Years of Poems and Spirits

My IBUS 579 class is structured such that half of the lectures are delievered by CEOs from local businesses. Today 2005/10/5 we had Mic Dinsmore, CEO of Port of Seattle.

Here are some of the interesting things I’ve learned:
It is the only “port” authority in the world that has both sea port and airport.
Its board of directors (5) are publically elected “commissioners”.
The ramp-up period to build port to port relationship could be as long as decades (25 years since they started to focus on China).
Congressman from Washington, Rick Larsen, organizes classes for about 40 colleagues on China issues.

Here are some surprises:
1. There are about 800 longshoreman PoS hires. The mean (math avg) salary is $105,000.
2. The top 5 of them are paid $250,000 a year.
Mr. Dinsmore attributed some of PoS operational difficulties (e.g. no bona fide 24X7 operations) to high labor cost.
—I did not know the scale of the high labor cost: average house price in Seattle is only $350K, and the average LSM salaries are comparable to commercial pilots and more than IT professionals with college or post-college degrees.
—Unless I am missing something terribly important, this sounds like Dennis Kozlowski in blue collar.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS