Paul Berger of The Wall Street Journal tells his readers that retailers say they can weather a short shutdown, but prices are likely to rise, and shortages might grow in a prolonged walkout. Berger writes:
Dockworkers walked off their jobs at dozens of ports from Maine to Texas at midnight, launching a strike that threatens to rattle the American economy five weeks ahead of the presidential election.
Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents 45,000 dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, began picketing early Tuesday at cargo terminals that handle more than half of American import and export volumes as the contract with port employers expired.
“This is going down in history what we’re doing here,” Harold Daggett, the head of the union, told hundreds of dockworkers on the picket lines at the East Coast’s busiest port at New York-New Jersey. “Nothing is going to move without us.”
Daggett rejected an offer late Monday of a 50% wage increase over six years, an increase from an earlier proposed 40% increase in wages, along with other improvements in benefits. […]
Tim Ryan, owner of Square 1 Farms, a Sunrise, Fla.-based importer that sells asparagus to supermarkets such as Walmart, Kroger and Wegmans, said he is having to fly in vegetables that would usually arrive by containership. He is adding about 50 cents a pound to the prices he charges stores to cover the higher airfreight costs.
“Either supermarkets elect to absorb that cost or they will pass it on,” Ryan said.
Read more here.
