1000 Saturdays: Week 0004 Part 2

(first published 9/28/2024)

This Week’s Highlights: Possible longshoremen’s strike; Police officer dies in traffic accident; Missing climber in Yellowstone National Park; Rachel Carson and “Silent Spring”

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International News Item:

While this would seem to be a National News Item, I can tell you that this impacts people, companies, countries at both ends of the situation. There is a dockworker/longshoreman strike pending in the USoA due to contract negotiaions that stalled back in June 2024. This would idle about 45,000 workers across the country at 36 ports of entry to the USoA, half of all ports available. The largest ports, places like NYC, Norfolk, Savanah, Brunswick and Houston would grind to a halt for offloading ships bringing products to America. At this time it appears that ports like LA, San Diego and other West Coast places would not be impacted…yet. Worse, it would halt all shipping leaving those ports and 29 others on the East and Gulf Coasts from the USoA.

There hasn’t been a nationwide longshoremen’s strike in this country since 1977, just after the Oil Embargo and the US economy shut down that 1973 and the new OPEC pushed onto the country. Then, like now, the contracts were all either expiring or expired. Both sides sought to make the best deal they could with both sides thinking they held power cards that made a strike impossible. Not surprisingly, both sides were wrong.