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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Though blue collar, these longshoreman are extremely well paid. With overtime, 1/3rd of the union members earn over $200k per year.

Where are you getting this from? Per an NPR article, the current top rate is $39/hour. With time and a half and regular double time on Sundays and Holidays you'd have to average 70–80 hours per week to hit 200k. While I'm sure there are some guys who can keep up with such a schedule for a full year, even the most hardened blue-collar guys I know can't work that much. And the way they talk about the guys who do, they're the ones who end up dying of heart attacks three weeks after retiring.

This is all before an election season. The Biden administration could in theory wield the Taft-Hartley Act to break the strike, much like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. But breaking a union, even a very well-paid one, is not a great look right before the election.

Biden has already said that he won't invoke Taft-Hartley, and that he's encouraging the sides to reach a resolution. This is the correct move from a political perspective; he can't force a contract upon management, so Taft-Hartley is the only card he has to play other than (possibly) mediator. Republicans have been trying to court unions in recent years (and have been pretty successful among the rank and file), but most of them still harbor many of the sentiments expressed downthread. Hell, even Trump complimented Elon Musk on his supposed union-busting tactics. If there is a strike it will take a hell of a lot of restraint for Trump, or any other Republican, to blame Biden for not sending them back to work. Putting this fornt and center within a month of the election isn't a good look.

Of course, I don't think Trump is stupid enough to make that kind of error. More than likely he does his usual schtick where he invokes his self-ordained status of Master Negotiator and says that if he were president then this strike wouldn't have happened because he would have been able to mediate an agreement. At which point Kamala Harris informs him that if he's so great at it then he could end the strike immediately be leaving the campaign trail to mediate a deal. There is, of course, zero chance that Trump actually does this, and if he tries, there's little chance that he'd be able to do anything (if the parties involved even let him get near the dispute), at which point he has to move on to do something else. But my guess is that no one will make a big deal about this.

Per an NPR article, the current top rate is $39/hour. With time and a half and regular double time on Sundays and Holidays you'd have to average 70–80 hours per week to hit 200k.

This is a mob connected union, widespread time card fraud is extremely plausible.

You got a source for that, bro?

I used Perplexity, although some of their source data may behind paywalls. The numbers jive with other sources I have seen on Twitter, which have asserted median wages above 150k, with foremen making up to half a mil.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-much-do-ila-east-coast-lon-VkXsWI_qRN..SODTx.9QUg

Biden has already said that he won't invoke Taft-Hartley, and that he's encouraging the sides to reach a resolution.

As Biden himself knows, "encouraging" can take many forms. His admin honestly doesn't give a care for the Constitution, so they might just executive order a resolution, and then let the legal system throw it out in 24 months. The election is in 5 weeks.

But I'll confess I don't know what will happen. My heuristics are this:

  1. The sides seems really far apart

  2. But, it's a political football. The uniparty will do what it takes to resolve this in a way favorable to Kamala's election chances.

#1 and #2 seem at odds with each other. So the most elegant solution is delay tactics, therefore I think delay is the most likely. Possibly there will be a symbolic strike for a day or two. Low confidence all around.