The metric used in this article is likely different than the metric that the port operators care about. The article was measuring productivity by turnaround time for ships. The port operator probably cares most about operating costs. Excess turnaround time for ships is a cost born by the shipping line (and consumer), and it is unlikely to affect whether people choose a given port because geographic concerns dominate most.
The goal of the port operator is explicitly to lay off longshoremen so they don't have to pay inflated salaries. It is diametrically opposed to the union's goals in this regard, hence the dispute. The article largely acknowledge that automation succeeds in reducing the number of longshoremen required, which is its actual purpose. (It did question whether the reduced labor costs actually pay for the capital investment required, but didn't give any numbers. Since capital investment is a one-time cost but wages are a recurring cost, this calculation needs to be subjected to discounted cash flow analysis, which also requires that an interest rate be specified.)
In the ports in the US that have adopted some automation, it hasn't led to job losses. It actually increased throughput and required more workers.
Automation messes up the flow of illegal drugs. The big stuff does not come in a backpack but in container ships/trucks.
In LATAM, dock workers make sure this goes undetected. I know of an IE who was championing a dock worker scheduling optimization algo, typical Operations Management stuff. Dude was killed.
I'd like to think that this kind of things do not happen here. But every time I've thought along those lines, I've been mistaken. It's just happens at a different scale.
This interpretation is at odds with what happens in Rotterdam aka cocaine ground zero (or is it Antwerp now?). It's the most automated port in the world. They still routinely bust port insiders who help crooks there.
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-59379474
https://www.vice.com/en/article/belgium-netherlands-cocaine-...
https://www.occrp.org/en/project/narcofiles-the-new-criminal...
I would argue OP's point is still valid since any kind of change is bad when you're smuggling drugs. If they automate everything, then all of the old systems no longer work, and any new system would require people working at much higher levels.
The argument here is that the union is directly involved in drug smuggling, which is why some of the union reps live in multimillion dollar luxury homes. They're opposed to automation because it would mess up their system
If we follow the OP's point, a good port is one where insiders can be busted for facilitating drug traffic and a bad port is one where insiders get killed for trying to stop it.
The fact that we still waste fortunes pretending we can ban drugs, despite the drug trade preserving every single time without fail, irks me to no end.
Like a lot of nice-sounding but difficult things, it reaches "political exhaustion" and we end up with a half-assed "compromise" that's the worst of both worlds.
How would automation mess up the flow of drugs. Wouldn't it make it easier, if no human was there to take a peek?
Or are there ghost containers on ships, which are filled with drugs and not part of the manifest, that an automated system would flag but people with greased hands know to let it through?
Likely the second one, things like “take that container and drop it off on that truck, but don’t log it”
Doesn't even have to be whole containers, whole containers would be harder to hide.
Just divert the container to an area without cameras for a few minutes, pop it open and remove the kilos.
In a manual world, nobody notices that the container takes 15 minutes longer to reach the storage area.
In a manual world, nobody notices that the container suddenly became 100lbs lighter.
In a manual world, nobody notices the GPS trace showing the container going behind the warehouse where the camera coverage is spotty.
> Automation messes up the flow of illegal drugs.
This is the real reason and one of the primary reasons productivity won't be optimized, especially at the LATAM ports.
It happens in Rotterdam, EU's biggest container port, so I'm pretty sure that it happens in the States, too.
You'd think the union would keep it's head down then. Or they are just power drunk and want their cake while eating it too?
They are in the position to hold critical infrastructure hostage, via a government mandated monopoly on labor. The ports can't just reject the union offer and employ non-union workers. Laws mandate that the ports can only hire union labor. The Union can, if it so desires, shut down most East coast ports until it gets its demands. They're not power drunk, they genuinely have the power to cause massive economic damage.
Imagine halfway through a kitchen remodel, your contractor stops working and demands 70% more than the initial quote. But not only that, the government prohibits you from hiring a different contractor at market rates and forces you to negotiate with the original contractor. That's what union negotiations are like.
