You’re correct. I had read WatchingThe Herd’s blog and assumed it was correct simply because he usually is - I should have verified.
Pete
You’re correct. I had read WatchingThe Herd’s blog and assumed it was correct simply because he usually is - I should have verified.
Pete
There are very few union members earning the $20 rate. The ILA is a very hard union to join since it’s workforce is shrinking. I expect most of the workforce has longer tenures with few new hires.
intercst
There is no such thing.
Puhleeze!
Both the International Longshoremans Union and the Teamsters are very internally fragmented and varied from Local to Local. Back in the 70s, with just a few phone calls and two meetings, I got the west coast Teamsters signed on to gay rights with no problem, but my colleagues working on all the rest?, with very few exceptions.
Fuhgidaboutit.
And the national “news sources” are ever more ignorant, lazy, and misleading in these discussions.
We all know better
d fb
Most strikes don’t go that far. The country and economy went through complete shutdown like COVID, so we know we ca handle and bounce back. I doubt this is going to create any massive downturn, but if it did, by the dip.
Which brings up the question, which party do blue-collar workers support? That is too much politics for this board, but one can google the Teamsters poll from last month.
DB2
There’s a difference between knowing we “can do it” and being forced to do it when it’s avoidable. I think blow-back from that kind of inconvenience will be worse than the actual economic effects. Altho we all know how much people/media over-hype transient economic irritants into “the worse economy since…”
In general, I think the resiliency has gone down and tolerance for discomfort however mild is very high. The supply disruptions, strike, natural calamities, are all part of life.
In this 24*7 media world everything is existential. Wait for the Friday circus, Job report, a number that gets revised multiple times in subsequent months. The CNBC’s of the world will talk like that’s the end of the world or we avoided a major recession.
Take a deep breath, mostly likely this strike will not last beyond a week or two at most.
I don’t think I claimed or implied that it would lead to a massive downturn. In fact, in rereading, I didn’t make a claim of ANY downturn. Not sure why you are inferring such.
If it lasts more than it month, it might shave 0.1 or 0.2 off the GDP for the 4th quarter. Certainly something we can handle.
Meh. Color me skeptical of the results. The Teamsters did an in-person national straw poll two months prior when Biden was still running and the results were 44-36 Biden. Seems exceedingly odd for the results to swing so wildly just because the top of the ticket changed - and in a direction that is decidedly different that all other major polling. Of course, I also read from a different source that only about 10% of the Teamsters participated in the most recent poll. No idea how that compares with the straw poll - either way, something is off.
The sample size of the poll?
It was some sort of popularity poll with fewer people voting.
People are easy to lie to is demonstrated daily.
That’s fine for any one poll. However, it has been clear over the years that the Ds have been losing support among the working class and minorities such as blacks and hispanics while building with the college educated.
DB2
Which was in the opposite direction to what most Teamster locals are endorsing.
One article I read had this:
Of course, domestic seafood and American beer, wine, and liquor are all options for those who enjoy such things, but the majority of bananas are shipped in from elsewhere. Associate professor of operations management at Southern Illinois University, Gregory DeYong, told Time that cherries, canned goods, hot peppers, grapes, avocados, and chocolate could also be difficult to find until the strike is resolved.
The primary seafood I eat is salmon. I can manage without it for a few months.
Don’t drink much beer, have enough wine to last a couple of years, will need to cut back on my cognac consumption. At least Ms. Wolf will be happy.
Bananas? I’m on a low potassium diet. What’s a banana?
Grapes I’ll miss, but I don’t eat much of the other items listed.
Chocolate? HOLD ON!! That’s where I draw the line. Get your lazy butts back to work!!!
There have been inroads but considering how unpopular the Rs are…
On the “news” last night: a reminder that the vast majority of toilet paper is made in the US, or imported from Canada or Mexico by rail, so people don’t need to horde toilet paper.
What the heck is the USian obsession with toilet paper?
As “K” said, “people are dumb, panicky, animals”.
Steve
These sorts of comments make me crazy. As if ships sail around the world empty.
One of the largest export categories for the US is food and raw agricultural products. Ask a farmer if he can sit around with a new crop of soybeans for months, waiting to get paid for a product which is diminishing in value. Truckers who take these products to market will quickly find fewer loads, and pricing will quickly fall with the surplus of empty trucks available.
It isn’t just about “what you’ll find in the supermarkets, it’s also about what we export and won’t, and what that will do to supply chains across the country, This isn’t quite as big a deal as a national rail strike, and the effects will be mostly muted at first, but if it goes on for any length of time the economies of several states (ag, mostly, but also factory towns) will be affected.
Hey, remember the days when you couldn’t get grapes every single day of the year? And when giant ships filled with soybeans set off for Asia?
The noon local “news” just reported a local Costco has been completely wiped out of toilet paper.
People are idiots.
Steve
Well put Steve!
Answering your question, although much of the world is as obsessed with religion as the USA, none have arrived at the level of toilet trained neurotic paper obsession as the USA, where wiping is a holy sacrament of purity and protection in menacing times.
d fb
In the Muslim world they say never offer your left hand. Their solution to the toilet paper problem.
Read the contract Hawkwin posted. It’s the “Base Wage”, not the average.
The term “Base Wage” in that contract may not mean what everyone thinks it does. It isn’t a “base” as in a MIMINUM which means everyone is making ABOVE that rate. It’s a CAP. There is a different table in the contract immediately below that reference that lays out the underlying wage structure based on years of service.
The terms in that part of the contract are stating that each year of the contract, on October 1, the wage rate will increase:
Each of those paragraphs states that the increase applies to those employed the day before who were already receiving the specified straight time “basic” wage. If you weren’t making that specific dollar amount the day before, you did not get a $1 raise.
The table immediately BELOW that set of bullets then defines what the “basic” wage is based on years of service. Those entries look like this:
0 years - $20/hour
1 years - $20/hour
2 years - $23.75/hour
3 years - $23.75/hour
4 years - $29.40/hour
5 years - $29.40/hour
6 years + - $35.00/hour (at the start of the contract in 2019)
The subtle result of the above pay schedule is that the contract only raised the wage rate of the TOP wage tier. Those with less than 6 years service only received the tenure-based increase from the seniority table but those rates below the peak were NOT increased during the contract term. A worker with 2 years of service in 2023 or 2024 is only making $23.75/hour.
I’m not saying 80 percent of the membership is making BELOW the now-current $39/hour top rate but the different media outlets are not properly explaining the wage structure here. They’re looking for an attention grabbing headline on the high side (the management story) or on the poverty side (the labor story).
There are other rules in the contract governing overtime pay and pay for time when workers are on site but “not working” that are part of the contention in negotiations. Maybe some of those rules explain how someone might be making $190,000 per year. Still, even if drawing double-overtime, someone earning $190,000 on the dayshift was clocked in for 4870 “pay” hours so they would have to have worked 3475 hours or 66 hours per week with no vacation.
From my perspective, if someone working 66 hours a week outdoors in bitter cold or stifling heat with someone swinging hundreds of multi-ton shipping containers over their head can pull in six figures a year doing it, more power to them. They have a much tougher job than someone sititng at a desk writing JavaScript code or penning some vitally important marketing email who is probably making more and doing far less.
WTH