$147,000 A Year Just For Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay

IBD reports:

Unions: The entire port system on America's West Coast could shut down within a week due to a labor impasse. The country should take this moment to give thanks that private-sector union membership is falling.

The 29 ports running north from San Diego to Bellingham, Wash., are the hub of America's Asian and Pacific cargo traffic. Forty percent of the country's trade depends on these dynamic harbors.

Already there's a work slowdown that is "making life difficult," says Kelly Kolb, vice president of government affairs for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. A complete shutdown — which could follow a weekend suspension of cargo loading — "could derail the economy," she says.

Shippers have made two formal offers since last May to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, but the labor bosses aren't budging.

So what is the union fighting for?

The ILWU is demanding 3% annual raises over five years — which the shippers have agreed to — and some changes in the arbitration system.

Those might sound like reasonable demands for a minimum-wage worker. But the men who work the docks make far in excess of minimum wage.

In fact, according to the union's own material, the average dockworker makes $147,000 in annual salary and pulls in $35,000 a year in employer-paid health care benefits. Pensions pay $80,000 a year.

That salary is well beyond the average American's personal income — about $43,000 annually — and we doubt that the average dockworker is worth $147,000 a year to his employer.

Special privileges in the law leads to monopoly: the essence of the rent-seeking society.