That take is predicated on the assumption that the govt will always side with the union. Ask ATCs from the 1980s who the govt tends to side with when it comes to critical infrastructure.
The difference there was that PATCO was a union for government air traffic controllers. Every government employee swears an oath not to strike against the federal government:
https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdfimage/sf61.pdf
There were existing laws on the books to remove the striking ATCs.
That’s not the case with the ILA. The most they can do is block strikes for 80 days.
That's a weird metaphor considering the situation here was that a contract expired and they had months to negotiate. It's more like if you were in the middle of reworking your kitchen and while that was happening you were talking about doing the bedroom next for a cheaper cost. They said no but you thought you could get a bulk deal.
Now add that to a bigger time scale and mass inflation happened between the batrhoom and he bedroom. They have to charge more just to keep buying power.
The analogue to the kitchen remodel is that critical infrastructure is held hostage. Ports are prohibited, by law, from hiring non union port workers if they find the union's demands too onerous. This gives the union incredible leverage to harm the rest of society if their demands are not met.
Ah yes, applying household analogues to national government issues.
How about this: imagine you're a multi-billion dollar per annum organization openly researching how to put tens of thousands of your core workforce out of a career, and they ask for more money to protect their families and livelihood. And the government forces you to negotiate.
Imagine how people would react if their operating system was so hilariously incapable of managing its responsibilities.
But when it comes to the management of the majority of our lives (the system we conduct our lives within, and according to), right thinking people insist on mediocrity.
There are many paradoxes like this in the world, but for some reason it is not possible to get minds to focus on them. I wonder what the underlying cause of this is...perhaps there is a causal relationship between the two phenomena in this case?
Considering what can happen if you cross a union? I would imagine people keep their heads down and turn a blind eye
Salacious claims like this should always be backed up with verifiable info. In the absence of such, it is reasonable to assume inaccuracies from chains of communication or even deception–especially when coming from an anonymous source. Did you even know the guy?
The article notes that many automated ports are poor performers productivity-wise and presents this as evidence that automation doesn't increase productivity. However, it stands to reason that ports already suffering from low productivity would be the most inclined to adopt automation. I think it's safe to say automation is not a silver bullet that will cause a port to jump from the bottom to the top of the rankings, but that doesn't mean these ports wouldn't be worse off without the improvements they've made.
Also while the article champions various process improvements to make ports more efficient that don't strictly require automation, it's not an either/or scenario. Implementing automation can make it easier to implement process improvements like scheduling, and process improvements which reduce variability make automation less expensive and more capable. It makes sense to pursue both in parallel.
Autometion generally starts with high labor costs which poductivity is not really a measure of. Sometimes it is about safety or no strikes, but normaly wages.
Once automation works it often is more productive but not always.
useful line of thinking here.. this approach also reveals a fundamental part of negotiations.. are people interested in seeing an approach? and willing to put up with small failures and setbacks to get to a desired approach? ask that for both sides. call them "automators" .. those who want more robots, all the time, at any cost(?) due to the bright and shiny robot future they make.. and/or the "john henry"s so to speak.. humans and their allies.. people who make a living, have property and are part of families, schools and communities.. elect representatives into social groups that have a seat at the table.. long-term humans that live and thrive
On another hand, pure "economic determinism" about efficiency and quarterly results, that is included in this topic.. but some might say that those economic determinism people have a lot to answer for in an age of inappropriately priced fossil fuels, availability of credit in large amounts for unequal reasons, a system of law and associated prices that assume an infinite natural world to use up in any way, shape or form. etc.
