A Doughty DeSantis Takes on the Longshoremen

Hats off to Governor DeSantis for standing up to labor militancy and deploying the Florida National Guard in an effort to reopen the state’s ports, which are bottled up by the Longshoremen’s strike. Mr. Desantis’s show of spine is all the more welcome in light of President Biden refusing to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to get commerce moving. Even President Trump seems more sympathetic to the strikers than concerned by the economic impact.Doughty DeSantis points to the need to get aid and supplies to the victims of Helene in his state and across the Southeast. “It is unacceptable,” he declared today, “for the Biden-Harris administration to allow supply chain interruptions to hurt people who are reeling from a category 4 hurricane.” He’s dispatching the National Guard and State Guard “to maintain order and, where possible, resume operations,” he says.To what extent this will result in ships being able to unload cargo amid the larger strike is not yet clear. However, Mr. DeSantis points to “ships that have nothing to do with these negotiations” that “may need a place to come — you can come to the state of Florida.” With the Longshoremen demanding a 77 percent raise, and the Maritime Alliance offering 50 percent wage increases, Mr. DeSantis observes: “Now is not the time” for a strike.That’s a refreshing contrast with Mr. Biden’s excoriation of “ocean carriers” for refusing, as he puts it, “to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits.” Vice President Harris croons that “this strike is about fairness.” Trump avers that the Longshoremen “should be able to negotiate for better wages, especially since the shipping companies are mostly foreign flag vessels.” At least Trump is talking about market principles.This enthusiasm for the Longshoremen — who are adamant in opposing efforts to make ports more efficient via, say, the introduction of automation technology — appears misplaced. Such innovations are already helping busy ports like Busan in South Korea, Rotterdam in Holland, and Singapore move more cargo. It is a sobering statistic that the strike is expected to cost the economy up to $4.5 billion per day, according to J.P. Morgan. Mr. DeSantis’s stand calls to mind the mettle shown by the 10 governors who, in 1877, sent in troops to reopen the railroads amid a destructive strike. His move echoes, too, another GOP governor with presidential aspirations — Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts. In 1919 — an era that, like our own, was plagued by inflation — the policemen of Boston struck for higher wages. It was an astonishing breach of faith with the 700,000 citizens served by the police. “The results of this sinister proceeding,” a Sun editorial in 1919 observed, “have been a succession of riots attended by the loss of many lives, by the unchecked insurgency of the criminal classes, by violence and crime of every description, and by a state of terrorism in parts of the city too nearly approaching what we have heard of the experience of Russian and other foreign towns where Bolshevism has been temporarily or permanently rampant.”Denizens of the Hub “were as shocked by this savagery as they were dismayed to find how thin was the veneer of legal restraint by which they had ordered their lives,” historian Francis Russell notes. While the mayor dithered, Coolidge stepped in, nixing the striking policemen’s pleas to be rehired and setting in train the hiring of replacements. “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time,” Coolidge cabled Sam’l Gompers. A few hours after this editorial went to press, the Longshoremen’s union announced that it was calling off its strike, at least until January 15, to allow negotiations to continue. That doesn’t detract from Mr. DeSantis’s principled stand, though. Just as Silent Cal’s handling of the police strike propelled him to national prominence, we’d like to think that Mr. DeSantis’s insistence on reopening the ports, while other politicians sat on their hands, could be a turning point for his own presidential fortunes.___________This editorial was updated to reflect late developments on the Longshoremen’s strike.

A Doughty DeSantis Takes on the Longshoremen

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