Nobody is Talking About THIS PART of The Longshoremen Strike

Nobody is Talking About THIS PART of The Longshoremen Strike. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I could have had class, I could have been a contender,
could have been somebody on the waterfront twenty twenty four.
This is not anyway. Anyway, We're going to talk a
little bit about this doc workers strike and what's taken
place right now. We've got various different counter offers that

(00:40):
have been exchanged. The longshortmen are actually asking for a
significant pay increase in order to just sit down at
the table. It's seventy over the next six years. As
the sands right now, they are on strike. Many of

(01:02):
the importers they kind of saw this coming and they
learned a lot after what happened during COVID, and they
have re routed a lot of their a lot of
their shipments to California. California settled their union initially there
was a couple of years ago now and many also
as well are flying product in. So also brought a

(01:23):
lot of stuff in early for Christmas. Knowing that this
was on the table. This labor union has forty seven
thousand members up and down the East Coast. Joe Biden
not stepping in on this. The last time I think
it was in the California strikes when George W. Bush

(01:48):
was president, where he stepped in and forced them back
to the table. You know, this kind of reminds me
of it. I did the on the Waterfront bit right there.
Great television series is a huge fan of It's actually
one of those few series I've watched several times is
The Wire. And the second season of The Wire has
a lot to do with long short and corruption in

(02:12):
the Baltimore Waterfront and the issues. The issues from the
Wire are some of the issues that that are coming
up in this This just strike today as automation efficiency
and the Wire episode, a lot of the longshoremen they
they went and they saw what was taking place at

(02:32):
other ports around the globe, and they actually recognize that,
you know, their time, the time was coming and things
were changing. Just to put this into perspective, To put
this into perspective, ports in the United States are some
of the least with an out least efficient in the

(02:57):
entire world. The ports in Africa, Kenya, Tanzania are a
hell a lot more efficient than ours, because what you
want to compare to the ports in Japan, Rotterdam, China
blows hours away least efficient ports, some of the least

(03:18):
efficient ports in the world. But you know what about
the workers, some of the highest paid, some of the
highest paid workers running the least efficient ports. Does that
sound at all like capitalism to you? Does it? Oh?

(03:39):
I know there's some people listening right now, protect these jobs. Listen.
Technology changes things again. I remember when when Barack Obama
I had one of his speeches is ridiculous, was talking about, ah,
you know, uh ATM placing tellers out there. Yeah, it did.

(04:02):
It did replace tellers. But also it increased the amount
of employment at the banks because it freed up you know,
time and space to do other things the banks got
involved with. This is just a natural ebb and flow.
Put into perspective with overtime, these long shomen making upwards

(04:25):
a two hundred thousand dollars a year, nothing wrong. I
don't know. I don't have any problem with people making money.
I do have a problem where you, in essence, you're
not allowing an industry to improve or evolve just for
the sake of some labor contract. This is problematic again.

(04:49):
You know where Donald Trump weighs in on this, I
don't know. I know, we'll see, you know, I'm you know,
I haven't really heard much of kind of talking on
the edges. But in order to make America great again,
like he says he wants to do, you need to
make America competitive as well, and having the least efficient

(05:11):
ports in the world with the highest paid workers, which
then makes no sense, makes no sense, is a bit
of a problem. Watchdog on Wall Street dot Com