You're Not Going to Automate MY Job

Last week U.S. dockworkers struck, for the first time in decades. Their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILW), was demanding a 77% pay increase, rejecting an offer of a 50% pay increase from the shipping companies. People worried about the impact on the economy, how it might impact the upcoming election, even if Christmas would be ruined. Some panic hoarding ensued.

Then, just three days later, the strike was over, with an agreement for a 60% wage increase over six years. Work resumed. Everyone’s happy right? Well, no. The agreement is only a truce until January 15, 2025. While money was certainly an issue – it always is – the real issue is automation, and the two sides are far apart on that.

Fighting automation isn't going to work

Most of us aren’t dockworkers, of course, but their union’s attitude towards automation has lessons for our jobs nonetheless.

The advent of shipping containers in the 1960’s (if you haven’t read The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson, I highly recommend it) made increased use of automation in the shipping industry not only possible but inevitable. The ports, the shipping companies, and the unions all knew this, and have been fighting about it ever since. Add better robots and, now, AI to the mix, and one wonders when the whole process will be automated.

This is the world of shipping today. Credit: Logistics Management

Curiously, the U.S. is not a leader in this automation. Margaret Kidd, program director and associate professor of supply chain logistics at the University of Houston, told The Hill: “What most Americans don’t realize is that American exceptionalism does not exist in our port system. Our infrastructure is antiquated. Our use of automation and technology is antiquated.”

Eric Boehm of Reason agrees:

The problem is that American ports need more automation just to catch up with what's considered normal in the rest of the world. For example, automated cranes in use at the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands since the 1990s are 80 percent faster than the human-operated cranes used at the port in Oakland, California, according to an estimate by one trade publication.

The top rated U.S. port in the World Bank’s annual performance index is only 53^rd.  Sixty-two ports worldwide – out of some 1300 – are considered semi- or fully automated. According to Heather Long in WaPo, the U.S. has 3 ports that are considered fully automated and another three that are considered semi-automated.  Loading and unloading times in the U.S. are longer than competing ports. Increased use of automation, in some fashion and to some degree, is necessary to stay competitive.

Yet the dockworkers are unmoved. In a letter to members, the ILW leader vowed: “Let me be clear: we don’t want any form of semi-automation or full automation. We want our jobs—the jobs we have historically done for over 132 years.” He insists the new six-year contract must include “absolute airtight language that there will be no automation or semiautomation” 

“The rest of the world is looking down on us because we’re fighting automation,” said Dennis Daggett, executive vice president of the ILA. “Remember that this industry, this union has always adapted to innovation. But we will never adapt to robots taking our jobs.”

This is what needs to get resolved by January. Wages are important, but only for those who have jobs. It very much reminds me of last year’s Hollywood writer’s strike, which was partly about money, but also about not letting studios use generative AI to do their jobs.

Seem familiar? Credit: Mandalit del Barco/NPR News

It’s worth pointing out that dockworkers may not quite fit the typical blue collar union worker stereotype. The Wall Street Journal reports that the average, full-time dockworkers on the West Coast made $233,000, while more than half of their East Coast counterparts earned over $150,000. Not all dockworkers earn such amounts, nor has full-time work available, but – still.  

Resisting automation is a great rallying cry to union members, but is not realistic. “The argument to stop automation now is slamming the barn door decades after the horse has gotten out. This is not going to work long term. The economic incentives behind it are too strong,” Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Washington Post.

Mr. Levinson told WaPo: “In the past, the longshore unions have agreed to various types of automation, but there’s always been some kind of price attached in terms of protecting the jobs and protecting the union’s jurisdiction. And I assume that there is some price at which this dispute will be resolved.”

Professor Kidd, in The Hill, urged: “The ILA needs to be looking at a long-term vision. There’s no industry — journalism, academia, manufacturing — that hasn’t been changed by technology,”

Along those lines, Erik Brynjolfsson, the director of Standford University’s Digital Economy Lab, suggested to The Hill:

I find it very short-sighted of the dockworkers, or any workers, to be pushing against automation if you can instead, find a way that the gains get shared. I would hope that there’s an opportunity there to strike an agreement where there is a lot more automation, not less automation and that some of the benefits get shared with the dockworkers and others.

This is not just a dockworker’s issue. As Ms. Long wrote in WaPo, “the bigger reason everyone should pay attention is that this is an early battle of well-paid workers against advanced automation. There will be many more to come.” Or, as Allison Morrow quipped in CNN: “The bots come for all of us, which is why the outcome of the port strike is particularly important to watch.”

Maybe you’re not a longshoreman, or a Hollywood writer. But the future is coming for your job too. I was struck by the title of an NYT op-ed by Jonathan Reisman, M.D.: I’m a Doctor. ChatGPT’s Bedside Manner Is Better Than Mine. As Dr. Reisman concludes:

In the end, it doesn’t actually matter if doctors feel compassion or empathy toward patients; it only matters if they act like it. In much the same way, it doesn’t matter that A.I. has no idea what we, or it, are even talking about.

I think of another quote from Professor Brynjolfsson, from a WSJ article earlier this year: “This recognizes that tasks—not jobs, products, or skills—are the fundamental units of organizations.”  I.e., when it comes to thinking about the future of your job, you really need to be recognizing which tasks in it could be done as well or better by automation/AI. They’re going to be more than you might like.  

The future is here.