Readers with long memories will recall that in 2014 the ILWU and the electricians' union fought over two jobs at Terminal 6, the Port of Portland's container facility on the Columbia River (pictured). The question was whether the task of plugging power cords into refrigerated containers was properly allocated to the ILWU (because the containers were sitting on docks) or to the electricians (because the task involved wiring). The fight between the unions turned into a general slowdown that drove container shipping away from Portland in 2017. One freight line tenuously returned (one ship a week) in early 2020, just before the pandemic struck.
The idled union workers might ask their leadership to read this story about the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest port on the west coast. Shipping times from China to Los Angeles have ballooned from 2 weeks to 7 or 8 weeks. The ships still chug across the Pacific Ocean at the same speed -- until they get to Los Angeles, where they sit and wait offshore for weeks with their cargoes of Pelotons and other Christmas gifts (now Twelfth Night gifts?) before they can dock and unload. Everyone involved justly blames the Covid-19 pandemic. The delays in unloading in Los Angeles are so great that many importers paid extra - a lot extra - to have their goods flown to the United States instead of taking their chances on being marooned offshore.
Consider the Port of Portland's nearly idle Terminal 6, its facility for handling shipping containers. Certainly the warring unions couldn't have predicted in 2014 that a worldwide pandemic would strike in 2020. But they might have considered that anything that caused a slowdown at a larger west coast port might encourage freight companies to divert their ships to Terminal 6, and keep their members employed.