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The massive US port strike has begun: 'We are prepared to fight as long as necessary'
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- Title
- The massive U.S. port strike has begun
- Published
- Oct 1 2024
- Word count
- 764 words
Please pay the dockworkers.
Like just come on. Why does management think this will be any different than all the other strikes in the past few years?
I do not need supply chain issues right now. No one does.
Pay is an issue for sure. The ask for a complete ban on automation is ludicrous though; you can't hold back technological progress.
This is so emblematic of why America needs a social safety net. Jobs being automated shouldn't destroy lives, and if it didn't, it wouldn't need to be a factor in adopting new technology.
Is that an American thing or a worldwide thing? Is there a country where automating the docks wouldn't cause job loss and subsequent life disruption?
It would cause life disruption everywhere, but in America it would cause lives to be destroyed in ways that it wouldn't if there was a proper social safety net. Anyone replaced would need a new job, but would they have income to survive while they found it? Would they have access to training in a new field? Would the new job offer the same benefits and opportunity for union participation?
Any country where any of these answers is "no" also needs a better social safety net. I'm not pretending that America is the worst place ever, it's just a place that I'm familiar with.
I was actually at a talk earlier today with Unionen (the Swedish white collar private sector union) and the representative made it a point to express how important it is that the unions in Sweden be open to technological innovation and therefore they have to include provisions in their negotiations that protect workers in the event that they are replaced by technology. Unions work differently here, any employee can join one even if their workplace is not unionized, so they are also able to support their members in this way without their members worrying that they won't be able to get another union job.
This is oddly fascinating to me. How do they negotiate, then? Striking, in particular, seems somewhat ineffective if the people refusing to work don't actually work at the company you're trying to pressure.
Sectoral bargaining:
I don't know all the details because I just got here and I've only been to this one talk, but there are different kinds of agreements the union can negotiate for you. There are individual agreements and collective agreements, and if your workplace isn't unionized it's possible that they can only offer you a limited individual agreement. About 80% of workplaces in Sweden are unionized, so it's possible they could organize some other consequence using pressure from related organized shops?
It’s uniquely worse in America because healthcare and many other important things are tied to employment.
This is my issue with the demands. Workers should absolutely share in the wealth that automation brings via much higher wages for their increased productivity. But demanding a ban on that increased productivity from automation is bad for everyone.
They want a 70% pay raise and a ban on automation that would make their jobs easier and safer! I'm sympathetic to workers' rights, but this is peak union cronyism.
I think it's fair to demand a ban on automation knowing that negotiations will land somewhere in the middle. You never start a negotiation with where you want to end up. It is up to the other side to come back with a reasonable plan that keeps workers livelihoods intact while automation enters the scene. Nobody expects automation to actually be banned, it's just that right now the plan for how it will affect workers is "go fuck yourself".
They were offered to keep the current contract language on automation, but they rejected that. Workers can handle way more cargo with robotic assistant and containers (see every international port); it would create more jobs overall. American ports are embarrassingly inefficient, and it's the unions' fault.
Why would automating things create jobs? The entire point is to be able to do more, with less humans.
As MimicSquad said, automation can increase the number of jobs if output per person is a limiting factor. Comparing American ports to other nations, dockworkers could be massively more efficient and increase the number of laborers by growing the total number of imports.
Basically, if the cost per import went down, more goods could be sent through US ports thus increasing the labor demand. This wouldn't be a problem for workers because each worker could unpack more with assistive technologies.
The big picture idea is to grow the size of the pie, not just argue over who gets the biggest piece of the shrinking pie.
This happened with computers in industry generally and especially with programming.
In the 70s, software engineers lamented that the invention of compiled languages would mean fewer engineers would be needed to write a program. Instead, the opposite happened. Lower costs of production massively increased the value of what software could bring to people and led to a surging demand in the software industry.
I'm not convinced this will happen here, however, because I don't think there's this huge unmet demand for shipping.
Interesting. Are there potential negative effects to increasing imports, elsewhere in the economy/supply chain? Or would it just be a net positive thing.
That's a much more complicated question. The overly simplified answer is imports are good because it's good for countries to focus on whatever they're best at and trade for the rest (for example, grow crops where the weather is good then ship them).
Broadly speaking, international cooperation on specialized manufacturing and investment is a good thing. Strong economic ties also make war much riskier because of the guaranteed economic damage (protectionism in the interwar period is considered one factor that led to the second world war).
