KEY POINTS
- The United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the owners of East and Gulf Coast ports, said in a statement on Wednesday that the union position on automation is currently making a new labor deal difficult to reach, with a January 15 deadline to either reach an agreement or face another strike.
- USMX says the use of semi-automated cranes, already at many ports, is critical to future supply chain demands.
- The International Longshoremen’s Association, which is not publicly commenting, has said in the recent past that the union wants new contract language to clearly state that “no automation means no automation.”
This is tough because alternatively, not progressing on automation at the ports benefits a select group of wealthy individuals as well. The ILA’s president, Harold Daggett, brings in nearly $1 million a year ($902,000) in salary, and his son Dennis which is the vice president, salary is $703,000. At the United Auto Workers union, with more than four times as many members, UAW President Shawn Fain received just under $200,000 for his eight months on the job last year. . None of the dock workers get paid close to as much.
I think one of the best solutions for this is to offer some sort of retraining for the workers who will be displaced by automation. As with any technological progress, I am sure new jobs will arise. As the article states, we don’t really have a consensus on whether port automation will actually decrease jobs. I think the benefits of port automation (environment, worker safety, the end consumer, efficiency, etc) with some sort of worker retraining here really outweighs the cons.
These are pennies compared to the oligarchs, don’t demonize labor for the rare exceptions, all automakers would apparently need to do is give the union president a raise to dampen your support? Don’t fight over crumbs.
Wow… I didn’t know that, but that’s kind of disgusting, too.
The problem with retraining being the only consideration given is that unless they’re maintaining the same level of pay in whatever position they’re being retrained for, it’s not equitable. A possible improvement would be for workers displaced by automation to continue to receive salaries from their old positions for a period of time, with the percentage of their original pay rate decreasing over that time. This needn’t just be dockworkers; there’s plenty of difficult, demanding or menial jobs that could be automated, if we didn’t have this misguided sense that everyone has to have a job, no matter how unnecessary it is for a human to be doing it.
I do agree with you that automation should be the end-goal, though. We just need a better system to support anyone whose jobs are made redundant by it.