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Longshoremen’s Strike (currently paused, but not ended)
Some of the issues in the United States longshoremen’s strike (temporarily paused) captured my interest. Especially after comments from the head of the longshoremen’s union (Harold Daggett) became so widely distributed. Parts of this topic arose in the hurricane relief discussion, but I thought it should have its own discussion without distracting from the discussion of hurricane relief efforts.
As I understand the union’s demands, they fall into three categories: 1) more pay, 2) better “benefits” (including pensions) and 3) no more automation. I understand that the pay issue has been settled, for now at least (October 7, 2024). I’m not sure about the “benefits” issue. But the automation issue has certainly not been settled.
Pay and Benefits
I’m sure many workers whose wages have not kept up with inflation over the last four years might have something to say about whether the longshoremen should have special treatment on the pay issue. Similarly for the question of “benefits,” as we are decades into most non-government workers dealing with the opportunities and risks of self-directed retirement funds, and not being tied to a company-specific defined-benefit pension, and also participating in the costs of employer-provided medical insurance.
The president of the longshoremen’s union says longshoremen should be paid more because they are critical to the flow of goods. Well, lots of other workers are also critical to the flow of goods – truck drivers, warehouse workers, shipboard crew, fuel suppliers, etc. What if each of them makes similar demands? It appears the longshoremen’s union has about 50,000 members. 50,000 longshoremen in a land of 350,000,000 US population = 0.014 %.
Something about the privileged 1% comes to mind.
The longshoremen’s union seems to be demanding privileges in pay and benefits beyond what most people who are also essential to a functioning economy get, and at the expense of everyone else. I wouldn’t think this popular among the general population.
Automation.
(Irony alert.)
The union not long ago justified the current very high pay for longshoremen (often between $100,000 and $200,000 per year, supposedly more than a third of the union members earn more than $200,000 per year) on the basis that they require a high level of skill to operate sophisticated machinery. Well, that sophisticated machinery they currently operate is the result of prior generations of “automation” that replaced many dockworkers manually unloading and loading ships. Wheeled hand trucks allowed one man to “carry” what previously several men carried individually. Forklifts powered by internal combustion engines then allowed one operator to transport pallets loaded with what previously took several men with hand trucks or many more men carrying individual bags or barrels. Cranes with large scoops or augurs allowed one operator to move grain and other bulk material previously carried by many individual men packaged in bags or barrels. For decades now cranes have moved large containers (often 20 feet or 40 feet long) filled with manufactured items that previously would have been moved by many, many men carrying individual items or boxes, each containing a small number of items.
So longshoremen’s current jobs are the result of automation that displaced prior generations of workers. But NOW they want to stop the progress of automation? Or is the union suggesting that we should go back to individual men carrying individual 50-pound bags of a commodity, or individual boxes of finished goods, from deep in the holds of ships all the way into a warehouse? Go back to a time when a strong back was the key characteristic for a longshoreman?
Absolute resistance to automation looks like resisting normal human progress.
Longshoremen’s Union President Harold Daggett
Who thought putting this particular union head in front of the general public was a good idea? Is the longshoremen’s union trying to provide the public (most of whom do not belong to a workers’ union) yet more reasons to think that unions are bullies only out for themselves?
What I think the public hears when the head of the longshoremen’s union speaks is, “I’m going to make your life miserable until you give me more of your money, and I get special treatment none of the rest of you have.” Exactly what people heard the schoolyard bully say when they were children — and what the rumors say about how Mafia bosses operate.
On the topic of automation, the head of the longshoremen’s union cites with disapproval the automated highway and bridge toll collection system called “EZPass,” a system created in 1987 (almost forty years ago) and used mostly in the northeast and on the west coast. Similar systems exist in other parts of the country. In my area of north Texas, it’s “TollTag.” Although few people like paying highway tolls altogether, if they’re going to pay tolls, this man is suggesting that preserving the jobs of a few thousand toll collectors should take priority over the time and convenience of millions of drivers who save thousands of hours of delay and effort through toll collection automation.
Out in the real world, where real people deal with real issues, workers of all types, including those in the “creative” fields previously thought to be exempt from the threat of automation, have had to begin considering the possibility that their jobs (or at least parts of their jobs) could be automated. I don’t see why most people should think longshoremen should be exempt from world that the rest of us occupy.
As one looks back in history, some form of “automation” has always displaced human labor. Oxen and horses replaced humans for pulling things. Levers and pulleys replaced many men in lifting. Water wheels and windmills replaced men delivering power to certain tools. Steam engines, and then internal combustion engines, provided yet greater power to tools. Mechanical devices replaced many people performing manual labor.
Control mechanisms (first mechanical, then electrical, and then electronic) have successfully enabled mechanical machinery to do even more work, continuously replacing more human labor. For example, automated fuel delivery to a burner or to the cylinders of an internal combustion engine eliminated the need for men to shovel coal into a fire of a steam engine.
In another example, a modern automated tractor and computer-controlled planter operated by one person (who may even be a small relatively weak woman) does in a few hours of work (planting dozens of rows of fertilized seed) that which a little over a century ago would have employed the labor of dozens of strong men over several days using a horse-drawn implement. And even farther back in time, the use of a horse to pull a planting implement replaced many men pulling individual plows with even more men (or maybe women) following to place seeds and then fertilizer into the proper place. Some farmers find the tradeoff worthwhile (such tractor and planter setups can cost $1 million or more). Others do not. But the longshoremen’s union seems to think any such progress should be stopped altogether.
