Thoughts?
This could get very interesting, very quickly…
Hopefully we can head this off early.
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I was working on shipping my next pallet over the last few weeks, but glad now I am still waiting on a few items. Will definitely track this before greenlighting the shipment.
Apparently, late last night, the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) offered up a bid with a 50% increase in wages.
For normal folk, that would be a heckuva nice raise.
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It’s a double whammy. They want a HUGE raise (and to be clear, they are already handsomely compensated), plus protection from job losses due to automation. On the whole, automation has allowed international ports to be significantly more efficient than US ports.
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They want a 77% wage increase over 4 years. 50% has been offered (and rejected) as well as a freeze on automation going forward. Union wants elimination retroactive. Good luck…
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Seems like they are asking for everything and offering nothing, but what is the other option for the ports? I guess they can wait it out and hope to break the workers’ resolve after no paychecks for a couple of weeks.
As I understand it, talks broke down in June.
Ok, are we veering really close to stuff that should be in the Politics forum? @ToddFrench
Just looking to avoid another dumpster fire thread.
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thanks, Yule - yeah, this has potential to get political - y’all know the rules, let’s keep it ‘clean’, please?
@A_Tzikas can you maybe clean yours up a bit?
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6 years. Union has such softened to 61.5% per NYT.
So trying to bring this into a focus that is appropriate for Wine Talk, if this strike happens and persists for more than a short time, how does it affect wine?
Does it just affect imported wine? Or maybe mildly affect domestic wine in the sense that prices might creep up as the cost of imported competition goes up?
How long would the strike have to go on before making a dent into availability and pricing, given the lag of time and the inventory already in the USA?
Is the effect on futures, on gray market, and on regular retail purchases significantly different? It fees like if I’m buying 2023 Bordeaux futures (I’m not, it’s just a hypo), I wouldn’t be much concerned since the odds are very low a strike is still going on when they would ship, plus I wouldn’t really care if delivery was delayed since I wouldn’t be drinking them young anyway. If I’m buying one of those ubiquitous 6 packs from the gray market that take a few months to arrive, those might be more delayed, but again, I’d only care about the delay if it’s a wine I want to open fairly soon.
Its a bigger mess than you reference. Imported wine will certainly suffer. Producers who get glass, corks, barrels, labels, machine parts, etc…from Europe will also be impacted.
If it goes on routing all the cargo to West Coast will clog up West Coast too.
This can get really bad. So many layers of issues.
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Great points. Thanks.
Probably premature to guess. I mean, there’s dozens of ports entirely shut down. They say it will cost $5B per day. DirecTV didn’t have ESPN for a week before they came to an agreement because of MNF. I can’t imagine this goes on very long.
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we kinda went through this when the wine tariffs were implemented. A lot of importers just declined to import until it was gravy and that was much longer than this will be
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Don’t west coast wine producers get these things through west coast ports?
Perhaps but shipping from Europe to California is a lot more expensive than into Texas and then rail or OTR it to CA.
The point is when everyone re-routes loads to open West Coast ports, the snarl will be brutal.
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Eric Asimov (with quotes from many importers)
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I guess it does beg the question of whether this could be good for domestic producers. Probably would take a month or so of a strike to really matter. I agree with Skurnik that French restaurants likely won’t be pouring Cali wines. Given the softening in the wine market in general he also makes the point that distributors have still have plenty of wine in stock. I am curious about when do wines typically ship - so for example does Champagne typically ship in October/November for anticipation of December peak sales season?