There is a major dockworkers strike on the East and Gulf Coasts. Stuff in transit across the Pacific will probably deflect to West Coast ports, which will become impacted as ships pile up offshore awaiting a turn at the docks.
I’ve no idea how long the strike will last. It will have a positive impact on rail transport, a negative impact on imports, and cause some grief for retailers trying to amass inventory for the Christmas shopping season which begins later this month. I’d say the stevedores picked a good time of year to withhold services, a busy time.
Expect lame-duck President Biden to speak in favor of the union. If Joe’s aged brain remembers anything, it is his to-the-bitter-end commitment to unions. It makes him an anachronism as a Democrat, their main voting groups now are college educated women and their androgynous husbands, plus every “victim” group that exists.
Dockworker unions have a checkered past. The ones on the West Coast were led by a Communist and the ones now striking are tainted with mob ties. Neither gains them much sympathy.
Thinking about dockworkers, reminds me of the wiry little guys we watched doing the job in Kowloon. This was when Hong Kong was still a Crown Colony. Clad in shorts and rubber flip-flops they clambered all over stacks of containers hooking cranes to the tie-downs built into the containers.
All of this in 90 degree heat and near-100% humidity on a sultry South China Sea day. They weren’t all young either. They were nonchalantly doing things I couldn’t have done in my prime, too many decades ago.
Which further reminds me of the bamboo and raffia scaffolding around buildings under construction there. Some of these went up maybe 20 floors or more, tied together with what amounts to string. And they did the job.
Scary but perversely fascinating. Obviously the men who built them knew exactly what they were doing and what would hold together.
