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Notes -
Automation is coming for our jobs, old economy edition:
On Tuesday, the 45,000 or so longshoremen who work at the East Coast ports of the United States will go on strike. Or, at least, there's an 89% of this happening according to Polymarket.
This is a bit of an interesting development for a few reasons.
Though blue collar, these longshoreman are extremely well paid. With overtime, 1/3rd of the union members earn over $200k per year.
The demands of the union are also pretty strident. They are seeking an increase of 80% over 6 years.
Furthermore, the union is demanding that no further automation happens at the port. Obviously, the ports hate this since. They are incredibly inefficient compared to European and Chinese ports.
These ports handle 60% of the goods coming into the United States. Even a 2 week shutdown will snarl supply chains into 2025. Shipping prices, already elevated due to the Red Sea shutdown, will soar to levels never seen. Anything too bulky to fly in will see shortages.
This is all before an election season. The Biden administration could in theory wield the Taft-Hartley Act to break the strike, much like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. But breaking a union, even a very well-paid one, is not a great look right before the election.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. As of right now, the union and the ports couldn't be further apart.
My guess is the ports get bent over after a week or so and the costs get passed on to the consumer. The Biden admin will probably force both sides to come to the table. I've heard "we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way" has worked recently. They might ask the union to push this until after the election. The union would be foolish to accept that right now since their leverage will never be higher.
I just want to point out for those who don't know- longshoremen are not skilled labor. They are extremely well paid in hereditary sinecures that may or may not be bolstered by fraudulent timecards and maintain their dominance with an old-fashioned organized-crime-linked union.
I mean, good for them. We should all be so fortunate. When software engineers are begging for scraps on the streets, the longshoremen will truly be kings among men. When the social contract (referring to pro-social business norms) cannot keep your family fed, people will resort to other means.
That drives up the price of all goods. They are really sticking it to you and me. And also making our ports far behind the automated ports the rest of the world has.
Well yeah, but if I were a longshoreman, I would rather my Amazon order be $5 more than have no job. Minimizing costs for businesses is not an end on an of itself. From the perspective of the longshoreman, trying to automate away their jobs is defecting and its obvious they would want to punish this behavior.
I have heard at least one (blue-voting!) New Yorker complain about the stranglehold the transit unions have on the city's mass transit. In particular that the leverage of a strike halting the subway prevents investment in some better technology that would improve the rider experience. In particular, this included any sort of automatic driving system, which (I'm told) limits total system throughput and those self-aligning train and platform doors that have existed elsewhere in the world for decades and would probably improve safety substantially.
I'm not wholly opposed to unions, but I don't think they uniformly make everyone's life better either. See also the Chicago plumbers union and lead pipes. But I suppose most of the time they probably ask for more reasonable concessions.
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