Sinking Ships

Heading into day five of the West Coast port shutdown, which by all accounts threatens to cripple both the U.S. and Asian economies, the American economy is running aground in ways too terrible to have imagined. Ask the good people of Hawaii: In at least one Honolulu market, they've run out of toilet paper and Spam!

But in all seriousness, the lockout is costing the U.S. economy a pretty penny—$1 billion a day, according to some economists. Sympathy for the dockworkers might come easier if the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) were fighting for better working conditions or salaries; fortunately, the union's members seem to be doing pretty well in that department. According to CNN, dockworkers averaged $82,895 last year, many working just 40 weeks per year; foremen averaged $157,352. That's quite a few tamales upwards of the U.S. median.

The current conflict appears to be over the well being of the union itself. Specifically, officials want to control several hundred new computer jobs that the port owners would rather fill from the open labor market. In fact, the ILWU says dominion over those jobs are critical to its survival.

That may well be true, but it appears dock workers weren't fighting initially for control of those jobs. Instead, The New York Times reported a few days ago, "the union has balked at accepting such new technologies because it worries that some jobs will become nonunion."

No one wants to put a dockworker out of a job, but the times do change. Or maybe not. Check out some of the dockworkers' nifty 17th-century lingo, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times: "Hey, tell the warfinger the gang is hard-timing us and we've got nothing to dray." (Translation: Tell the dock owner that the workers are slow-motion striking and we've got no goods to haul.)