Union thugs accused of California port delays

 National Review:

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The Biden administration has responded with an initiative that is perfectly Bidenesque: vague and fuzzy about the details, offering the appearance of action but very little of the real thing. The administration says it brokered a deal under which the twin California ports now operate around the clock. The 24/7 operation began “weeks ago,” according to White House flack Jen Psaki.

You will not be entirely surprised to find that this is not true.

Port authorities tell the Long Beach Post that there is no terminal at either facility currently operating 24/7. What has happened is that the port authority has launched a pilot program under which one terminal at Long Beach (there are seven) will operate 24 hours a day Monday through Thursday. The rest of the week, it will revert to its usual restricted hours. No other terminal is offering 24-hour operations at this time, and none has announced plans to do so.

If there ever is an actual transition to 24/7 operations at the ports, it will take months or years to implement. And it will not solve the fundamental problem — instead, it almost certainly will only replace one rigid and inflexible labor arrangement with a different rigid and inflexible labor arrangement.
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The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are not alone in their problems. The same global supply-chain disruptions that have complicated their operations have done the same at other major ports around the world. And the same labor disruptions — notably, a shortage of truck drivers — have challenged cargo operations everywhere from Rotterdam to Immingham. On top of all this, we have a shortage of warehouse space and the chassis used to transport containers by truck.

The California ports are not dealing with unique problems — but they are uniquely bad at dealing with them: When it comes to the timely unloading of ships, San Pedro is by far the least efficient port, according to industry experts, underperforming not only sophisticated global competitors such as Hamburg and Singapore but also far underperforming U.S. ports such as New York and Houston.

One of the distinctions that unfortunately gets abraded in our political debate is that there is a difference between a problem with labor unions and a problem with these labor unions. In 2020, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents the San Pedro dockworkers, was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy after a $94 million judgment against it in a corruption case involving illegal labor practices. It was using “work stoppages, slowdowns, safety gimmicks, and other coercive actions,” the court found, part of an effort to pry jurisdiction over some work away from another union. That judgment has since been reduced to $19 million — but that’s just haggling over the price of corruption.
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What is needed is a Congressional investigation of the ports and also California policies that facilitate the slow movement of goods to markets.  I fear that is unlikely while Democrats control Congress because they are likely to protect California goofiness and the laziness of union thugs.  We are already seeing the dysfunction of the Biden administration in dealing with the problem along with the AWOL head of the Transportation Department.  Apparently, Biden who loves mandates refuses to mandate work at the terminals or his own Transportation Secretary.