on Boats, Unions and Pies

http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-u-ports-drive-control-costs-leads-labor-060425219--finance.html

"When Charles Spencer became a crane operator at the Jacksonville Port Authority in Florida in 1971, it took at least a day for 200 dockworkers to unload 160-pound sacks of coffee from a cargo ship.  Now the same job takes 20 dockworkers, assisted by massive robots programmed to lift and stack containers, an hour."

" It all comes down to who gets the rewards from the investment the port operators have put into increasingly automated equipment: the companies and their shareholders or the unionized dockworkers."

     Those quotes from the above article show exactly what is wrong with so many unions and people in general.  Unions want more and more money to do jobs that are made easier and faster as time goes by with the aid of technology.  People and Unions in particular seem to have this attitude that "Sure everyone else spent a hell of a lot of money improving everything, but we deserve to get a cut of it even though all we do is work for them."  The answer to the question of who gets the rewards?  The Companies and their shareholders.  Simple as that.  If you want to get in on the booty, invest in the company.

"Florida is a "right to work" state, meaning employees can't be forced to pay union dues. Terminals not bound by the ILA contract work rules can be more flexible about starting times, the number of workers and pay rates.  It limits my opportunity to go out and compete for new business," Kelly said. "It's pretty much impossible because our labor agreement with the ILA makes us non-competitive."

      For the most part I am not anti-union.  I feel that unions in the past did a lot for Labor and for Industry.  However, when a company can longer be competitive because of Union Demands that far exceed the norm, then things need to change.  We think of ourselves as the greatest nation in the world, but when one looks beyond that delusional state, they see that we lag behind in everything from Education to Shipping.

     It is all well and good to want a bigger piece of the pie.  However, if you keep scarfing up more and more pie for yourself then eventually you won't have any more pie and the company that makes the pie will have been forced out of business.  Meanwhile, other people who have eaten smaller slices of pie and shared that pie will still eat and the companies that produce their pie will be going strong.

(Huh, suddenly I am hungry.)

End of Rant