The caveat is nations need to make smart investments and encourage industry and research to build out competitive domestic manufacturing and service sectors. If nations can't grow and change to meet new needs, life will always be painful. We can always build things faster and better if we set our minds to it. The first transcontinental railroad was built in only 6 years.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
It is interesting though that your example of the transcontinental railroad being built faster and better is also an example of a horribly exploited workforce. I think over a thousand Chinese laborers died, and they were paid very little. I hope the dock workers and the companies will be able to quickly find a moderate solution that can have the best of both worlds.
Strikes in the late 1800s were wild compared to today, especially the ones related to railroads! The Pullman strike, the great railroad strike, the Carnegie steel one was a straight up battle. All because they refused to pay fair wages. Pullman actually starved people, the governor had to call in emergency charities to feed his workers. He argued that they were in fact paid a living wage, because they were living.... in court. The story of his company town is really fascinating (and so awful) Given the history, I tend to lean toward unions being a necessary and positive thing, even if they come at some other cost. There just isn't a reality where the wealthy pay fair wages and protect workers out of the goodness of their hearts.
That's all true. Though nowadays China has built out an even more impressive high speed rail network with, as far as I know, better labor practices. For an example of a recent rapid construction project in the US, part of I95 collapsed in Philadelphia and was rebuilt in 12 days! We can literally move bridges if there's the political will.
Labor regulations are significantly better than centuries ago, and many of the laws were paid for in blood. I'm not universally anti-union. I'm just not convinced that this particular union and bargaining method will deliver benefits for anyone but the dockworkers. Unions are not necessarily representative of all labor interests, and they can individually take actions that harm communities. We're all well aware of the problems with police unions for example...
You can get more jobs if there's so much unmet demand that even with automation more labor is needed, but that's rare.
According to the article, the maximum they can earn is $79,040 a year. They start out at $41,600 a year.
A 70% increase would be $134,368 and $70,720 a year.
I see absolutely no problem with that. Why should they settle for less? If these workers are so crucial for the economy, their pay should reflect their importance.
I get that the ban on automation seems silly, but it's definitely a bridgehead for negotiations. I absolutely do not think a 70% pay raise, even a 100% pay raise for these guys, is "union cronyism".
Why is it "union cronyism" to ask for a six-figure salary, a $55,328 and $29,120 increase in pay, when the executives of shipping companies are making millions more in 2024 than they were half a decade ago?
I'd be supportive of their pay demands if they were negotiating in good faith and genuinely supported productivity boosts. American ports are uniquely inefficient, and I see zero signs the unions want to make things better. Natural monopolies should be regulated in ways that benefit the average person, not just union dock workers.
I disagree that the union is negotiating in bad faith. Like I said in my last comment, starting from a bridgehead of "no automation" allows them to make concessions on less, for more in return. They can go from "no automation" to "a little automation" and potentially get a lot in exchange. That isn't negotiating in bad faith, that's just negotiating.
And for those concessions, they can get more than just a pay raise. I'm sure they have fears of automation at the ports eventually leading to job cuts. If they concede to some automation at the ports, they can tie that concession to a binding agreement that protects their jobs for a certain number of years.
Also, to put it bluntly, why should longshoremen give a shit about automation and increased productivity before they've secured a significant pay raise for themselves? I certainly don't have faith, and it doesn't appear that they do either, that the companies would just grant them a substantial pay increase, out of the kindness of their hearts, if they increased automation at the ports and productivity went up 300%. Why should the longshoremen even begin to negotiate on that possibility before they've secured raises for themselves?
I think we both agree that, at least in terms of money, this strike will do more "harm" to the United States as a whole than it will benefit the longshoremen, even if they get the pay raise they're asking for. I think where we disagree is that I say "that's the point" and recognize that's what strikes are and how they're supposed to work. The companies can end this strike any time they want. They can pay millions of dollars over the next several years, and save this country billions, any time they want.
Isn't it the job of the union to make things better for workers and (theoretically) the job of their employers to make things more efficient and beneficial to their customers and the point of negotiation is to balance those needs? That doesn't mean the union is unsupportive of productivity boosts, that just isn't their side of the table to argue. Productivity boosts don't help someone who is unemployed because they were replaced by a machine or someone who sees no additional pay after that productivity boost. So the union demands increased pay and job security and leaves the employer to counter with a way that can happen without preventing the increased productivity. And if it can't, then the union is right not to support it because it is against the interests of its members.
That's all correct in isolation. The trouble is when the industry is critical to the country. There's no price-competitive alternative to shipping containers. The ports are a natural monopoly. They're well within their rights to shut down all the ports, but there will be a price paid by the average American if the strike drags on.
