Saturday, February 7, 2015

West Coast Ports Shut Down: Where's Obama?

From KING.com, Seattle: It will be a very quiet weekend at the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, where work will halt temporarily amid a bitter and drawn-out contract dispute involving the shippers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
By Friday evening it appeared work had already stopped at the Port of Seattle.
The last-minute temporary suspension of operations was just announced by the Pacific Maritime Association and caught the union off-guard.
"This is nothing short of a form of economic terrorism by predominantly foreign-owned companies who are hurting American businesses and communities," said an ILWU spokesperson.
The Pacific Maritime Association negotiates on behalf of shipping companies with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and blames that union for an intentional slowdown during tense contract negotiations, which have dragged on for months.
"After three months of union slowdowns, it makes no sense to pay extra for less work," said PMA spokesman Wade Gates, "especially if there is no end in sight to the union's actions which needlessly brought West Coast ports to the brink of gridlock."
The suspension of work only affects loading and unloading of ships. It does not directly affect trucking or other onshore operations.  http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/02/06/west-coast-ports-close-slowdowns/22998905/
Well, it does effect trucking.
All the truck stops in Kingman, AZ. are filled to the brim and the trucks are spilling out into different parking lots, like K-Mart, Wal-Mart and other places.  Trucks who have business on the West Coast are not going there and instead are hanging out in Arizona and other places like Nevada and Idaho and possibly California.
And because this is causing economic harm, like truckers not being paid, shipments not coming or going, so, where is President Obama?
Why isn't he putting on pressure on the ports and the unions thugs of the unions.
These union thugs, who have caused serious riots, have jobs a trained monkey could do, but unlike the monkeys, these thugs make on average, over $140,000 a year or more. (and apologies to the trained monkeys to be compared with union thugs)
The union thugs, who have jobs trained monkeys could do, are afraid that robots can take over their jobs and maybe robots and trained monkeys should take over their jobs.
But again, where is Obama?  People are hurting already and more will soon be hurting.
Why don't you do your damn job, Obama and order everyone back to work.

1 comment:

  1. Dan, I was just at a manufacture in ND and they brought up this vary point. The slow down at the west coast ports of Tacoma and Seattle have been vary stressful. They actually have truckers sitting in motels waiting for loads to be released.

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