Dockworkers deserve plaudits: Opposing view
Dockworkers up and down the West Coast are practically drowning in crocodile tears.
Newfound concern for workers across the economy has everyone from the FedEx CEO to the Editorial Board of USA TODAY howling over port congestion. They blame unionized workers for everything from dwindling auto parts supplies in the Midwest to french fry shortages in Japan.
It's a depressingly familiar bait and switch. Pay no attention to the billions in profits shippers are raking in, or the fact that it's the port operators bottlenecking cargo by cutting shifts and closing ports for days on end. Instead, blame the workers laboring in this difficult and dangerous occupation because they still carry a union card and their wages don't hover around the poverty line.
Longshore workers on the West Coast earn $26 to $41 an hour, and they have excellent health care and retirement benefits. In short, they have the kind of jobs we need more of — jobs that allow working-class men and women to buy homes and send their kids to college free from crushing debt.
These standards aren't the result of enlightened corporate decision-making. They are the product of struggle. Longshore workers have fought for 80 years to get a fair share of the fruits of their labor. Today's standoff is just the latest battle.
Fifty years ago, more jobs had comparable pay and benefits. But after a generation of free-trade deals, deregulation and Wall Street shenanigans — supported by politicians on both sides of the aisle — most of those jobs have been destroyed.
We live in the richest country in the history of humankind. But in our upside-down economy, CEOs make 331 times as much as the average worker, and far more folks will face a lifetime of Walmart wages than will end up on Easy Street.
The primary reason? Just one in 10 workers belongs to a union today, down from a peak of one in three. Unions are the only reliable way to ensure that working people share in our nation's dizzying wealth.
That's why union dockworkers should be applauded, not demonized, for defending good working-class jobs.
Mark Brenner is the director ofLabor Notes. He writes at the urging of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.