I'd support paying dock workers more as long as the workers were more productive like international ports (an option the union has seemingly rejected so far). Their actions may make sense for union members, but I feel we should always question selfish decision making that only benefits one group. I have extremely mixed feelings about syndicalism.
The additional pay makes no difference to someone who loses their job to a robot. If a compromose is offered that protects jobs without blocking automation, then I'll agree with you. It seems reasonable to me to let the shipping companies put one forward rather than coming up with one themselves, as it will seem favorable to the shipping companies by comparison.
I even agree that the good of the general public should be taken into account when considering a strike, although I don't agree that workers should accept losing their livlihoods with no fallback because it's good for the nation. In America that means facing loss of medical care, inability to support their families, and even potentially homelessness, just to save other people money. That doesn't seem like a reasonable ask to me.
The shipping companies can afford a compromise, of the strike drags on, that's on them.
I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread that increased assistive technologies could actually increase the number of good, safe jobs at the ports, so I won't get into the details here. Suffice to say, America's ports are uniquely terrible internationally, and the unions are hardly blameless.
It's cold and utilitarian, but I think we should consider what's best for everyone sometimes. To be clear, I'm not saying all the dock workers should be immediately fired etc. I just think you might be underestimating the potential harms to millions of Americans. Depending on how long the strike lasts, the COVID supply chain shortages could look mild by comparison. Hundreds of millions of dollars of perishable goods will eventually spoil at sea (union agreements say they can't be unpacked on the west coast), and critical supplies for disaster relief will have to be airlifted at great expense rather than shipped.
Could, sure, but companies often could do things that would benefit their employees, the American public, and even themselves, and instead choose to do things that make someone an egregious amount of money in the short term. If they were expecting to create those new jobs anyway, then a guarantee for existing workers would cost them nothing and either satisfy the unions demands or cost them quite a lot of support, including mine.
I don't begrudge anyone facing their life being destroyed who fights against it with every tool they have. You would willingly face homelessness so that the American economy coukd continue unabated? If so, you're more selfless than I am.
Again, the shipping companies have the power to negotiate as well. They can prevent their workers from having their lives destroyed as well as these supply chain issues from occurring.
In that case, it sounds like the port operators can afford to present a counteroffer that the workers would accept. After all, since they have this natural monopoly, they can charge their clients whatever price they need in order to balance their checkbooks.
You’re mad at these workers going on strike, and present all these reasons why it’s terrible.
I’m sitting here with that same list of terrible burdens to the broader US population, and I’m mad at the business owners for letting it get to the point of a strike rather than negotiating an outcome before it came to this.
Yes there is - it's called trucking/training the goods to a Canadian or Mexican port.
I would be very surprised if something like a china->Canada port->USA is price competitive to a direct china->USA port even if we assume existing distribution infrastructure built up around the US ports are equal to the CA-US border crossing points in this proposal.
All the articles I've read say that trucking/train from the West Coast wasn't viable, so I doubt adding another border is better.
On the plus side, if the strike continues for another two decades, airships might become the US's dominant mode of international shipping.
I see no concerns with launching the Hindenburg II
People give the Hindenburg a bad rep, while ignoring 1) the safety records of the 1930s aerospace industry in general, and 2) that the Hindenburg was designed to be filled with helium, and was only filled with hydrogen due to the USA (the only major source of helium) embargoing Nazi Germany in 1939.
I mean, I have sat with both of those pieces of information and still...
It would be safer because it would eliminate all of their jobs and then they would have a zero chance of getting hurt
They fought containerization too. The workers don't always know what's better or safer. Plenty of people want to keep doing things they always have even if there are better options.
Unions making their own right wing anti union propaganda. Why do they keep doing it?
If it's the same protections the West Coast Union has I don't blame them for going for it.
But I don't know the nuances of their demands and the job so I can't say whether I think it's reasonable outside of that.
By the timing, I imagine at least one side is gambling that the upcoming election will help them get what they want
It's embarrassing that so many union members support Trump over the most pro-union president in decades...
Air Canada just went through an almost pilot strike. Same playbook: don't negotiate in good faith, instead rely on legal mechanism and government intervention to stop strike from happening.
Trade accounts for 27% of your economy and these people start at $20/hr and maxes out at $38 and this is fine?
Good on Biden for staying out of this one.
I welcome any inconveniences to make sure people are paid appropriately.
