That would raise average wages to about $63 an hour from $39 an hour over the life of the contract.
The union and the port operators said in a statement that they would extend their master contract until Jan. 15, 2025 to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all outstanding issues.
https://xcancel.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1841973125996585431
To them it’s a huge loss compared to what would’ve happened without the union - max 5% annual raises, if that.
That’s like Netflix telling you “hey we didn’t raise our prices enough to keep up with inflation, we’ll now charge you for last 5 year’s inflation in a single payment”
It won’t fly because it wasn’t in the original contract.
Normally I’d agree with you that this sucks, but aren’t they hourly? Hours reduction means pay reduction. If I was hourly, I’d want the ability to work more hours (AND obviously a higher hourly rate to begin with)
You’re talking about this like this isn’t a huge win for these workers, but that’s just not true. Yeah there’s been bad inflation, but minimum, mean and median wages have NOT increased nearly as fast as they should. Hell the minimum in the US has been unchanged for decades. And plenty of people still make minimum (or less in tipped jobs).
Now we just need more sectors to form unions, and strike successfully. In more countries than just the US. Here in EU we make less in tech than longshoremen do in the US whereas in the US, tech salaries are nearly uncapped. Unions could help. And obviously unions in the less well-paid industries are even more important.
This is a ridiculous and liberal lesser-evilism. A pay rise below inflation is a pay cut. This is such an important point which trade unionists have been pushing since forever. We consistently see trade union leaders accepting pay cuts of this nature, against the will of rank and file unionised workers, when there is plenty of momentum for escalated strike action and an actual pay rise, with inflation, is entirely achievable. We absolutely need to be criticising the labour movement shooting itself in the foot.
The labor movement here is probably getting a 10x bigger raise than your average worker in the same timeframe. I can damn near guarantee Walmart isn’t going to raise its wages more than 1 or 2 dollars per hour in the timeframe these guys are getting 24 extra dollars per hour. Hell, they might not give ANY raises since there are mass layoffs happening and unemployment is on the rise.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Accepting pay cuts only serves to aid the capitalist class and dampen working class militancy. Please stop spinning losses as wins. It helps nobody.
It’s not a pay cut if you’re getting an 8% raise YoY when the historic average inflation is closer to 3% and 2024 is shaping up to be lower than that, with 2025 forecast to be lower than 2024.
If they repeat this 6 years from now, they could be making $200k+ annually soon enough, that’s a huge amount of money for your average person.