165K per year?? Yeah, right!

We're back to me sitting in front of a keyboard and drawing a blank which is reallynothing new. In order for me to have made many of the 1200+ posts I have done this many times.

I just sit down and start writing. The first paragraph is generally the hardest and then after that things seem to just take right off.

I saw something out there about a possible longshoreman's strike because some clerks want a raise and they are supposidly making 165K per annum.

Yeah, right.

Let's look at what these guys have into their job. Likely they have little more than a high school education (if that), a TWIC card costing them about $125, union dues and that's likely about it.

They have no real skin in the game. They don't hold any stock in the company they work for and really have little to lose.They have little invested in the game yet they seem to think thay are worth 165K per year.

Prior to the sixties, longshoremen worked their asses off unloading ships by hand. It often took days to unload a break-bulk freighter and haul the stuff ashore onto various trucks to be delivered. Then came technology which the longshoremen fought tooth and nail but it overcame and the modern ports we have today evolved.

Today what was done by hand is now done by machine and it is pretty much a snap. Crews have been replaced by machine operators and a ship that arrives in port isn't likely to be there unloading for very long. The time is now measured in hours instead of days.

Still the longshoremen have evolved from being little more than grunt laborers to machine operators, most of which don't really require a whole lot of training. You don't see courses in colleges for longshoremenand I have never seen a trade school for it, either.

In short, being a longshoreman is just another job of labor that doesn't require years of study and for someone to ask something as insane as 165K for a job like that is beyond the rediculous and well into the sublime.

Yet I guess 165K for a basic job of laboring isn't enough and they want even more.

For years the companies have absorbed the increasing rates for these guys simply by raising rates and passing the cost onto the consumer and I suppose that it is likely that they might do it again to avert a strike. Maybe not, though.

Maybe it is time to tell these greedy people that enough is enough and take an agressive sand on this and lock them out and run in a bunch of scabs and not settle with the unions until they decide that they are a whole lot better off than they think they are.

One of the things that Ronald Reagan did back when he was in office was to break the PATCO air traffic controller's union and I think he did the right thing when they threatened to illegally strike and cripple the country.

I was once in a union, the Seafarer's and I always got a hoot out of how they used to and still do brag about how they won WW2 singlehandedly. Of course they don't tell you that maratime unions threatened to strike during the war until FDR told them that if they did they would be replaced by sailors of the United States Navy.

They figured they had the world by the ass when the thought that they could use the lives of US troops as a bargaining chip. Truth is, those guys simply should have been shot out of hand. Had this been ordered, FDR could have gotten away with it by telling the American people that he wasn't bargaining with people that wanted to use the lives of their children to bargain with.

You have to remember that 12,000,000 Americans served during WW2. That's a lot of sons and when you consider that each son has 2 parents you have the immediate support of 36 million people to start with.

While I am not 100% anti-union because it's likely that if management had their way their employees would live in mud huts. A lot of companies don't care. A lot of investors do not care how a company makes money just so long as it pays the dividends and makes money for them.

What is interesting to note is that likely a lot of the union bosses and rank and file members with 401Ks probably have a lot of money invested in nonunion companies and THEY don't care just so long as their 401K grows.

These union members with their money invested in non-union outfits are doing exactly what the people they hate in management are doing. They are investing in companies simply to make money. I can't say as I blame them, but it's pretty two faced to me. Ask any of them to take a consession and it ain't going to happen.

Still, back to $165K/year longshoremen.

What's reasonable? What can a guy expect with a high school diploma and nothing invested in his company reasonable expect?

Several years ago a guy I know on the docks told me what he thought and it make sense to me.

'The guy packin' a lunch pail deserved a halfway decent place to live in a safe neighborhood, a decent vehicle to get around in, to be able to feed his family and the option of just a little extra to either be able to take a nice vacation every few years OR put it aside to help school his kids."

It was an interesting observation from a guy that was doing exactly what he was doing. He also chided that he was doing a lot better than that. He was grateful for that.

On the other hand, a guy that opens a company is risking one hell of a lot more than an hourly employee. He's the guy that has the guts to take the bull by the horns and pony up his venture capital, float a loan or whatever and start a company. He's the guy that has to worry about where his employees paycheck is coming from.

In some cases the risks are a lot more than money. Over the years I have known a number of commercial fishermen that have ponied up the money to have a boat built only to die at sea while trying to make a living.

He's entitled to take what he can get from his investment just so long as he is honest and plays by the rules. He isn't one of the fans in the stands that have just bought a ticket. He's the guy in the arena. He's the guy that has whatever he can gain to gain and everything to lose. If he succeeds, fine. If he loses, so be it.

I have a pretty hard time supporting a longshoreman that may or may not have finished high school has a $130 TWIC card in his pocket, has nothing invested in his field of endeavor and thinks he's worth $165K.

I'll bet a lot of other people feel the same way.



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