More Unions: Because The Cost Of Doing Business Was Not High Enough Out Here

It is a common misconception that warehouse workers in the IE are paid less than those in Los Angeles. They are not. Look at the BLS numbers.

The median transportation and materials moving occupation in LA metro pays $12.25.
For Riverside-San Bernardino, it is $13.24.

There, the IE's dirty little secret is out. On average, workers here cost more. The reason is that if labor theory holds, then workers are paid their marginal utility of labor, thus workers in the IE are more productive.

And they should be. The warehouses here are head and shoulders above LA county, so fewer workers can work bigger warehouses.

What bothers me about these "new" unions is that they are not affiliated with the established existing unions. They are trying to shake things by having all these "strikes" and "walkouts" but have done little then get people arrested. To me, it seems like a wildcat strike by a wanna-be union who is hurting their constituents more than helping them.

Business conditions are not favorable here in California, and we do not really need yet another union to muck up the flow of goods.

Just my two cents. Below is the LA times article.

These guys are making some headway, two months ago they were not even quoted in the local papers.



LA Times:

Unions hope to organize Inland Empire warehouse workers

A labor coalition known as Change to Win is focusing on the vast warehouse and distribution hub in the region, which handles goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The Inland Empire has become a new battleground for unions looking to organize warehouse workers and broaden labor's clout in international trade, a $300-billion industry in the Southland.The fledgling movement is backed by a coalition of unions with more than 6 million members known as Change to Win. That's the national labor group that broke with the AFL-CIO in 2005 and includes the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the United Farm Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, among others.

The unions' targets are warehouse and distribution centers in the Inland Empire counties of San Bernardino and Riverside, which together make up one of the nation's biggest logistics networks. The facilities handle much of the container cargo that moves through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest trade gateway in the United States."They want to start here because there is such a large concentration of the industry here. It's a great sandbox and it would be a real coup if they do it," said John Husing, an economist who specializes in the Inland Empire goods-movement industry.Nearly 2,900 warehouses of at least 50,000 square feet each dot the Inland Empire. The facilities, which employ nearly 113,000 people, are operated by hundreds of companies, including some of the nation's largest retailers.