Questions
Is it just me, or does the public see that the longshoremen’s union is either — or both — out to harm most of the public, and trying to resist the inevitable progress of humanity?
The union may win a temporary battle but seems likely to lose in the long term.
Published in Economy
I understand that many major ports around the world are far ahead of the US ports in the use of automation. We also have apparently allowed foreign powers to lease and operate US ports, which makes no sense to me whatsoever, except I would bet some foreign powers are happy to see the longshoremen’s union standing in the way of making US operations more globally competitive.
I too had heard that the lack of automation at U.S. ports means that the cost per container offload (I hear it’s called “cost per lift”) is higher at U.S. ports than at many other ports around the world.
Doctors, dentists, pharmacists and lawyers use a guild system to capture high wages. It has been argued they should all be outlawed.
I forgot to include in the original post that, to add to the reasons the union president presents the union as being in opposition to the public, he said that even if the U.S. President invoked the Taft-Hartley Act and ordered the union workers back to work, they would deliberately slow work in order to continue to inflict pain on the American public.
See the video interview at:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2024/10/03/kamala-harris-sides-with-striking-workers-n2645690
Also note his apparent pleasure at the prospect of putting many of his fellow labor workers out of work. He appears to be someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others.
IIRC when I was a youngster, there was a lot of talk about “featherbedding” on the railroads. I haven’t heard the term used for years so somehow the issue was resolved or everyone just puts up with it. Certainly there will be an adjustment in due time.
Or maybe doo-doo time, as in when we – and them too, I hope – are in deep doo-doo.
China does it better.
This is the way.
This is what the Luddite mafia boss wants to avoid.
They did this in China where a laborer might earn $12/day, not $120/hr as many of the longshoreman currently do.
This must be crushed.
The Sopranos
Well I certainly do. Don’t know is this story is actually true, but it is illustrative nonetheless:
“While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.” –American Enterprise Institute
I read an article that said many longshoremen work 100-hour weeks. I doubt this is true in the sense most people would interpret it. That works out to six 16-hour days (two shifts) plus another 4 hours (1/2 shift?) on the seventh day.
It also seems out of place compared to truck drivers who are limited to a maximum 60-hour week.
My suspicion is many of those hours are down time at the beginning or end of a shift before a ship is berthed, or after the loading is complete. Does anyone know the rules they work under?
They are price gouging.
h/t James Freeman
I’m quite sure that people who support the longshoremen are the same people who accuse corporations of “greed”.
I think the public at large understands the situation just fine.
Very good article, Full Size Tabby. I had already been thinking that it would be interesting to invite 100 longshoremen from these American ports to work a month in some backwater port where they are loading and unloading ships with century-old technology and see if they find that preferable.
BTW, I can’t remember which podcast it was but recently I heard a detailed description of the guy who basically invented the shipping container concept (in the 70’s, IIRC) and it dramatically lowered the cost of shipping goods world wide, of course over the fervent objections of the same union.
Economists have said that the shipping container system has lowered the cost of living for practically all of humanity.
Far earlier than that. Look up stuff about Galveston vs. Houston. Why did an inland port become bigger than the port actually on the Gulf?
The problem is that every port has the same union. It is much easier to pass on the costs than fight because incoming freight doesn’t have any alternative if all ports are subject to the same hike.
Biden surrendered his power to invoke Taft-Hartley in advance. Was that some bargaining chip to push this past the election? If we are going to send all smoke-stack manufacturing overseas we need to efficiently handle the imports upon which we will be entirely dependent.
Nobody has come up with novel policy solutions to help transition the economy to more automation. The deal VW made with the German auto workers union some time ago–workers accept layoffs and a new, more automated German plant and VW does not send manufacturing overseas and gives workers a large share on the management committee–did not permanently solve the automation issue.
Maybe when AI replaces some lawyers, journalists, college professors, and a few hundred thousand government employees, that will be more of a policy priority.
Do you want a government policy for this? I don’t. What makes you think government officials will have better ideas than the free market? We’ve been transitioning to more automation for centuries. I’m sure when sails were invented, people who rowed boats for a living complained.
Rapid transition across many industries is kinda new.
In the late nineteenth USA century when farm automation started to drive small subsistence farming out of existence because a machine could do the work of ten men, those nine guys could move to the cities to work in the factories that made those machines and others.
But what if the machines were already taking those jobs in the cities? “Learn to code” was snark from people who probably couldn’t create a two-line MS-Word macro but did allude to the underlying truth that transitions are especially tough in an economy that encourages or requires specialization then wipes out specialized niches.
Jane Jacobs compared the US transition from primarily agricultural to manufacturing-based to the arrival of farm mechanization in South America in the early twentieth century. The machines were imported so there were no urban manufacturing jobs. Many displaced farmers were reduced to slash-and-burn farming to the detriment of the rainforest.
If insurance companies make a massive move to AI will thousands of unemployed do slash-and-burn farming in the outer Connecticut suburbs?
The policy changes might be to change incentives for saving, social insurance etc. How can employers be incentivized take over or support the third-party task of educating and preparing workers when the school system is near complete collapse. And what does government do if underemployment expands? Merely sending support checks is, shall we say, less than optimal so how do we forestall that outcome?