The companies offered 50% pay raise, but they're striking because they want a ban on automation and an even larger pay raise. The union is doing what's best for their members, not what's best for the average American. The dockworkers' unions have fought containerization and every safety and technology improvement.
Its a shame that its necessary to fight progress to keep people employed. I can't blame the unions but I wish the system incentivised automation for the average person, and not just lining the pockets of the billionaires that own the company. Every job that gets taken over by a machine is a blow against the working class, and a huge win for the ruling class.
Things like this should be a net-win for the entire human race, automating labor has been our goal since civilization began; but it ends up making life worse for most people. Think of how much further our technology would be if people don't have to fight every major advancement tooth and nail to keep their families alive.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not against automation, I hope that I didn't come across like that in my comment. I just wish the economic gains from automation were more equitable.
I don't agree that automation makes life worse for most people. Life is obviously better for almost every human on Earth since the industrial revolution. The Luddites were wrong then, and they're wrong now. Humans are very shortsighted and generally hate change even if it would improve their lives.
They weren't wrong. Their belief wasn't "this will make things worse for everyone forever" it was "this will make things worse for me and my family now" and they were right about that. They should have been protected, and we should be protecting people now. Yes, automation generally makes the lives of most people better eventually, but with many innovations there is a group of people who suffer unnecessarily in the short term. If those people had protection or other options, the whole equation would change.
Yep, societies should provide social benefits that make automation and job changes less painful. Even still, it's always an uphill battle fighting for change because it's inevitably going to disrupt someone's life. Take NIMBYism's prevelance even in areas with much stronger social safety nets for example.
Obviously in the grand scheme of things automation has been amazing for the human race, thats why its always been our number 1 goal. But for the people who are directly affected it 100% makes their life worse. And in our current age with such a delicately balanced economy, automation severely negatively impacts the most vulnerable individuals.
I'll use a hypothetical example that we will probably see: Self driving cars and trucks. Ignoring the argument that there are more efficient ways to transport people and freight, self driving cars will revolutionize everything to do with the transportation/shipping industry. For domestic shipping, humans have always been the bottleneck for these industries and are the most expensive part of the chain, and eliminating that cost of both time and resources will significantly streamline things and reduce shipping costs substantially. Truck drivers cost a lot of money and can only drive a certain number of hours a day before legally being required to stop, they also are more likely to have expensive accidents that can destroy billions of dollars of products every year. Reducing/eliminating those costs would obviously be a huge gain for the economy as a whole, but for the people who work in that industry, all of a sudden they are shit out of luck and need to go work somewhere else.
This results in a negative feedback loop where you have more people flooding into a job market which results in lower wages all around for the working class because of competition (the basic rules of supply and demand.) These effects extend far beyond only related industries, and even blue collar and white collar jobs are affected. If a fast food worker makes 25 dollars an hour, then someone with a more specialized job will obviously require a higher salary to satisfy their skillset.
So who is gaining the immediate benefits from these changes? It's always been the ruling class. Sure we don't have people toiling away plowing fields by hand anymore, but you still have people working 3 jobs often doing 12-15 hour days and still barely making enough to survive. Our economic system heavily encourages automation and technological advancements, but those gains take far too long to "trickle down" to the common worker.
You'd have a more valid point in an international context where jobs are shipped overseas and no local industry takes the displaced workers. However, America currently has a very tight labour market with far more jobs than workers. Making everything cheaper by lowering shipping costs is good for everyone.
I totally agree that we need more programs to support retraining and job placement, but that's not an argument against automation on a society level. Fully-automated luxury gay space communism clearly relies on automating jobs.
Side note, the vast majority of Americans are doing fine and are exceptionally wealthy by international standards, and I'm tired of people forgetting about this. The poorest state in the US is doing better than the UK.
I'm not educated enough to have an opinion on that, and I'm certainly not arguing against automation, I'm obsessed with technology and believe that it will help us solve a lot of the issues the human race caused over the last 200 years.
I just am always frustrated by how those gains are always absorbed by the .01%. (I haven't entirely fact checked this claim, but it seems reasonable) The fact that the ten richest men in the world doubled their fortunes in pandemic while incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell just goes to show why it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. (Fun stat from the article: “If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet.")
