Posted on 11/30/2012 1:26:45 PM PST by ColdOne
California may find itself in a disastrous fiscal situation, but that won’t stop California’s newly-empowered unions from flexing their muscle. In the aftermath of the failure of Proposition 32, which would have prevented public sector unions from funding politicians, the unions are celebrating their confirmed power by striking. The latest strikes started today with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63, which shut down the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the busiest ports in the United States.
Even though November traffic remains slow at the ports, that doesn’t mean the economic effect will be mitigated. These ports handle approximately 40% of America’s imports.
Shockingly, the strike doesn’t include dockworkers – it’s just the clerical staff at the union, which has now set up picket lines at the terminals at the Port of Los Angeles. The 50,000-member union supports the strikers; 10,000 dockworkers did refuse to cross the picket lines.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Well that could be. I heard one report on the local news that businesses were already feeling it. That may have been misleading. We’ll see.
Indiana is a right to work state.
Well, I hope you’re wrong this time. We’ll see. Wouldn’t put money on it. LOL
This is why on Black friday I went to wal-mart and argued with these vermin. Unions have ruined our country. Worst Schools and education system in the world. Putting companies outta Business they are the treasonous ones. The unions and the people behind them..FU— Unions.
TomKat said basically the same thing.
I know they’d try. I don’t think folks would buy it, but as I told TomKat, I wouldn’t put money on it.
;^)
From NYT, about commerce along the Mississippi River:
“If water levels fall low enough, the transport of $7 billion in agricultural products, chemicals, coal and petroleum products in December and January alone could be stalled altogether.”
I’ve seen that. As I understand it, this has happened before, but not quite to this degree.
Of course GoreBull warming is the cause.
Just wait for global flooding, soon to return to the Mississippi river basin.
I think that’s caused by..., ah...,, yes, GoreBull warming.
>> “ Won’t the totalitarian slave masters simply abolish unions?” <<
.
No, the unions have become their ‘protection’ collectors. They’re the money highway of leftist politics.
How are the labor unions doing in Cuba?
>> “Just wait till TSA does this.” <<
.
I don’t know how they could make it any worse.
Two weeks ago my wife and I crept through 4 hours of lines at the Lima airport to get boarding passes and go through pederist body prodding. Between those lines, the flight, and customs, it took about 16 hours to get from Lima to Sam Francisco.
We’ll find out when Cuban forces land and take over next month.
Found a recent article on Cuban labor unions:
Cuba’s Workers Union (There Is Only One), Reports to the Regime
Posted: 05/11/2012 4:50 pm
If anything distinguishes May Day from other days in the year, it’s not the parade, nor the crowd waving its paper flags. The most striking is the silence that falls over Havana after the mass rally in the Plaza of the Revolution. A stillness interrupted only by the few cars that roam the streets and by some cop who blows his whistle at the corner. All the schools, workplaces, government agencies and bus stops are empty.
This scenario has been repeated for decades, but this year, in 2012, something broke the habitual tedium of the Day of the Workers. Many private businesses, known here as “the self-employeds,” opened their doors despite the holiday, skipping the commemoration to throw themselves into selling pizzas, ice cream, fruit smoothies. While others launched slogans of Revolutionary reaffirmation, they launched products, fishing in the peaceful river left by closed State shops.
It’s expected that at the end of this year around 600,000 Cubans will have take out a license to work in the private sector. Among them will be many who lost their jobs because of the downsizing happening throughout the country. In the coming months, more than 170,000 jobs will be eliminated in the different spheres belonging to the State and the personnel will be relocated to other work or dismissed.
The euphemisms that characterize the official language have reached their highest expression in referring to this unpopular process. The cuts are called “labor reorganization” and people who are left unemployed are classified as “availables.” As if such peculiarities in vocabulary weren’t enough, the only union authorized in the country has supported the decision to “deflate the payrolls to achieve efficiency.”
The Cuban Workers Union has made it clear that its role is to be at the side of the employer, not the employees. A posture that surprises not one of its almost three million members, accustomed to the disciplined paying of their dues, but aware that this organization represents the powers-that-be against the base, and not the inverse.
To this same obedient union more than 80 percent of the more than 370,000 self-employed have subscribed, and one representation of them paraded on May Day. They haven’t signed up to represented or defended, but to avoid problems. They intuit — with good reason — that not joining could suggest they are “apathetic,” “bourgeois,” and in the worst case, “counterrevolutionaries.”
They all, undoubtedly, would prefer an association to defend them from the high taxes, to convene protests over the lack of wholesale markets, and to demand bank loans to support their businesses. Able to choose, they wouldn’t have voted for Salvador Valdes Mesa, the current secretary general of the Cuban Workers Union, whose previous job was in the antagonistic Ministry of Labor.
