Biden-Harris escaped a disastrous longshoremen’s strike by accident

Most Americans may not realize it, but the country just avoided a massive crisis last week as the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) strike ended relatively quickly and painlessly, thanks in large part to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Had the strike continued, American consumers would have experienced shortages everywhere and the economy would have been ruined.

The reasons for the strike were nothing unusual. The ILA negotiated a new six-year contract with its employer, the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX). And although the USMX made an “offer of a nearly 50 percent wage increase” to its employees, it was not enough and the ILA staged a strike to secure an even larger wage increase and guaranteed protections against automation.

Because the ILA had so much influence in the negotiations, the Biden administration and the USMX were left with few options, none of which were good. They could stay out of the talks and simply try to encourage the USMX to meet the strikers’ extravagant demands, which Biden’s spokespeople tried to do, with little success.

Or the Biden administration could have invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to temporarily halt the strike and force both parties to negotiate. Still, Biden rejected the idea, knowing that the optics of forcing union workers back to the docks would anger a key part of his coalition.

Or the Biden administration could actively force the USMX to give in to the demands. Given the high salaries the longshoremen already enjoyed and the fact that they were clearly exploiting their unwarranted stranglehold on the American economy, giving them everything they asked for would also be bad optics since they were showing weakness and potentially creating an untenable situation that would make the cost of using the ports prohibitively high.

Then something actually happened. Out of nowhere, Gov. Ron DeSantis took action and deployed the National Guard to Florida ports. Unlike the president and his surrogates, DeSantis has a state to govern — one devastated by one of the worst hurricanes in modern history — and no time to deal with the ILA.

He made this clear in his statement on the decision: “Unlike the federal government, Florida is taking decisive action to ensure that our economy continues to function and that Hurricane Helene victims have access to what they need to rebuild.”

Hours later, the ILA inexplicably ended its strike and settled for a 62 percent pay increase, after demanding 77 percent and agreeing to revisit the matter in January to clarify all the details.

Although the strike was resolved quickly, there is reason to believe that problems of this kind will arise again. Therefore, it would be beneficial for everyone to learn a few lessons before making a choice at the ballot box next month.

First, Ron DeSantis has proven once again why he is America’s best governor. If he had not taken the actions he did, the strike would have lasted much longer and cost the country over half a billion dollars per day. More importantly, it would have significantly hindered efforts to rescue and assist the countless victims of Hurricane Helene.

Second, Biden has proven once again why he is one of America’s worst presidents. When the strike began, he took no action and was prepared to continue it. Yes, it would have destroyed the economy, but he knows the corporate media would cover him like anything else.

Even more fundamentally, the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for creating the conditions for the strike in the first place. As columnist Jeffrey Tucker recently noted, much of this had to do with inflation: “Inflation [created the conditions for the strike] The decline in purchasing power has the most dramatic impact on wage workers, while it affects the wealthy much less severely. As a result, these longshoremen look at their bills, food prices, rising rents and insurance payments and then realize how well management is doing and eventually something falls apart.”

This leads to the final point: in many ways, ILA workers have no one to blame but themselves for their problems. With their demands, they are forcing themselves out of their own industry and essentially asking employers to replace them with robots and foreign workers.

Pro-worker writers like Sohrab Ahmari may celebrate the union for playing hardball, but this kind of behavior easily becomes counterproductive and destructive. Workers should be rewarded (as they usually are) for becoming more productive and skilled, not for stopping production and causing the company to crash.

Furthermore, it is unions like the ILA that vote for the Democrats and donate to their election campaigns. In return, Democrats opened the border and printed trillions more dollars, bringing in cheap labor to replace union workers and triggering higher prices that make them poorer. Fortunately, some union members are coming to the realization that it’s ultimately better to vote for Trump because of his promises to close the border, deport illegal immigrants and lower inflation.

However, too many other union members will continue to vote for Democrats like Kamala Harris, who long ago abandoned them in favor of global elites who aggressively oppose private unions and collective action. Right now they may be able to make and negotiate better deals, but that influence is quickly diminishing and will be completely gone if the Democrats win another four years. And next time there will be no Ron DeSantis to save them.