Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday showed her opposition to the dockers’ strike when most dockworkers went on strike after no new agreement was reached, reported the Hill.
Harris came out to support the protesting workers saying, “This is a just strike. These foreign whaling companies are racking up immense profits and their CEOs are getting annual raises. Longshoremen, which is a very crucial industry to the movement of critical supplies around the continents of America, should receive a portion of these new extremities of profits”.
Looking at Donald Trump, the Congressional Democratic Presidential candidate claimed that the ex-President of the US tried to “push us back in levels where issues are attackable and when they weren’t there was no such thing as organizing working people”, accusing the former president of working against workers’ rights as making “words what goes as1001 night, hoping for deliverance, but there’s never a deliver.”
However, Trump had previously blamed the strike on the ‘d war d’ inflation which he argued is being provoked by the attributive of Biden-Harris.
“Everyone gets the praise of the dockworkers since they were battered by the inflation just as every one of the citizens of our nation and elsewhere was,” Fox News Digital quoted Trump in an interview.
Harris has also made it a point to state in the midst of her campaign rallies that Trump is only ever targeting the rich, whilst trampling on the rights and working conditions of the working class. “He believes that the economy is only for the Owners of the tall buildings and not the people who actually build them,” said Harris. “In the capacity of the President, I will always strengthen workers’ hands and with that end the PRO Act will be signed. And I will fight for an opportunity economy, where not just getting by, but getting forward is possible for each and every one.”
This Work Stoppage, which happens to be the first strike called by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) in nearly half a century, had to do with the failure to complete negotiations between the ILA and the US Maritime Alliance USMX.
As the hill wrote, the longshoremen are on strike to raise wages and completely stop the usage of automated crane, gate and container moving trucks. The US Maritime Alliance USMX confirmed on Monday further wage counteroffers had gone back and forth but no final agreement was reached.
The ILA counts 45,000 workers in its ranks. To what USMX’s offer of improve the salary of work of the unionists by 50% wage increase–the ILA’s head, Harold Daggett is making more demands of the union including $5 per hour increase for the period of new six years of the contract, withdrawal from, or moratorium on more port automation works which would imperil members’ jobs.
“Unfortunately, we feel that a decisive battle, if necessary, for all the time that is needed to get out on strike, wherever this may take, to obtain the wages and guarantees against automation of the ILA membership, will have to be total struggle,” Daggett said on Tuesday.
The strike ad also undertakes political dilemmas and economic strains for the administration headed by President Biden-Harris. This pending work stoppage bascially is reported to be costing the US and the economies of the whole world about up to five billion dollars a day to the extent of crippling both exports and imports in vital ports in the United States.
Biden himself on Tuesday went further and joined in the strike action by calling upon USMX to change the workers strike by making a reasonable offer to the employees stressing the need of making payment increase.
