How longshoremen won one of 2012’s biggest (and most underreported) labor fights.
Working America @WorkingAmerica
How longshoremen won one of 2012’s biggest (and most underreported) labor fights.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-averted-port-strike-holds-lessons-for-all-workers/2013/01/01/3befd548-5393-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_story.html
The cliff that America sidestepped with time to spare in 2012 was the one on the nation’s docks. On Friday, harbor operators and shippers reached an agreement with the union representing nearly 15,000 longshoremen on the East and Gulf coasts. The key point holding up the signing of a new contract was whether dockworkers would continue to receive royalties on the containers they hoisted on and off ships. With that issue resolved, apparently to the workers’ satisfaction, their union agreed to call off a year-end strike pending the resolution of less contentious points, and the nation was spared a work stoppage that would have slowed imports and exports to a relative trickle.
Had the workers walked, the attacks on them would be easy to imagine. Dockworkers are among this country’s best-paid blue-collar workers; many make more than $100,000 a year. They’re sitting ducks for union critics and are objects of wonderment for many Americans who can’t fathom how nonprofessional work can pay so much.
Unraveling the mystery of longshoremen’s pay, however, goes a long way toward explaining the U.S. economy and its possible futures. The four reasons dockworkers make what they do are, first, there are so few of them; second, they’re highly skilled and productive; third, their work can’t be relocated; and, fourth, they’ve had powerful unions.
In the 1950s — the time of the film “On the Waterfront” — 35,000 longshoremen were employed at the Port of New York and New Jersey. Today, there are just 3,500, loading and unloading much more tonnage than their more numerous predecessors did. The difference, of course, is that beginning in the ’60s, cargo has been shipped in massive containers that are placed on trucks or railcars. The longshoreman’s job has changed from hoisting much smaller loads with slings to running the giant cranes that move the containers between ship and shore.
(More at the link.)