WHAT SHIP DID YOU COME IN ON?: My dad was a longshoreman. It's a really tough and thankless job with near-zero return on investment, save a pretty basic blue-collar paycheck. It's labor-intensive and these guys and gals are often in harms way. I've never had a job remotely similar - remote is a key word here. The job takes place on the outmost ports of our coastline, and what these people do is basically act as the haulers of goods and supplies from foreign countries and the deep seas. It's literally the point at which supply and demand meet head-on.
"A stevedore, dockworker, docker, dock laborer, wharfie, wharf rat, and/or longshoreman is a waterfront manual laborer who is involved in loading and unloading ships."
Cargo...Oh, Oh: As the lengthy debacle continues disputes and discussions take place up and down the West Coast. It's a small union that is very powerful in its own right. If you are interested in the ongoing issues you can read about it from various angles - in the Longshore Shipping News or the LA Times, the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee or the Washington Post. Yes, folks, these types of headlines are real and have serious and important social consequences that rock the nature of consumption in general, and keep you from getting, perhaps, the latest from Funko, Hasbro, or NECA. It raises other critical questions as well, as to why more isn't manufactured in the United States, preventing our widespread reliance on foreign labor -- not to even scrape the surface of environmental issues, et al. But on a more basic note, it's perhaps a time to take pause into our already vast collections and goods on hand...and to consider, for a moment, if trade embargos were more stringent and we had to rely on our own good 'ole American ingenuity.
A Story For Our (Precious) Time: So, with the ships backed up and the ports overly congested how does this stand-off become resolved? Well, President Obama has activated his Labor Secretary Tom Perez into action to try and reconcile between the Pacific Maritime Assoc. and the ILWU. Now, mind you, one thing to keep perfectly aware of are the great potential losses in this dispute and reduction of wo/manpower - not to mention the spoilage and revenue. Hauling sh*t takes time, coordination, a lotta sweat and muscle! It is very much the antithesis of where our currently socialized circa 2015, one in which the virtual at-a-click world has rallied away from for over a decade. It seems these push-button times comes a connundrum, we have become caught up in the midst of strange cargo so to speak. With all the automation available, good old fashioned hard physical labor may be re-reviewed as worth more than we orginally thought after all! Speaking of speak - I really like what Gizmodo's Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan had to say about all this.
"I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket. It's my bar of chocolate. Give it to me now." - Veruca Salt
Take Stock Of What You Got: Though if the kernel to the story were just capital (haves/have nots) this would be a boring scenario to mention - instead this is a story about humanity, of infrastructure and of our physical world (greed vs. need: desire, abundance and loss). I will not soon forget living in Oregon, of the monsterous ships that anchored temporarily in Astoria, likely on their way down coast to supply the nation with lots of goodies and shiny new things. I remember thinking how odd and quiet that ten story building sized thing sat there so quietly, remote. I imagine what Astoria must look like right now with the backups further down the coast. Come to think of it, I have lived most of life in a port city: Boston, Halifax, Portland, OR. We can only hope for smooth sailing ahead - otherwise much of the spoils collector's would hope for from the most recent Toy Fair may be quite delayed. So sit tight, be patient, play with the action figures you have already acquired -- and don't get stuck in the headlights. We may still all be like ships passing in the night, but some are without a port to call their own.
PS: A teamster wrote me and said:
"You're right that it touches on all sorts of important questions about our hunger for cheap goods at the cost of jobs as well as unnecessary damage to the environment. With the latest round of elections many states, including Illinois and Michigan, we are facing devastating attacks by the newly elected governors. Organized labor is vitally important to the future of this country. Workers are under attack by corporations who want to decimate salaries, benefits and pensions in the name of higher profits and returns to shareholders but at the detriment of millions of working Americans."