Twelve Truck Drivers Moved Five Container Ships
On August 10, 2022, about a dozen drivers with Trucker Movement For Justice(separate article on this organization soon)went on strike at the Seagirt Terminal(Port of Baltimore container ship terminal) to protest massive, unpaid waiting time in the terminal, and to try to establish a grievance procedure to deal with issues in the port. In an effort to crush the strike, Ports of America(POA), one of the largest port operators in the world, unknowingly became our BEST ally, and just showed every port driver that POA could effectively run a port, but they choose NOT to. If you want to read an easy, real world example of the real causes of the “shipping crisis”, this is it.
This is news coverage of the strike.
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/truck-drivers-picket-port-of-baltimore-unpaid-time-idling/40872289
POA Seagirt(Baltimore) is one of the most profitable ports in the country, and its profits mostly come from robbing truckers, shippers/receivers, and consumers blind. Ports generally do not compete for trucks, but they do compete for ships. POA really does care about getting the ships in/out quickly, because if they fail at this, the ships can go to another port. POA concentrates all its assets unloading/loading ships, and getting the ships in/out quickly. As one driver says, for “ship to shore” the port is great, its the “shore to door” they don’t care about. And as POA unknowingly proved during the strike, they are more than capable of delivering excellent “shore to door service,” but they refuse to do it.
What is “shore to door?” “Shore to door” is taking a container out of a stack, and loading it on a truck for delivery. Manpower is crucial to this being done successfully, if the port intentionally undermans the longshore workers, drivers end up waiting hours to get in and out. Most drivers are either leased on independent contractors, fully independent owner operators, and even some regular employees, but in the vast majority of cases, drivers are not paid for this waiting time. This ends up in massive pay cuts for the drivers, as most are flat rated by the load. It means instead of taking two or three loads a day, drivers are down to one or two, with their pay being cut 33–70% per day, and all of this has to do with POA refusing to correctly staff its ports. Ports are the only place in the supply chain that nobody even attempts to bill for detention pay, as the “remedy” to a driver or carrier protesting against massive unpaid time is normally being banned from the port(which is one reason why we want a grievance procedure). Drivers/carriers are literally supposed to take their 30–70% pay cuts, sit for hours unpaid, and be happy about it.
On August 10, about a dozen drivers started protesting at the port, we had more than that who took the day off but were afraid to be seen protesting. POA knew we were coming, but what POA didn’t know is that we have someone(maybe more than one, maybe more than five) on the inside(no, we wont tell you who they are, it may be a government official, port official, merchant marine, it’s someone in the supply chain at the port). We already knew the ship schedules, and when they found out what days we were striking, they moved the scheduled ship for the two days we planned to strike, which set off a domino effect, and required the movement of four more ships. POA spent a ton of money to try and discredit the strikers, but in the end, they unknowingly made our point.
While we were protesting outside the gate, the port kept the same amount of workers on duty that they would have had if they had been unloading a ship, so there are a ton of extra longshore workers that POA will not hire on days when there is no ship in the port. The strikers are port drivers, they know how the ports work, and within the first 30 minutes they saw what was going on. The ports kept on “extra” workers, and trucks were flying in and out of the ports. Moves that normally take three or four hours on what has become a “normal” day were taking place in as little as 30 minutes.
We struck the 10th and 11th, and POA kept the charade up on both days, the days of the scheduled strike(we had far more people on strike on Thursday). They hired a proper number of people to load/unload trucks, and everything went great, all in an effort to try and put the screws to us. In some ways, POA was successful, but in the big picture, they lost.
What happened on the 12th, when the strikers left? The ship came in, everything went back to “normal,” and by “normal” we mean that the port spent all its time unloading the ship, no time on trucks, and the wait time were massive on the 12th, and have been ever since. They have literally made our case, and unknowingly showed it to everyone in the port and everyone in the supply chain that they can easily run a port without excessive wait times, and they can easily unplug the bottlenecks at the ports if they want to. The ports do not want to do this, as it will cost them money to do so.
Is everyone seeing what a scam “port congestion” is yet? POA literally spent untold millions of dollars by hiring crews they normally wouldn’t, and moving multiple container ships to show how well the ports can work if the port operators would require the proper amount of manpower to load/unload the trucks. Money was literally no object when we are protesting their massive mismanagement, and the second we leave, what does the POA do? It goes right back to the massive mismanagement practices that lead to massive congestion.
Ports around the country are massive black holes for taxpayer money, there was $17 billion in for ports alone in the infrastructure bill. All the cranes in the ports, all the equipment in the ports, are by and large paid for by the public, not the port operators. We give the operators the equipment, tell them to use it as they see fit, because the operators are the “experts,” and the port districts are not. The port districts generally give the operators free reign on how to run the port, and there are zero consequences when it is run poorly. So when those nearly free cranes the operators get to use break down, the port operators, not the port district, decide if/when they will get fixed, and the drivers sit and wait. Same thing goes for chassis(the port provided trailer the container sits on), even though there is a massive chassis shortage nationwide and there are tens of thousands of chassis sitting in the ports, the operators will not hire mechanics to fix them, and the drivers, receivers, and ultimately consumers sit and wait. Yes, you can literally trace empty store shelves to the number of longshore workers in our ports, or better yet, lack of longshore workers in our ports.
There is no fixing this, as it is by design. Automation will not fix this problem, as automation is NOT designed to fix this problem. Every machine has a cost to run, and if the port needs ten(example) cranes to keep it running smoothly, the operators will only run four or five, manned or automated, because the operators do not care if the port runs smoothly. First off, they get to create massive congestion that they don’t pay a dime for, but second, and most importantly, this congestion massively raises prices for shipping lines, and also, for the port operators, it is an endless way of them to constantly go back to taxpayers and ask for more money for more equipment and expansion. When the operators get this money to get more ships, they spend it all on the ships, and none on the trucks. The problems still exist, they just get bigger, and the bigger the problems get, the more money the operators make.
In the end, the POA wouldn’t even talk to us, but they spent literally millions of dollars trying to screw us. Truth be told, drivers do not even really want money for waiting, what the drivers really want is exactly what POA did, which is for POA to hire the proper number of crews to quickly service the trucks, and do it every day. If the drivers were able to get in/out of the ports at the same rate they were as the days we were on strike, there would be almost zero problems at this port. Literally, all it takes is for the port to hire the proper amount of manpower to service the trucks, which POA showed they can do, BUT THEY CHOOSE NOT TO.
I’ve written multiple articles on what a farce the “shipping crisis” is, you can go back and read them if you like, they are all dated the day they were submitted. As I have stated before and will state again, the one constant, no matter if its trucking, rail, warehousing, ports, and now even airlines, is that all modes of transportation refuse to hire and/or pay the workers to do the job to keep our supply chain fluid. I stand by this assessment.
POA Chesapeake, THANK YOU. You made it very clear that you are more than capable of running a port correctly, you choose not to. The second we leave, you go back to running the port your “normal” way, and waiting times go through the roof. You made it very clear, to every driver in Baltimore and to the country, that you, as port operators, are intentionally mismanaging the ports to these insane levels of backups, all so you can keep every dollar you can. You can make the ports run as smoothly as you need to, but you’ve chosen to make them not work, because it puts more money in your pocket.
The Baltimore strike exposed the “shipping crisis” for the absolute scam it is. POA proved its more than capable of running a port correctly when there are strikers at the gates, the second the strikers leave, POA goes right back to creating massive back ups.
The real “shipping crisis” that exists in America today is that we allow these port operators to do this to all of us.
