Where are the politicians when port slowdown cripples Seattle’s traffic?

Taken from Thursday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

I know a lot of people on the roads like to hate on truck drivers, but that’s the only way goods get to market. A lot of them are independent people trying to scrape out a living.

This union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, is screwing people over. They don’t mind who they bring down with their slowdown.

I wished I had known how dire the situation was when I had the governor on my show Wednesday. Jay Inslee should step in and make sure our ports are moving. They talk all the talk.

When the union has decided, in its petulance of a labor dispute, to screw this entire city with traffic, to screw over businesses that are losing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, to screw over these independent truck drivers, who are just trying to make a living – where are the politicians then? Where’s their concern about things getting smoothly in and out of the ports? Crickets because they don’t want to tick off the union.

You know what? Those longshoremen make $120-140K with their benefits. They should be gone once they start gumming up the city like this.

Remember when President Reagan got rid of the air-traffic controllers because it was a hazard to our national mobility? We should think about that. We should start breaking this thing.

But again, where are the politicians? Where is Mayor Ed Murray – talking about how important it is to get things in and out of the Port of Seattle? He tells us that when he wants to raise taxes.

Where’s Jay Inslee – talking about how outrageous the union’s actions are? Things moving smoothly is important when they want to raise our taxes at the state level for the port.

The politicians are silent on this because the unions have bought and paid for every local politician. We still have, in the Puget Sound area at least, a one-party government and the union has bought and paid for all of those politicians.

So all of a sudden I guess port mobility doesn’t mean that much. When they come to us for a billion dollar transportation package and part of it is that we have to get things moving smoothly at the port, you know that that’s a lie.

Until one of them steps up and says what the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is doing is outrageous, you know that they do not care about mobility around the ports.

Taken from Thursday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

SK