on CNN, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he thinks there is a deal that can be reached to end the strike.

• “We’ve been engaging the parties on all sides, urging them to come to the table and get to a deal,” he said. “We think that economically, they are not so far apart that they can’t bridge these differences, especially when you consider this is a very, very profitable industry.”

• As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have done in their recent statements, Buttigieg said it is right for the union to demand its fair share of record shipping profits in recent years. He pointed to billions of dollars ship lines have been spending on share repurchases to help shareholders and the billions in increased value of those companies’ market caps.

That’s right, folks, these companies care more about shareholders and executives than workers. Color me shocked.

One good thing about living in San Diego: we won’t have to face a banana shortage, which is supposedly the first impact the rest of the country could see if the strike drags on.

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News You Outta Know

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Exclusive: Multiple Women Claiming Romantic Relationships With RFK Jr. Threaten His Standing in Trump Orbit by Diana Falzone at Mediaite

• Two sources with direct knowledge of the three women’s accounts confirmed to Mediaite the existence of their claims. Mediaite also reviewed and obtained texts from a woman in which she detailed an alleged relationship with Kennedy this year.

• The three women, who know Kennedy through Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group he chairs, have been sharing their alleged experiences in text messages with others in the wake of the scandal involving Kennedy and New York magazine correspondent Olivia Nuzzi.

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Internal Emails From Springfield Show What Happened After Trump's Debate by Jason Koebler at 404Media:

• City manager Brian Heck also received many threats because he publicly said that there were no examples of Haitians eating pets. An email titled “You are a liar” reads “you know your town is fucked by this illegal invasion … stop covering it up.” Another long email includes the lines “Let's thank President Trump for informing all of us what FAKE NEWS is and why it exists,” suggested that the city “form multiple possies” of police to drive out Haitians, “deport them to Washington DC” on buses, and ended with “CAT LIVES MATTER” and three AI-generated images of Donald Trump surrounded by cats and ducks.

• City officials also screenshotted various threats on Facebook and shared them amongst each other. One read “We need a Haitian hunting license!!” Another read “Just imagine a world where instead of school shootings, they set their sights on these Haitian animals. The world would be a better and safer place.” 

• Some emails also reference another false claim JD Vance made that immigrants in Springfield have led to “skyrocketing” cases of HIV, which is not true. This narrative originally came from Republican Kyle Koehler, who is running for Ohio State Senate and who said “A delivery nurse reports that 70% of all scheduled Cesareans are for Haitian women who cannot deliver naturally because of HIV.” The mother of a hospital nurse in Springfield who works for a Christian charity in the city that assists immigrants emailed city officials to say that this was “disturbing misinformation,” and that “My daughter works full-time in the labor and delivery unit and said she cannot see how this information could be even close to accurate, based on what she has observed and the c-sections she regularly helps perform.”

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Abortion Bans by Another Name: How Republicans Are Trying to Fool the Public by Parker Malloy at The Present Age

• Journalists have to dig deeper and not just take Republicans’ modified definition of “ban” at face value. Would Trump sign a total ban so long as it included “the three exceptions?” How about a 6-week ban? 12-week ban? 15? 20? Simply saying he’d veto a “ban,” while knowing how Republicans have tried to redefine the term tells us nothing other than the fact that a lot of journalists are terrible at their jobs.

• In October 2023, Valenti tried to warn everyone that the media was buying the GOP’s “ban” lie, but few in positions of power seemed to take notice. A year later, the press seems to have completely bought into Republican lies. It’s truly a shame, and the reason why people should question mainstream media’s pro-Republican bias.