Instead of the Church in the hands of Luther, our version seems to be the Union caught in the arms of the Boss. A federation that has supported the elimination of half a million jobs by 2015, and that has called for a greater commitment to the government of Raul Castro. A negative legacy of this passive and complicit attitude, will be the refusal of many workers to join its ranks and those of other proletarian organizations. The word “union” in Cuba will have to shake off its current connotations of inaction, to return to that irreverent and autonomous role it once held.
For now, on the platform on May Day, instead of a message of protest slogans, there are calls for discipline, demands for control. Labor disagreement has no place at the Plaza of triumphal slogans and praise for the current system. Not a single block represents the unemployed, not one fist is raised in protest, not one sign calls the authorities to account.
Many of those present have attended for the same reason they’ve registered with the Cuban Workers Union, so as not to be marked as opposed to a political process in which they can no longer believe. They smile for the cameras, some with their children on their shoulders, but nothing in them of the rebellious essence of a Labor Day.
When the parade ends then return home, or venture into the surrounding streets looking for something to eat or drink. They end up buying it at the counter of some self-employed, non-union member who stayed open to conduct business on the holiday.
The next morning the official newspaper, Granma, proudly published the red-letter headline, “This was the more organized and fastest parade” in our history. And for once, Granma is right.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cuba-unions-_b_1510168.html
I think Obama and our limousine liberal class would love living in a Cuban-like USA. Not so much the rank and file union goon or democrat.
Speaking of falling off the fiscal cliff, here’s another:
Castro Tells Cuban Labor Union to Accept Layoffs for Revolution’s Survival
By Blake Schmidt - Nov 1, 2010 12:28 PM PT
Excerpt:
Cuban President Raul Castro told unionists to accept layoffs and reforms that open the way for private enterprise as necessary for the survival of socialism.
“To defend and explain these measures, the working class must learn and be convinced of their importance for the survival of the revolution,” Castro said in an address to the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, the only union recognized by the Communist Party. “Otherwise we will fall off the cliff.”
Castro’s speech was published in the party newspaper Granma as Cuba prepares to dismiss 500,000 state workers by March, affecting 10 percent of the workforce.
The dismissed workers are being encouraged to go into business for themselves, and Granma said the central bank may offer micro-credits to new entrepreneurs as the island faces its worst economic slump since the former Soviet Union ended support in the 1990s.
Imagine that. Cuba’s communist leader tells the dismissed workers they’ll have to fend for themselves, ie, open a business or something. Why, they ought to run the guy out out of the communist utopia on a rail.
oops, meant to ping you to the above.
I don’t get the connection of this article to prop 32. ILWU is not (yet) a public employees union, is it?
The looters have gained control of the asylum.
Also found this (have no idea about the source):
http://www.cubasindical.org/docs/d122104.htm
Background to Labor Rights in Cuba
World Movement for Democracy.
Independent unions, workers’ rights to collective bargaining, and the right to strike are not recognized by the Cuban government. Individuals associated with independent unions are often fired, harassed, arrested, threatened with sanctions, physically attacked, and imprisoned for long periods of time. According to the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU), “Anyone who engages in independent trade union activity runs the risk of being persecuted and losing their job. Workers are required to keep an eye on their colleagues and report any ‘dissident’ activity.”
Independent labor groups have had their property and belongings confiscated, and the state security has infiltrated the movement with state agents. In March 2003, 75 human rights activists, including seven leaders of independent trade unions, suffered harassment and imprisonment and were charged with “treason and conspiracy.” The recent crackdown represented a violation of these workers’ universal rights to freedom of expression and association.
The Cuban government only recognizes one official governmental trade union, the Central de Trabajadores Cubanos (Cuban Worker’s Confederation- CTC). During recent years, several labor leaders have broken with the CTC and formed independent unions. In February 2001, one of these groups, in alliance with several other individual independent labor leaders, formed the Confederacion Obrera Nacional Independeiente de Cuba (International Confederation of Free Labor Organizations- CONIC), which is represented in exile by Federacion de Plantas Eléctricas, Gas y Agua en Exilio (Federation of Electric, Gas and Water Plants in Exile)and composed of representatives from various sectors of society. Federacion is an example of a group working in exile that focuses on raising awareness of Cuban labor rights violations in the international community. Federacion recently produced the Violations of Social and Labor Rights in Cuba report and presented it to the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Mississippi River levels can’t handle handle shipping, union strikes at major west-coast port, just-in-time philosophy....who says you need a Mayan Calendar thingy to be prepping for.
Add in a trucker’s strike like they do once in awhile in Europe where they block the roads and it might be nice to have a stash to dig into for awhile.
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