In early October, one of the main demands of the striking dockworkers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was to protect workers’ jobs from being replaced by automation. Industrial decision-makers, both businesspeople and government officials, have long been using technological developments to try to make the production of goods as efficient as possible, thereby increasing profits. In fact, in late October, Biden announced federal grants of almost $3 billion to update the infrastructure and equipment of ports across the country. While they are trying to paint this as a “climate-friendly” project, one of the real motivations behind electrification is to automate (while continuing to export and important fossil fuels and related products). But such automation in a profits-first system also means that workers lose jobs.
There have been attempts around the world for decades to automate ports, which have standardized shipping containers and allow for streamlined protocols. Many port jobs are extremely dangerous, with huge shipping containers weighing tens of tons being lifted and stacked using cranes and other large machinery. Automating some of this machinery can improve the safety of workers, who no longer have to interface with heavy equipment so closely. But dock workers know they shouldn’t just be cast aside from tasks that require experience and knowledge and can often be done faster and more effectively by humans. Further automating existing ports would cost many hundreds of millions of dollars. But the U.S. Government Accountability Office has reported mixed outcomes of how beneficial automation is to port productivity.
The importance of the movement of goods was crystal-clear when the ILA dockworkers struck for three days, Oct. 1-3, impacting the U.S. economy by an estimated $1 to $5 billion per day. Workers’ main concerns had to do with low wages and protections against losing their jobs to automation.
On Oct. 4, the ILA announced that the shipping bosses and port operators had tentatively agreed on a 62% wage increase in a new six-year contract. So, the union suspended the strike. But this agreement on wages is contingent on reaching an agreement on how much, if any, new automation will be allowed. If no agreement on automation and all other outstanding issues is reached by Jan. 15, the ILA is free to go back on strike and the bosses are free to tear up any promises they made about wage increases.
If the ILA goes back on strike in January, it will find its leverage over the shipping bosses and port operators significantly reduced. For one thing, shipments tend to decline in the first few months of the year and, second, with the election over, Trump may feel free to invoke a Taft-Hartley injunction to stop a strike.
Automation does not just affect dock workers. Corporate rulers have invested heavily in the development of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), seeing the potential in replacing human labor. From manufacturing and logistics to teaching, software development, art, and journalism, no one’s work has been safe from such technology. Capitalists are trying to threaten labor, especially skilled labor, which requires education. And even before recent technology, automation has been a tool to de-value and de-skill human labor. The assembly line, agricultural machinery, and mechanized looms served as tools to remove artistry and skill from jobs of production during capitalism’s development. Notably, the Luddites, British weavers and textile workers, fought back against the automation that allowed factory owners to work them harder than ever. The workers smashed equipment, and many were sentenced to death or sent to Australia by the English government in the early 19th Century.
Technological development and automation are not in themselves a bad thing. In fact, the improvements for safety and efficiency could mean that we could spend less time and take fewer risks getting the same, or even more, work done. The problem is who gets to make the decisions and for what reason. When the business owners spend their billions of dollars to automate, it is because they have calculated the ultimate profits they will squeeze out by paying fewer workers. Rather than using technology to free up our time to learn a new skill, enjoy a hobby, or socialize within our community, capitalism forces us to trade our labor for wages. When the bosses say they don’t need us, we can’t eat or pay our rent.
In a world free from prioritizing for-profit growth, we could use automation to do the repetitive and basic tasks that tie up our time, so that we could do other things. But capitalism wants to replace skilled and educated labor and keep us in more replaceable, lower-wage positions. In fact, automation is not as efficient as humans at more complicated tasks, but this is where the rich and powerful are investing their research.
As the dockworkers have shown us, our labor is extremely valuable and keeps the global economy running. Although the bosses use automation to try to replace us, we can replace them if we are organized. In a world where we as workers make decisions, we could take advantage of automation without losing our ability to eat, pay the rent, or have access to health care. In today’s struggles, let’s support workers at the ports and elsewhere who fight against the capitalists using automation to exploit them for profit while risking the workers’ lives.
