coming to an agreement.

to make the same as the chairman of Evergreen Shipping.

I personally have known a few dockworkers and none have any complaints at all about the pay or the job. Unless it's at contract time.

And while the dangers are similar to those of any construction job, automated container cranes are nothing like the old days of breakbulk.

It's not the '30s any more and the what's on the waterfront isn't a movie.

I'm sure the suits make much, much more. Should they?

Also the hours are terrible and many of the things they do expose them to the elements. It's very tough work and they deserve to be paid very well.

It's also essential that they get excellent health care benefits and retirement, because as I said it's dangerous work and there are frequent injuries.

The unfortunate reality is that there's a cycle of injury/illegal firing/ suing to get one's job back that's very common in the industry, and it makes it very difficult for people to keep their heads above water, even with union protection.

As a retired airline pilot, I could only have wished to make the money and had the time off the press said I did whenever contract negotiations rolled around. The MSM is not the worker's friend.

The MSM is just a corporate mouthpiece and even frame that reporting via a corporatist view.

I've seen so many time over the decades they'll either quote inflated figures of hourly pay for the rank and file by including overtime and benefits ( while studiously ignoring management benefits and stock options in an attempt to make their compensation appear lower ) or they'll ignore ignore negative key provisions for any pay increases. ( a pay hike but creating a "B scale" of a lower paid group, or rule changes that will cut headcount, or cuts in other areas.

Another thing they'll do is quote any pay hike offered in isolation of past events; such as a 2 or 3 percent raise following previous concessions of 10 or 20 percent or more.

All designed to keep one half of the working class to resent the other, and by extension, barking up any other tree than that the plutocracy has climbed. It seems to play right into corporatists hands as so many fall for it.

Devious bastards, the lot of them.

coming up, media broadcasts the overpaid longshoreman meme. It isn't true because longshoremen are not guaranteed work every day. That depends on what's at the dock and what the labor rotation is. During one strike, when I was a kid, and times were tough, my father said that he put his life on the line every day unloading ships, just like he had in the Pacific for 4 years during WWII and that he expected to make a good enough living to own a home, a car, take a vacation, provide health care for his family and send his kids to college. The ILWU is what industrial labor unions were designed to be. It should be the model for all working people everywhere.

Note that the focus is on businesses losing money instead of on workers' rights.

People who read these articles have grown so used to the bias that most don't even realize the extent to which they are being manipulated.

Coincidentally, 80 years ago, the Pacific Coast witnessed one helluva a strike.

"my favorite commie"

What's interesting about the era is that there were lots of Communists in the labor movement. (Bridges in SF, the Dunne brothers in the Teamsters strike in Minneapolis, Louis Budenz and company in the Toledo Auto-Lite strike.) Most of the rank and file weren't Communists and they had no illusions about the politics of some of their leaders. They knew that some of their key leaders were Communists. Yet they respected them for the way they organized and stood up for the rights of workers.

It's kind of a pity (although somewhat understandable) the way the modern labor movement tends to sanitize its own history. The truth is that some of the most effective strikes were driven by the locals and called in open defiance of the cautions of the national unions

There are great things to see—just beyond the shipping docks...

It's an area of San Pedro, CA that has a lot of potential. They are trying to build it up, but it's slow going.
Visit sometime! It's at the end of the 110 freeway.

There is an amazing marina (Cabrillo marina...we walk our pup there all the time), and Cabrillo beach (a man made beach, with an awesome jetty (that we named our dog after) and it's etched by high cliffs that will lead you to Point Fermin—where there's a lighthouse and a beautiful park (each summer in the evening they have Shakespeare in the park). There's so much to see in this area. I just LOVE it!!!!

Sorry for the side notes. But seeing the area in the news always gets me going. San Pedro is amazing, and if you ask me, the port is the ugly weak spot—although, I know it's the money driver.

propaganda from Fox, Limpballs, Savage, and the rest of the MSM have weakened unions terribly. I live around many of the world's largest refineries on the Texas Gulf coast, union membership is way down and most of these idiots vote Republican because "Democrats want to take my guns." Union leadership has trouble getting them to meetings, paying dues, electing candidates... They are not willing to sacrifice much for the unions and union leadership is aging and increasingly out of touch.
Plants like BP Texas City, which blew up killing 15 and injuring thousands in 2005, are run on the cheap and way more dangerous than they already were from the nature of the activity and the union was powerless to stop it. The jobs pay well and the plants keep them in fear that they will lose it all and go non-union if they rock the boat.