Which Side Are You On?

Infrastructure and energy vs. political convenience

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Container ship pulling into Port of Los Angeles. (Photo by Getty Images)

Is $20,000 a lot of money to you? 

It isn’t a lot to the Port of Los Angeles, which handles something on the order of $300 billion in cargo a year. It isn’t a lot to the union bosses who run the place, their coffers being generously topped off with mandatory dues. 

But it is a lot of money to at least one of the port’s customers. 

In April, an undeclared strike shut down the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The union says workers didn’t show up because they were paying rapt attention to a union-leadership vote and then ditched work for Easter. Yeah. As trade journal American Shipper put it, “Labor action at West Coast ports does not have a history of being explicitly confirmed; rather, it takes the form of passive-aggressive behavior that escalates with increasingly implausible deniability.”

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  1. Pschneider_9332

    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/04/28/climate-emergency-we-have-a-mental-illness-emergency-n546899

    Which side are you on?

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  2. Sway21

    The principle problem with west coast ports is not labor but the lack of rail infrastructure to and from the ports. Container traffic is ideally loaded onto rail cars and expedited to distribution centers away from the naturally occurring port congestion. Oakland used to be the leading west coast port, and has fallen because of its rail limitations. Trucks, or rather excessive numbers of trucks, is evidence for transportation failure. We can blame both California and the US government. Of course, the more we move distribution centers out from west coast port areas the less effect labor has upon it. Despite the appearance of labor intransigence, there's little enough labor in port operations left, and the shippers manage to earn everything they get from that remaining labor. The ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association truly do deserve each other. Nonetheless, as progress towards greater rail integration takes place the requirement for labor declines yet further, and since that's the chief challenge it's what ought be focused upon.

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    1. Betsybowditch

      The L.A.-Long Beach port complex remains Southern California’s largest single source of pollution and if you live close to it, you are in greater harm's way for asthma and cancer.

      It got worse during the pandemic when increased cargo imports, to meet the demands of online shopping, along with supply chain disruptions led to more anchored vessels running on auxiliary engines while waiting to unload.

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    Dennis

    Biden likes to pretend he came out of his mother’s womb wearing a hard hat.

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  4. Merriesoltis

    My company imports "widgets" from Japan. The last strike nearly killed us. I spent weeks trying to explain the situation to my customers WHY their PO's were still on backorder. I know complaints about "left wing media bias" are such a cliche, but it really wasn't big news for a long time, and I blame that on them not wanting to make the unions look bad. It didn't really make headlines until the strike was settled and they started working the backlog. There were photos of the massive pile of shipping containers waiting to be unloaded and stories about ships circling LA harbor for days until their turn to unload. I literally sent one of those stories to a customer who wanted to know when she'd be getting her order and told her "Your stuff is in one of those containers. You'll get it when they finally unload it and then ship it across the country to US."

    Within a few months of the strike ending, our stock shipments started speeding up dramatically - because the widget company started shipping their wares to Savannah instead of Long Beach.

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  5. Mike in Mad City

    Yes, this. All of it. As the close relative of a retired west coast port asset manager, this all rings true and close to home, even if I now live more than half a continent away from there.

    It would be nice to know if anyone currently running or considering running for high office has anything policy-wise to say about any of this that's tied to the world we actually live in.

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    DougAz

    Well. Some points I agree with and some I dont, says this one Progressive here. I also have a degree in Physics, and I have bounded support for US Nuclear plants, learning and following the French standard design model. Here, design competition is too risky. You never build critical learning curves and redundancy. My nuclear savvy engineer friend here Ingenero Lux, disagrees, and I respect that.

    I also have close to a masters (as an undergraduate)at Sloan, in Labor relations, economics, negotiations. And professional training in same avoidance at BigCorp. I've managed non union shops but also successfully worked with the UAW at a few dozen manufacturing plants.

    So. Unions are a broad term. Some are very easy to work with. Some are more difficult. In the final analysis however, it takes ownerships will and approach to work effectively with Unions. We have a lot of management that is poorly . trained in this regard.

    As to the LA ports - my free market self says... meh. Don't care to intervene. Let it takes it course. If the LA ports lose to others. Fine. If there isnt enough money to obliterate the LA highway system from the ports to I-10 and I-8 to 75 miles away... well thats probably a $50 billion road rebuild or more.

    LA ports suffer from the free market of land development. Government could have looked ahead for a better highway system for trucking away from the ports. Maybe a an 8 lane truck only straight highway beeline from the ports to I-8 or 10 would work.

    "Our progressive friends are not wrong to insist that environmental and labor interests be taken into account—intelligent policymaking involves tradeoffs and balancing legitimate interests. ' Agree.

    "They are wrong to give union bosses and green ideologues veto power over energy and infrastructure, which is what they in effect purport to do."

