U.S. Ports Rank Near the Bottom for Efficiency
Bubba
03 Oct
With a U.S. dockworkers strike currently halting about half of the country’s ocean shipping, we take a look at how well our ports work in the first place. (Noahpinion)
The latest: The International Longshoremen’s Association strike shut down 36 major ports in the U.S. Monday evening, after the union’s 45,000 members rejected a 50% pay bump.
The union wants a 61.5% raise for workers, and perhaps more importantly, a total ban on automation at the ports.
Per a J.P. Morgan analysis, the strike could cost the U.S. economy $3.8 to $4.5 billion a day.
ILA president Harold J. Daggett (who earned more than $800,000 last year):
When my men hit the streets from Maine to Texas, every single port locked down. You know what's going to happen? I'll tell you. First week, be all over the news every night, boom, boom, second week. Guys who sell cars can't sell cars, because the cars ain't coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week, malls are closing down. They can't get the goods from China. They can't sell clothes. They can't do this. Everything in the United States comes on a ship. They go out of business. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren't coming in. The steel's not coming in. The lumber's not coming in. They lose their job.
The data: According to the World Bank, America's largest ports are among the least efficient globally.
The Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach ranked last out of 370 ports in the World Bank's ranking.
The Port of New York and New Jersey, the second-largest in the U.S., ranked 251st.
The Port of Savannah, the third-largest U.S. port, was near the bottom as well, ranking 367th.
Contrast: China’s Yangshan Port in Shanghai led the world in throughput last year, moving 49 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of cargo, compared to New York and New Jersey’s 7.8 million.
In fact, Yangshan alone processes more cargo than all U.S. ports combined.
Much of China’s success in transforming the global shipping industry can be traced back to investment in automation.
Yangshan bills itself as “the world’s largest automated container terminal with the highest level of automation around the globe.” (See it in action here.)
Political blogger Noah Smith:
Is it right that the livelihoods of millions of Americans should hang on the whims of 50,000 dockworkers? Is it smart to give a single union the power to shut down a large portion of America’s critical infrastructure? Collective bargaining is important, but there should be limits on how destructive we allow that bargaining process to be.
Bubba’s Two Cents
The public’s support for unions has been steadily rising over the past decade. Last year, Americans overwhelmingly backed striking autoworkers over big car manufacturers. A growing number of people believe corporations are squeezing the little guy.
On paper, conditions are ripe for the ILA to garner public sympathy for its cause. But it seems like the union’s going out of its way to squander the labor movement’s goodwill and blatantly holding fellow workers in adjacent industries hostage.