Huh, it sounds like better places to act would be:
1. Repealing the Foreign Dredge Act [1] (or amending it to be compatible with friendshoring);
2. Mandating truck appointment systems (maybe even a centrally-run one, at least for each coast); and
3. Moving to a 24/7 default for our nation’s ports.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Dredge_Act_of_1906
So about truck appointment systems, you should probably be thankful those are NOT the norm. Generally speaking container terminal operators and transport companies are antagonistic to eachother, since they are NOT in a direct business relationship. The truck transporter (or rail/barge transport companies) are hired either by the shipper directly, or by the shipping company, depending on whether you book a door-to-door or a port-to-port transport. This is also known as carrier haulage and merchant haulage. The container terminal generally works for the shipping line.
Long story short: the container terminal will always opt to please their customer (shipping line) over their non-customer (trucking companies). Truck appointment systems are usually used to force transporters to smooth out peak times not in the name of efficiency, but rather to lower the amount of dock workers the container terminal needs to hire. The truck companies generally end up footing the bill for this, both in increased workload and in detention/demurrage costs because they can't get their containers out and back in time. This money goes directly into the pocket of both the shipping line and container terminals as this is typically something they make heavy profits on.
Be very wary when container terminals and shipping lines start to push for centrally mandated appointment systems. They are much more consolidated than hinterland transport operators. I'm all for increasing efficiency but let's not even further increase market power for shipping lines and container terminals please.
> smooth out peak times not in the name of efficiency, but rather to lower the amount of dock workers the container terminal needs to hire.
I’m confused. Efficiency means you don’t need to hire as much, since your peak-to-trough ratio is lower. Or you can handle more load, if you were capacity-constrained.
I don’t get why this is framed as a secret “other reason”.
My understanding is that shipping is a competitive market, is this not the case? If it is you expect price decreases to be passed on to customers.
Container terminals will take any minor efficiency win on their side, even if it comes at the cost of massive efficiency loss for truck transporters. It's optimizing for a local maximum. The market is structured in such a way that it is hard to correct for that, since the relation between trucking companies and container terminals is very indirect, and customers can't directly compare.
Also while shipping is a competitive market, the market for ports is not. You're either in a location or not. There are not hundreds of container terminals in a single port in competition because of economies of scale.
(The market for trucking companies IS competitive however, meaning that if you have to err on 'protecting' either party, you should probably pick that one)
> about truck appointment systems, you should probably be thankful those are NOT the norm
Sounds like you’re arguing against a port-run appointment system versus a system per se. When I said centrally-managed I should have said federal. It strikes me as analogous to ATC.
ATC does not take appointments. Planes arrive early and late all the time. All ATC offers is _sequencing_ through protected airspaces. Your pilot is literally picking up their actual clearance on the ground right before engine start.
Planes can declare emergencies, they can divert to alternative locations, turn around for maintenance issues. And this is just IFR flights. VFR flights can take off, and once outside of controlled airspace, can just fly mostly however they want.
Your doctor takes appointments. That's a more apt analogy for what port appointments will create.
That’s actually not true for airlines, which are the better analogy here. For airline traffic airports have slots, which are basically appointments, attached to fixed flight schedules.
At the most congested airports slots are highly valuable, to the point where they’re often listed separately as part of an airline’s assets, and airlines will sometimes trade slots.
Many countries will fine airlines if they miss their slot time for reasons that aren’t related to emergencies or bad weather, as well as fine them for any other slot misuse such as hoarding, strategic cancellation, etc.
Now, sure, it’s not a case where if you miss the slot you can’t land or take off. The airport and ATC will always try to accommodate flights no matter what. But it usually means fairly substantial delays to avoid impacting on other take off, landing, and gate slots.
Slots have a very wide time range so thinking of them as "appointments" is entirely misleading.
Also airlines have been given waivers since the early 2000s because the FAA realized that they were simply operating empty "ghost flights" merely to keep their slots allocated to them. So we just give them waivers every year so they don't waste fuel on this stupidity.
The ATC/FAA model is entirely inappropriate for ports.
That’s not the case globally. Heathrow for instance has strict slot time ranges. As does Schiphol.
