It seems like the contracts usually run out on Oct. 1 of whatever the year anyway so there would have been a strike vote in the leadership’s pocket well in advance.
It probably helped that the President had let it be known he would not be using Taft-Hartley Act powers to force the parties preemptively. He still had it in his quiver and I’m sure he’d reach for it if it began looking like this would really hurt, but he was not going to just short-circuit things up front w/o giving them a chance to try. That reinforces the Administration’s labor cred.
Back to the OP, well, yeah, a lot of people in the bloviatorsphere were jumping straight into OMG we iz d00med mode. What can I say…
I saw a reference to toilet-paper hoarding in another thread, and it got me wondering if toilet paper is even brough in through the affected ports. Then I figured it would be a hijack in the other thread, so came looking for one that related directly to the strike.
TP is so bulky that it seems like it would be uneconomical to ship. I don’t know what it costs to send a standard shipping container across an ocean, but spread over ~4,200 packages would be a significant portion of the price. Of course, once I found this thread the subject has already been addressed.
I saw someone write that much of the wood pulp used in manufacturing paper products is imported. I don’t know if that’s true.
In another life going back about 30 years ago I had an office job with a shipping company. Container ships not FedEx. I visited the port a few times but mostly I was involved with the paperwork at the main office. We were well aware of how well the longshoremen were paid. One thing that I found interesting is that for every ship that came into port we had to pay the union a “royalty”. It wasn’t payment to anyone for work just a fee to the union itself. It felt like a bribe to me. I always envisioned it going into the pocket of Tony Soprano.
I had a temp job in a paper mill a few decades ago. They had wood chips delivered, ground them up, and added water to make a pulp onsite. The delivery was quite an operation; there was a hydraulic lift that could take a semi-truck or a railroad boxcar and lift it to an angle like a dump truck and the chips would pour out. A boxcar looks even bigger when you tip it up on end.
That was in the northwest, where wood chips were probably easy to come by. Importing wood pulp sounds like it would make more economic sense than bringing in finished toilet paper.
Huh. I bought toilet paper designed for office use over Amazon. As best as i could tell, it was all domestic. But i like to buy in bulk, so i had most of a case of tp at the start of the pandemic, and never ran short.
Yeah, when i lived in NYC, i had to get used to only buying what i needed now, because storage was at a premium. But now that i live in a house in the 'burbs, i like to keep extra of most consumables around. I buy toilet paper once or twice a year. I keep the box in the laundry room, 2 feet above the floor so it doesn’t get wet if something drips or leaks a little.
I keep extra flour in the freezer. Etc.
So i don’t generally stress about temporary supply chain issues.
The deer hunters were always swiping my TP so I got a giant box of John Wayne TP. God, it must’ve been over 10 years ago. They’d come looking for necessary paper and I’d direct them to that box in the garage.
The next year, miraculously they all brought some from home.
That paper is bad. Minor sandpaper level. Most of the case is still in my garage. I’d donate it to the shelter but it would be cruel punishment.
Now the deer camp has an official rule in the Bylaws. “Provide your own TP” right under “Take a good shower before you depart for camp”
I was at Costco right when things were starting to get weird. I just so happened to need some TP so I grabbed the next to last package off of the pallet. Little did I know that it was the next to last package for many months. Since I am a single guy with a bidet, it lasted me well through the crisis.
The roadside rest areas on the way up to northern Minnesota set out their nearly empty TP rolls during the fall. I asked the custodian what that’s all about: it’s for hunters to take to their deer stands or cabins, instead of getting thrown away. You see, Minnesota provides tampons and TP to its citizens.
A woman I used to know would go out for brunch at a “fancy” place on Pittsburgh’s Southside once a month. I thought it was a strange affectation for someone usually very frugal.
I went with her one month. She ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. We ate and before the check arrived she ran to the ladies room.
I found out later that while in the ladies she filled her purse with handfuls of tampons, which were available for free.