U.S. Dockworkers Go on Strike Over Robots and Wages

The people who move goods from ship to shore are on strike along America’s east coast. For the first time since 1977, the 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association(ILA) are walking picket lines. The union’s existing contract expired on Monday at midnight after negotiations with the bosses broke down. The longshoremen want better pay as well as something existential and harder to secure: a future where robots don’t take their jobs.

The ILA strike will hit 36 ports from Maine to Texas, shutting down most shipments coming into the eastern half of the United States. America runs on trade and for hundreds of years the people who work the docks have pulled goods off of ships, sorted them, and loaded them for transport across the country.

Without the longshoremen, America’s supply chain shuts down. Much of the country has stocked up on goods ahead of the Christmas season but there’s always something coming in and the longer the strike goes on, the more likely it is that Americans will feel the pinch. Inflation may rise. Goods might be scarce.

According to ILA President Harold J. Daggett, that’s the point. “These people don’t know what a strike is,” Dagget said in an interview posted to YouTube on September 5. “You know what’s gonna happen? I’ll tell you. First week. Be all over the news every night, boom boom. Second week, guys who sell cars can’t sell cars because the cars ain’t comin’ in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week. Malls start closing down. They can’t get the goods from China. Everything in the United States comes from a ship.”

The ILA is negotiating with the United States Maritime Alliance which represents ports and the major shipping companies. The Maritime Alliance said on Monday that it had offered to triple employer contributions to retirement plans, strengthen health care plans, and increase wages by 50% over six years. It also said it would keep the old language from the previous union contract that limited the use of automation at ports.

The ILA wants a 77% increase and a complete ban on automation at the ports. According to Dagget, he saw the shipping companies rake in billions in profit during the pandemic and he wants his people to have a piece of the pie. “In today’s world, I’ll cripple ya. I will cripple you and you have no idea what that means. Nobody does,” he said in his interview on YouTube.

The Maritime Alliance does know what it’s like, which is probably a big part of why it’s been doggedly pursuing automation at the ports over the past few years. The robots are already at the ports. Automation can already handle the two biggest jobs at a port: unloading massive shipping containers with a crane and sorting those shipping containers on the shore. There are already three fully automated terminals in the U.S. More are on the way. The equipment to automate a port is expensive to set up and it does still require workers, but far fewer than are required to unload goods the old-fashioned way.

“You don’t have to pay pensions to robots,” Brian Jones, a foreman at the Port of Philadelphia, told the New York Times in September. Dockworkers on the West Coast struck a deal with the Maritime Alliance last year. They secured a pay raise without having to strike but did not stop the rollout of automation.