Los Angeles/Long Beach Port Strike

Michelle Malkin reports, "Port strike update: SoCal at a standstill, shippers move to Mexico, retailers beg Obama for help."

Michelle's discussing the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (featured at the front-page of today's L.A. Times), and she writes:

I am going to continue to post and re-post the FACTS about the striking ILWU clerical workers because pushback against Big Labor’s false narratives is vital. The rest of America’s workers (and those seeking work) need to know what these goons are really up to as they monkey-wrench the economy. The OCU [clerical workers' union] enjoy extremely generous paid time off benefits (with average absenteeism from vacation, sick leave, holidays, and other leaves totaling over 29%, or three and one-half months, of the year). In the face of this absenteeism, the OCU demand that when employees are absent, for whatever reason, the employers must call in a temporary employee to fill the vacancy on the first day and for the duration of the vacancy.

• The OCU also insist that the employers hire a new employee every time an employee retires or quits, even if there is no work for the new employee to perform.
• The OCU’s last written proposal before the strike includes an unlawful demand that employers convert some managers to union-represented clerks as a reward for giving the OCU misleading and/or false information that the OCU sought to use against the employers during contract negotiations…The OCU are already the highest paid clerical workers in America. The employers’ latest proposals would increase OCU annual compensation packages to over $190,000 in wages and benefits by 2016, including:
• Average annual wages up to approximately $90,000;
• Pensions of up to $75,000 per year;
• Maintenance of all benefits in the OCU’s extremely generous health plan, for which the OCU pay nothing (benefits include, e.g., $0 co-pay for generic drugs; $0 for x-rays, diagnostics, and lab tests; $5 office visit co-pays; 90% coverage for infertility; and more);
• Maintenance of all other employment benefits (an average of 12 weeks of paid time off every year; meal and transportation allowances; early retirement with full benefits; education reimbursement; etc.).

Retailers have asked the White House for help. Good luck with that.

Check Michelle's post for all the links. And also, "Port strike watch: ILWU’s shutdown spreads across L.A. and Long Beach."

The ILWU's one of the most militantly radical union organization in the U.S. Founding president Harry Bridges (pictured above with Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Minister under Joseph Stalin), was a secret member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and a suspected agent of Moscow. He led the union through the storied 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike, which is widely cited as a seminal event in the revolutionary workers' battles in U.S. labor history. Today, despite mainstream reports to the contrary, the ILWU has worked closely with the anarcho-communist Occupy Movement to shut down West Coast ports as part of organized labor's revolutionary agitation to destroy capitalism and bring the "ruling classes" to their knees.