    I disagree with this framing. Rule 1 - look at management. Fact- Biden doesn't run the ports, the Unions, the Sierra Club, or the obviously recalcitrant Oil and Gas companies. The Port management must lead the negotiations. As they fail to do so, they will lose business. Oil companies are using environmental regulations purely as an excuse. The technology and engineering exists to meet all environmental regulations.

    Here the Oil Companies are like the Port Unions, holding progress - hostage.

    "The question should not be whether we are going to build pipelines to ensure that Americans have reliable supplies of gasoline or whether we are going to encourage the development of LNG-export facilities at our ports—the question should be how to go about doing these things in an environmentally responsible way. "
    A fabulous statement and I fully agree. This is the Way.

    I think our differences overall can be summed up like this Kevin. And its very contrarian!!

    You want the government, ie Biden administration to drive Nuclear power, new oil and gas refineries, and solve a labor-business problems essentially over price and investment

    I want the free market of business leadership to stop using excuses. Own the issues and pronlem solve and move forward. The ROI for business is great enough but long-term. The long-term is a real issue today for business.Expand full commentShow less

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    1. Mary Stine

      Thanks, Doug! Agree especially with "The long-term is a real issue today for business". I'd expand this to say that this is an issue because most business began converting to emphasizing only short term gains decades ago. Part of this is due to investors and shareholders wanting faster returns, and part of it is the ugly reality of faster changes in the markets. But it has had a chilling effect on several vital areas like research and development, quality and environmental controls and overall ethics.
      Most of the excuses I hear from business leadership have the echo of "we can't afford this in the short term" .

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    2. MathewA

      It's not really a free market when it comes to labor unions though is it? Is CA a right to work state?

      And the government in CA has a REALLY big thumb on the scale when it comes to management/labor relations.

      Doubly so when it comes to something like the ports

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        DougAz

        The point is like any labor management negotiation. It's free between both parties of free will to determine whatever outcome.

        If the Unions totally close the LA ports for 5 years ..guess what...a lose lose. But a net gain somewhere else. As it should be.

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  7. Jack Wright

    This is a very good explanation of the unfortunate landscape in which we now find ourselves. With a few notable exceptions (ILWU vs PMA being one), it seems to me that the gatekeepers on these issues are far more local than federal. If economies are built one transaction at a time, then they are also constrained and undermined one state/county initiative at a time. There is a very real ground game to these issues that run through statehouses and county boards, and the playing field is all too often abdicated by people who readily agree with the above piece. Take what is happening at the new Leathermann terminal in Charleston- the ILA is essentially extorting the state of SC and as a result, the newest capstone of SC funded investment has been sitting idle. This is a downstream product of local inattention and inaction.

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    Olympus Mons

    Another tiresome article where Kevin bashes Democrats and Biden in particular. Why no criticism of Republicans here? Aren't they responsible as well? Don't they control one branch of Congress? I must've missed they're comprehensive infrastructure proposal.

    As Pat Riot often points out, they all voted against it, but go back to their home districts to take credit for it. If they're taking credit for a bill, they deserve the same criticism, don't they?

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    1. Deleted Comment

      This comment has been deleted

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      JohnM.

      "As Pat Riot often points out...."
      He points out a lot of things and has earned quite a reputation here for making generalities, exaggerations and out and out falsehoods. He's been verbally spanked by TD writers Kevin W., Jonah G., David F. and Declan G. for doing just that here. That is a record as far as I know.

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    3. Mr. E.

      [waiting excitedly for which version of "I write what I want to write" that KDW replies with here]

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      JohnM.

      This strike started under the Biden administration and with a Dem. Congress in power.

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  9. Donnybrook

    Good column, but I might point out that the conversion from diesel powered cargo handling equipment and trucks is being mandated by local and state agencies due to public health concerns in neighborhoods adjacent to ports. So the infrastructure funding is helping industry to remain somewhat competitive when transitioning under those mandates. It might not fit the traditional definition of "infrastructure," but it is necessary to deal with emission reduction mandates and still stay in business.

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    Earl King

    Of the insane things we Americans do environmentalist opposing carbon mitigation thru anything other than wind and solar is the dumbest. We deserve to sit in caves if we continue to allow this craziness

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    1. Mary Stine

      I hear some caves are really lovely and come with a bear landlord for entertainment!!
      However, that might just be positive advertising from the bear community, I dunno.
      (kudos to Earl, my fellow pragmatist!)

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        Earl King

        I sometimes feel grumpy like a bear!

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    2. Simon Kennedy

      It's not just us Americans - the Germans are far worse. They're taking nuclear plants offline and bringing coal ones up

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        Earl King

        You’re right, that may be the most insane thing in fighting climate change. Taking a zero CO2 emitting energy source for a higher one. LOL. There must be a reason they lost two World Wars.

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