The Pacific Maritime Association is planning to strike the two largest West Coast ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach. Talks haven’t gone as favorably toward the union as it wishes, so….

The union laid bare its attitude toward port management and toward us average Americans generally.

A timely agreement matters not only to the parties at the table, but to the entire Southern California supply chain and to the local, state, and national economies that depend on it.

That’s just naked extortion, and it’s putting those not anywhere close to the negotiations under union threat, using them as hostages. Not only is this union threatening the ports’ ability to function and earn the income needed to pay up, it’s also threatening all of the hostages it’s taken, us average Americans who make up those local, state, and national economies.

Yet another union is demonstrating why it should be decertified.

Further, in any other milieu than union “negotiations,” contracts signed under duress would be held invalid. If unions aren’t going to be decertified, then at the least, contracts signed while a strike, or a lockout, is in progress or within some serious time period after the end of a strike or lockout should be held invalid, having been signed under duress.