Putin and the Ayatollah have Obama in Training for the Unions

by Karl Spain

Dockworkers in California, at 29 ports, are striking in unison, refusing to work 3 or 4 days a week, holding up tens of billions in port traffic, trade, and business according to multiple news reports.

The supply chain that starts with raw materials and ends up delivering a finished product to you impacts the cost of everything in the economy. When the supply chain runs smoothly, prices are lower, your budget balances, you can make the car payment.

When the supply chain is not efficient, because for instance the main suppliers of oil, our transportation fuel — form a cartel, and hike the cost of the raw product at one end, it comes out much more expensive at the other.

In this case for oil, the foreign imposed cartel disrupted the natural supply chain for years on end. In the case of the recent strike by the Longshoreman’s Union in California, which has shut down 29 ports and is impacting the cost of every imported and exported good in the U.S., to the tune of a trillion dollars, this is home grown lunacy.

The President needs to make a phone call or two, ringing his friends in the labor union movement. This isn’t some bad faith strike over unfair wages, the actual union members are happy with the terms of the new contract and all the major issues were resolved through negotiation except this last minute change and demand by the union leadership.

O.K., the union wants a last minute change, fine, fight it out, but don’t hold up the entire economy with a 2-union coordinated strike, designed to cripple the economy, especially right now. This reminds me of when the coal workers struck during WWII or the GM workers illegally struck the Malibu car plant because they knew it was the only car GM had to sell that was making money and popular.

When the unions lose sight of what’s good for the places where they work, what’s good this country, what’s good for themselves, what’s good for the economy, what’s legal, what’s moral and simply grab for more power because they have the leverage, the President should act. He can outlaw them, just break them, Reagan did.

Obama would break a corporation for such illegal and immoral behavior if it wasn’t a Wall Street firm, bank, or insurance firm, all of whom also appear immune, but shouldn’t be.

If that’s a Union bridge too far for him, I understand, but he could call his friends at Labor and say, work it out, but keep working.

If not, I’ll order you to work and that won’t look good for either of us.

After dealing with Putin and the Ayatollah Khamenei, the union guys and gals should be a pushover.