Going on strike? Average annual pay: $147,000 Plus + Employer paid healthcare: $35,000 Another Plus + Pensions: $80,000 ... Inequality, anyone?

Yes, the dockworkers are going on strike.

Are they being victimized?  No, they're not.

Here is a better question: Why aren't those jobs made available to the disadvantaged?  Those jobs pay $100,000 over and above the average American's annual income.

Where is the redistribution of those salaries, and healthcare plans and pensions to those who have been under-served?

Why the Inequality?  Why the unfairness of it all?  PB
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From Investors.com:

The entire port system on America's West Coast could shut down within a week due to a labor impasse...

So what is the union fighting for?

...according to the union's own material, the average dockworker makes $147,000 in annual salary and pulls in $35,000 a year in employer-paid health care benefits.

Pensions pay $80,000 a year.

That salary is well beyond the average American's personal income — about $43,000 annually — and we doubt that the average dockworker is worth $147,000 a year to his employer. A few might be, and they deserve their generous earnings.

But many aren't deserving, and they're riding on the coattails of their more productive, harder-working associates.

This, of course, is one of the problems with unions: equal pay for unequal effort and production.

It's the sort of work environment that drives productivity down.

Why work as hard as the next guy when there's little or no difference in wages? Let him put out the extra effort, and you enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Eventually, though, the hard workers will cut back their productivity because why keep up the good work if the unindustrious guys get the same pay?

It's a race to the bottom.

The private-sector union membership rate in 2014 was 6.6%, with 7.4 million private workers belonging to organized labor.

That's a steep decline from the 35% rate of union dominance in the mid-1950s — and it's a favorable trend.

Today, unions are neither friends nor helpful partners with the American worker.

Those tempted to be sympathetic to the longshoremen's demands need to consider who will pay for whatever package the union gets.

It's not the shipping companies, truckers, railroads or merchants who sell the products that pass through the ports.

No, the union will not be sticking it to "the man." It will be sticking it to the consumers. That's you. Pay up.
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Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/020615-738418-dock-workers-union-demands-hurt-consumers.htm