I just watched the ABC version of the ILWU strike and lock-down. It is a beautiful illustration of how US media deforms reality just enough to seem realistic, and yet poses the issues in dispute is such a way as to cast the whole into the capitalist pig camp. Unless, you don't already know this....
The report focused on the idea that the strike and lock-down was a matter of technological advances versus `make work' unions. That is to say, workers are holding up progress---read bad protectionism.
Okay, the more realistic issue is that shipping clerks who run the computers for automated inventories and FOB manifests port-side, are at the moment, unionized under the ILWU. The PMA and shippers want to de-link these jobs from their unionization, and out-source the computer procedures to third party contractors. This outsourcing is technologically feasible since there is no concrete reason a computer monitor and database program have to be located inside the port of entry. Both can be exported anywhere in the world and the job can be performed by anybody, through remote links (with video feed). The union wants these jobs unionized no matter were they are located, and the shippers don't---for very obvious reasons. It is a whole lot cheaper to patch a live link to somewhere else and outsource the routine database entry jobs, than it is to pay ILWU wages to have these jobs done in the Port of Oakland.
Nevertheless, the shipper version of the story line is as reported on ABC. Just a question of unions blocking progress....
Chuck Grimes