The massive port workers’ strike that has shut down all the major dockyards on the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. and the Gulf Coast is highlighting a fear held by many workers: Eventually, we will be replaced by machines.
The International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents the approximately 45,000 dock workers who walked off the job Tuesday, is trying to fight back.
The union demands a total ban on automating gates, cranes, and container-moving trucks in its ports. They also want big pay raises. They only make about $28 an hour. Many are in states where it is very expensive to live. But it’s unclear whether they’ll be able to stave off a trend that has seeped into virtually every workspace.
The growth of automation and technological advances has created tension between workers and management since the Industrial Revolution when machines first began to manufacture goods that had previously been made by hand. With the growing use of artificial intelligence, the group of jobs workers perceive as threatened with disruption is ever-widening.
Other ports are far more efficient because they use advanced automation. However, if automation goes through as planned, these workers will mostly be out of work.
Can they stop it? Should they? A strike lasting more than two weeks will probably create an economic crisis.
THE CORE PROBLEM
Port automation is going quickly in Asia and Europe, and they aren’t using American workers or equipment. Significantly, they don’t allow foreigners to take over their ports. It’s a matter of national security.
In the US, politicians sold us out to foreign and international companies. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Europe, Venezuela, Singapore, and, of course, China own our ports. None of these people, including Europeans, should own them, but they do.
Critics of the Dubai Ports World deal have suggested that U.S. companies should run U.S. ports. Despite that, Adam Davidson wrote at NPR in 2006 that most port terminals are leased and run by foreign companies, and that’s unlikely to change.
The government of Singapore owns most of the companies that operate terminals in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Two Chinese companies, both with close ties to the Chinese government, manage terminals in New York, Long Beach, and elsewhere. The government of Venezuela owns all or part of marine terminal management at ports in Pennsylvania and Maine.
CMA CGM bought two container terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey. CM CGM is owned by a French-Lebanese company.
They hire people for low pay.
Also, foreigners, Chinese in particular, can shut down our ports.
Foreigners will control automation. At the same time, we need to be competitive, but at what cost? We sold out American workers.
Only foreigners and foreign equipment will run our ports if the union loses. It won’t take long, either.
They also lost money during COVID and inflation is killing them, too.
Union president Harold Daggett’s job is to represent Longshoremen, and he does so to the best of his ability. Biden-Harris have done far more damage. It’s not clear if the union can hold this back at this point. America should buy back those ports instead of wasting money on pie-in-the-sky or computer-generated crises that probably don’t exist as crises.
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