Nancy Snow, a Tokyo resident, is a global advisor in strategic communications and the author of "The Mystery of Japan's Information Power" (Bunshindo)
Consumers held their breath last month in the U.S. when the International Longshoremen's Association, representing 45,000 dockworkers, shut down ports from Maine to Texas. The union strike was the largest in nearly 50 years. Had it gone on for weeks instead of days, it would have led to higher prices and a shortage of goods amid an atmosphere of nail-biting presidential politics and an encroaching holiday season.
