On the Waterfront
In today’s global market, the supply lines that trace the path of merchandise from the satanic mills of southeast Asia to the shelves of the local Wal-Mart are embedded deep in the tissue of the economy. Smooth circulation of goods relies on massive container ships, packed stem to stern with apartment building-sized boxes groaning with finished goods and raw materials for production. The ships sail in full, unpack, turn around and get more in a metronomic parade of production and consumption, the heartbeat of the global economy.
Right now, we’re in the midst of a heart attack. A blockage has formed at the choke point of the entire system, that narrow strip where the sea meets the land and the goods come ashore. You see, it’s not all mechanical, not yet. There are men (and a few women) inside the mechanism who turn the gears and work the levers. The persistent, irreducible need for capricious human beings lodged in the aorta of the free market’s circulatory system causes high blood pressure for those who see their fellow citizens as impediments to the ever-escalating efficiency of the global economy. They’d like to perform a tidy bypass and be done with the whole thing once and for all. But they can’t. Because in the time it would take to perform the operation, the patient would die.
The people with the chokehold on the system – the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) – know it. And they know that even with the power they now have, they can’t stop time forever. So, as a condition for allowing a small bypass, they want to make sure that their people can take up strategic positions in the new channel as well. Specifically, they want to prevent key jobs in centralized inventory management from being outsourced to non-union workers. The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) desperately wants to regain control of hiring and reduce its dependence on the willful and highly-paid longshoremen. This, they argue, will bring new efficiencies (and profits) to the system. For them, it’s a matter of free-market principles (e.g., greed). For the ILWU, it’s a matter of long-term survival. When those forces collide, things are bound to get ugly.
And ugly they are. Today is day four of a lockout by the PMA – a pre-emptive measure to gain leverage in the negotiations. It is costing the economy more than $1 billion per day, and if it goes on, those costs will escalate exponentially. Trade on the West Coast is at a standstill. Container ships wait at anchor. Unloaded cargo is piling up on the docks. Very soon the effects will start to be felt throughout the economy as inventories draw down and manufacturing processes grind to a halt for lack of materials.
The negotiations are not going smoothly. This isn’t a lawyerly disagreement or an empty pose. It’s a dance of death. The ILWU has a firm grip on the tender bits of the PMA and is squeezing like hell to bring them to their knees. The PMA is slashing desperately, trying to cut off the ILWU’s hand at the wrist. The PMA knows that even if the ILWU relaxes its grip upon a settlement, the hand will still be there, ready to squeeze again. And the ILWU knows if it lets go, the PMA will cut it off anyway.
If this sounds like most labor disputes, there’s an important difference to keep in mind. You can close a steel mill. You can move union textile jobs to Mexico or Alabama. But you can’t move the Pacific Ocean. There are only a few places to bring ships into the United States on the West Coast: the costs of bypassing them would be prohibitive and logistically unsound.
The PMA, businesses who rely on imports, and consumers can howl at the added costs. Efficiency zealots, labor haters and libertarians can wag their fingers and grind their teeth. But it’s not going to change the minds of the men and women who depend on the current system for their livelihood and who understand the stakes of the game. The position of the docks – and hence the dockworkers – in the global economy is such that the great impersonal forces of the market may, just this once, have to slide over and make room at the table for a few tough bastards who won’t give in.
9:49:49 AM 
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