Self-Destructive Class Warfare

Striking Folly

The Port of Auckland is presently debilitated by rolling strikes which put the strike threat system into bold relief  as extortionate blackmail.  Thankfully, the export/import business can transfer to Tauranga.  Whilst this does not help owners of the Ports of Auckland (Auckland City) it does provide a boost to shareholders in the Ports of Tauranga.
 

Not long ago, New Zealand was crippled by a system of national industry awards.  This meant that labour rates and working conditions pretty much everywhere were struck by means of "central bargaining".  If those days still existed now, we would be facing a nation-wide strike, closing all ports in New Zealand.  Thankfully those days are past, although the Labour Party put forward a policy platform trying to reinstate them as part of its recent election campaign. 

Unionised wharfies at the Ports of Auckland are paid six figure incomes; they loiter around for most of the working day.  But the politics of class warfare and envy cannot be satiated.  Like Oliver, they want more.  The minatory posture of the union is reactionary, to say the least.  As always, the working stiffs will have been ginned up into righteous indignation about how badly they are being treated, and how they are being exploited by their employer. 

Everybody with half a brain knows that Ports of Auckland and the port itself risks going into decline.  Business routed to Tauranga will not be easily recovered.  Tauranga is an aggressive competitor.  The new 9000 series locos are pulling bigger and longer trains between the Bay and Metroport in Auckland.  Tauranga is a fast, efficient, modern port.  New Zealand is so geographically isolated that shippers just want to get in and out and on their way as fast as they can. 

When stevedores are laid off in Auckland due to declining business their union bosses will complete the litany of grievance.  "See, we told you.  Capitalists are pigs."  And no doubt the dumb stevedores will nod and tell their families how hard done by they are, and how good it was to have the union stick up for them.  Except for the smart ones.  They will be long gone, relocated to the Bay.  They will have left already. 

How many decades do you think it will be before everyone learns the basics: capital and labour are mobile.  Become uncompetitive at any point, anywhere, and your commercial lifeblood eventually drains--one way or the other.  There are no exceptions.