If what you say about the poorest Americans doing better than the UK is true, than that's even more upsetting because vast regions of the US are in the most depressing, hopeless situations I've ever seen. A large portion of rural areas have 0 economic opportunities and there are tons of people working actual minimum wage jobs ($7.25 an hour STILL) because the only job for 50 miles is working as a dollar general cashier. These people have no education; no hope to ever do anything but retail work, smoke cigs and buy scratch-offs, and die in their 50's and 60's because the country has abandoned them. This isn't hyperbole either, I grew up in one of those areas and have seen it happen, and its gotten much worse in the last 20 years. Amazon (and related companies) warehouses have been the only real job growth in any of these areas and once those jobs get automated out of existence which is inevitable, the system will collapse and government welfare will be the only thing keeping those people alive. And living on EBT is not a fun existence for anyone involved, especially if you have kids.
Just as a side point, not trying to start an argument, but your point here
makes me wonder how many of those jobs actually pay anything close to a living wage, because if not then they're not helping do anything but slowly kill off the working class by choking them out.
This is outdated news now, but to clarify your statement,
they offered a 50% pay raise over 6 years. This comes out to a 2% pay raise each year. Given the rate of inflation over the last 4 years, this doesn't even keep up with that (AFAIK, inflation is about 2.5% right now), which was one of the primary reasons for the strike. They were put through hell during the pandemic and lost buying power for it.
Sorry, would you mind explaining your math here? Wouldn't 50% over 6 years be an 8.3% raise every year? That would beat out inflation, by a lot.
It compounds. For simplicity, assume a starting salary of $100. A 50% increase would be a final salary of $150. Here’s a breakdown (with a little rounding for presentation) comparing a 50%/6yr (8.333%/yr) versus what you’d need to get the correct result.
So 6% increase per year is the effective number. Lower than 8.33%, but higher than 2%, unless I missed something.
I think I did screw up the math (I don;t know why I'm so bad at converting percentages). I took the sixth root of 50 setting up
which gave me 1.91. But we're not working with raw numbers, but percenages.
what I should have done is convert 50% to 150% first
and that gives me 1.0699. Which would basically be a 7% raise. Raising 107% to the 6th power confirms this (you know, outside of inflation effects).
so they get 7% raises which is a lot more reasonable. Not sure if it makes up for covid inflations which were insane, but it's not some lowball joke.
So how did you get 8.3%?
I believe u/DrStone worked out the correct annual increase.
well, that is in fact another way to manage raises, but raises tend to be based on your current pay for that year, not the base pay when you sign on. I can't say which one of us is right without reading the contract.
as a personal example, I got 3% raises for 2 years at a previous company, but it was based on my current salary. so I didn't get a 6% wage but 1.03^2, which is 1.609. Very close, but that .009 diverges the more years I get raises. for a $100k salary, that 0.009 alone is a 900 dollar difference.
This is better in my situation, but worse in a situation where they set the target beforehand.
Totally! But we're getting screwed by the companies either way. At least now it's going to the workers and not the csuite
The average American won't see it that way when prices for every imported good go up. The workers aren't necessarily better than the executives. We've all had asshole coworkers that made decisions that were good for them and no-one else.
More power to them. Fight as long as necessary. The disruption is the point.
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I support the unions and believe everyone should be paid enough to live well. They can strike as long as they must as far as I'm concerned.
But every union or company's workers trying to "keep up" with inflation through manual changes to contracts seems like an endless, sisyphean task. There has to be a better way to consistently guarantee strong worker benefits without creating conditions that effectively require strikes every year.
Companies will always resist wage increases for employees. Surely wages can just be legislated to be indexed to inflation at a baseline. I also feel like there ought to be laws tying employee wages and management wages together (there can be a disparity, but if the ceiling go up, the floor should also go up). Perhaps there are other/better ways to "automate" this process through legislation.
Yes, but the political willpower to do it isn’t there. The people in office largely depend on donations from the very companies they’d be legislating against with something like this.
The strike has ended. Workers compromised on pay and got nothing regarding security in the event of automation, but the contract was only extended until January.
To be precise, negotiations were resumed, and all deals were "tenative". That normally means an end is coming, but we haven't been in normal times for a while. The fact that they didn't really conclude the negotiations on automation makes me feel that we'll hit the same brick wall come January unless something big intervenes.
Under Joe Biden, Department of Transportation regulations already forbid port automation that would reduce the number or quality of longshoremen jobs, so they already have job security as long as Democrats are in power.
Which also, potentially, ends in January. (But hopefully not!)
I think the election is why the negotiations are suspended - the port owners know if Trump is in office they can screw the workers, whereas if Harris is in office the workers will have very reliable ground to negotiate from, and don't want to compromise prematurely over Trump concerns.