Unfair — Biden's just the latest in a decades-long succession of politicians who are responsible for this
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we coulda been contenders
To please unions, Biden refuses to automate ports — fueling supply-chain woes
From Christmas toys to clothing and auto parts, shortages of imported products are forcing factories to idle, store shelves to sit empty and consumers to panic. What else is in short supply? The truth about what’s causing this economic crisis.
President Joe Biden, who brags about running “the most pro-union administration in history,” won’t admit that longshoremen’s unions are holding the nation hostage, refusing to allow the use of automated equipment to unload container ships and get the goods onto trucks faster.
The United States is the world’s largest importer, but its major ports, at Los Angeles and Long Beach, rank a dismal 328 and 333 in the World Bank’s Port Performance Index. That means nightmare inefficiency, worse than most Third World countries. Not one US port made it into the top 50 for speed and efficiency. In contrast, Japan’s Yokohama port ranks No. 1
Nearly 100 container ships have been waiting off the Los Angeles coastline to be unloaded. The longer they wait, the more prices for imported goods rise, clobbering consumers.
Last Wednesday, Biden announced a “game-changer,” saying the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach would stay open more hours for a “90-day sprint” to Christmas. Truth is, most ports around the world operate 24/7. Port operators here haven’t done that in the past, because union contracts require paying higher hourly rates for night and weekend labor. Dockworkers already average $171,000 a year. Wednesday’s announcement was a concession from port operators, not the unions
But increased hours won’t fix the bottlenecks. The added hours will boost cargo movement by less than 10 percent or an estimated 3,500 containers a week. The real problem is the unions’ tooth-and-nail opposition to labor-saving equipment. Cranes in automated ports operate at least twice as fast as cranes in outdated US ports. Biden’s port czar, John Porcari, let the truth out when he said last week it’s “your grandfather’s infrastructure that we’re dealing with.”
Unions won’t have it any other way. The International Longshoremen’s Association contract, which extends to 2024, blocks the use of automation technology. Willie Adams, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents West Coast workers, says automated cargo handling equipment will not be tolerated.
McCaughey’s description of the bottlenecks in our ports and who’s causing it is accurate, but the Longshoremen’s Union has always fought to keep its 19th Century ways. Although containers were first proposed in 1937 by Malcolm McLean, it wasn’t until 1956, after a prolonged, bitter fight, that they were finally forced down the union’s throat (and, proving their point, union numbers declined 90% in the years thereafter). An early study of the effect of that change in method reported that “20 to 25 tons of cargo were regularly loaded by container in 2 1/2 minutes as against the 18-20 man-hours required for breakbulk handling”. Not surprisingly, the cost of handling that cargo also dropped, from $5.86 to $0.16 per ton.
Since then, container ships have grown huge, as has the cargo capacity of the containers themselves. New equipment, including taller, automated cranes was necessary to handle the new volume, and the industry has responded; but not here.
Automated port equipment has been around for over twenty years, and has been incorporated in major ports everywhere but the United States. This is probably not the time to take another longshoremen’s strike, even if there were the political will to, say, use the Taft-Hartley Act to break them, but politicians long before Biden could have tried, and didn’t. The Democrats’ “PRO Act”, which will give unions incredible new muscle, will almost certainly be enacted into whatever budget is finally passed, and the opportunity will be lost, again.
Which is bad news for doughnut lovers everywhere.
