The recent port strike featured this Washington Post report: Biden may face tough choices as port strike continues. The subtitle read “The White House has firmly backed the union, but Democrats are eager to avoid economic disruptions weeks before Election Day.”
My emphasis.
But should the president be taking any side in a private contractual dispute? A statesman wouldn’t. But America has few real statesmen these days. And Joe Biden is as far from a statesman as you will ever see. I analyzed this issue in a Facebook post:
“Biden on Tuesday urged the port employers to produce an offer to the striking workers that includes a “meaningful increase” in their wages, citing the dangerous work they did during the pandemic.”
I find it an absolute obscenity the way the Biden Administration has reacted to the dockworkers strike. It’s true that America has long been short on political statesmen—politicians who recognize that, once in office, they put their fiduciary responsibilities to represent the entire nation before their personal political interests.
But this administration, in brazenly throwing the weight of the federal government behind the dockworkers and against the shipping companies, has sunk to an unbelievable low point. This is a private contractual dispute, and the government should not be pressuring one side or the other on the issues. True statesmen would maintain strict neutrality unless laws are being broken, which for now I don’t think is the case.
This administration, from the President on down, is a gang of small-minded political hacks who can’t distinguish between a political campaign and the heavy responsibility of actually governing a great country. By taking sides, Biden and his ilk are likely lengthening the strike and its cascading hardships, likely inflaming the situation, and in the process throwing industries, businesses, employees, and consumers across the economy under the bus. They are a disgrace to this nation.
The Post also reported:
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said in a statement Wednesday that “this strike is about fairness,” calling for “a fair share” of shipping profits for union workers and blasting her Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, for his overall record on labor issues when he was in the White House.
So everything I said about Biden also applies to Kamala Harris. And why should the shipping companies share their profits with the workers? Those profits legitimately belong to the companies’ shareholders, just as the workers’ wages legitimately belong to the workers. If, in hard times when their profits are low or non-existent, someone suggested that the workers “share” their wages with the shipping companies, Harris and her ilk would no doubt scream bloody murder.
Related Reading:
2018 SCOTUS ‘Agency Fee’ Ruling a Victory for the Rights of Working People
NLRB ‘Grants’ Students ‘Right to Unionize,’ Which Really Means Power to Coerce
The Future of Organized Labor Should Be Volunterism
End “Collective Bargaining Rights” and “Right-to-Work” Laws, my article in The Objective Standard
End Government Intrusion into Labor-Management Contracts
Law-Favored Unions are Quasi-Criminal Organizations
No comments:
Post a Comment