Biden makes supply chain worse by kowtowing to unions
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What Biden, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Port Envoy John Porcari, and other senior aides failed to mention in recent days was how, even in filling round-the-clock shifts, the ILWU's port contracts are root causes of the delays.
By design, unions practice "featherbedding" to maximize pay for members, which simultaneously drives up production costs for employers while driving down labor efficiency. In particular, ILWU's holiday pay and stiff opposition to automation helped create the current freight backlogs and make clearing them even more difficult.
Unlike nearly every other first-world economy, the United States's ports do generally not operate on a 24/7 basis, something the administration has stated in recent weeks it hopes to change in the future.
According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute , however, the outright cost of ILWU contracts makes that effectively impossible.
"[The ILWU] contract limits the port to just three shifts in a day: two lasting eight hours and another lasting just five hours. All three go from Monday to Friday. These shifts overlap slightly, but they would still only total 21 hours even if they didn't. Keeping the ports open for 24 hours would require the port to pay overtime every single day," CEI research fellow Sean Higgins said. "On top of that, the contract says that any work done on weekends or holidays is automatically time and a half, too. So, even if the port could offer shifts with a five-day workweek that started on, say, Wednesday, it would have to pay those workers the equivalent of six days."
The ILWU's resistance to automation in any form has also landed the ports of L.A. and Long Beach at 328 and 333, respectively, in the World Bank’s Port Performance Index.
"We were totally opposed to fully automated terminals and got the guarantees from our employers that they would not construct them during the life of our new package," then-ILWU President Harold Dagget said when negotiating the current port contract. "Now more than ever, dockworkers from around the world, joined by all maritime workers, must unite to fight this important battle against automation."
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It is yet another example of how Democrats and their allies make the US less competitive and efficient. Shippers should switch to ports that are not bound by these restrictive practices.
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