Neither the UK nor the Netherlands choose to not enforce slot misuse. We’re not talking only about the US and the FAA as examples here.
Whether it’s an appropriate model for ports and especially truck traffic at ports is a different topic, one I’m not qualified to speak on. I was just pointing out the misconception on how airline traffic at airports works and how it’s certainly not just a first-come, first-served ad hoc model.
Slots aren’t managed by ATC. They’re typically managed by the airport as there’s a whole host of facilities impacts to a slot, not just the airspace aspect.
I didn’t say they were managed by ATC, I said the airport has slots.
ATC’s role is to help manage the reshuffling when slots are missed, because there’s still finite landing and take off capacity at very busy airports.
In both cases it’s centrally managed, rather than a free for all.
If ATC does not take appointments, they do give appointments. Useful search term is “expect further clearance.” If all else (e.g. your radio) fails, you can plan to have that space reserved at the time indicated.
I’d argue, of course, that when you file a plan, you’re requesting an appointment.
Agreed, with the asterisk that shipping companies and terminals will try to be the ones driving the government agendas on this. Government run does not necessarily equal neutral. But a neutral system I am generally in favor of.
> the asterisk that shipping companies and terminals will try to be the ones driving the government agendas on this
Which makes the present, in which the ILU's boss has almost turned being an asshole on the internet into an art form, politically expeditious.
Why aren't there more US ship builders? It seems like there ought to be room for a profitable business, given that they have a huge advantage enshrined in federal law.
Related discussion from last month: Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41456073
It sounds like there just aren't that many ships that need to be built.
> [1] Looking at upcoming deliveries, 20 dredgers are expected to join the global fleet in 2021
[1]: https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insight...
We do need some icebreakers though!
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-the-us-cant-build...
I think it's a fairly inconsistent business, for one. I wonder also if state protectionism is at pay. Washington State for example until recently was only considering in state ship builders to replace the ferry fleet
What about repealing the Jones Act?
It seems to me that comparing Chinese ports to American ports is comparing very different things: I would imagine that the vast majority of the traffic at a Chinese port is export traffic while at an American port it’s import traffic.¹ Furthermore, thanks to centralized decision making, the interface between surface traffic and ship in China will inherently be more efficient than the same interface in the U.S. What I’m wondering is how do U.S. ports compare to, say, Europe or Canada where the situation would be more comparable.
⸻
1. In fact, it occurs to me that loading the ship should be faster/more efficient than unloading as there’s not necessarily any reason to do any sorting beyond which ship a container goes on at the export point, while at the import point, there needs to be more direction of getting containers onto individual trucks and trains.
That's not true in my experience. Loading outbound cargo is way more complex, since the stowage plan of the ship dictates where each container goes. Theoretically a lot of containers can be swapped as long as weight is similar, the container type is identical, and the port of discharge is the same. In practice it's still incredibly complex compared to just unloading stuff. While you may need to do less 'digging' on shore, the nitty gritty of the actual operations are way more complex than throwing some boxes ashore.
Import cargo is annoying in that it is mostly random access on pickup. For pickup by train, barge, or feeder ship, a vast minority, you typically don't have cargo manifests until a day or two before pickup at best, so in practice this is also random access-ish. The customs processes are also trickier.
My experience is mostly in Rotterdam and Antwerp, and I'd say the problems in the US probably don't have to do much with automation. Rotterdam and Antwerp have very different automation levels at the biggest container terminals, yet productivity is quite similar.
There is lots of low hanging fruit in optimizing operations, like more collaborative stowage planning, simultaneous unloading and loading operations, and 'modal shifting' from road to rail and water combined with early preannouncement of manifests for trains and barges.
Disclaimer: I'm in the business of consulting and building software for container terminals, so I'll generally be biased towards those solutions.
Unloading can be complex also I would think, in that you have to maintain balance on the ship so it doesn't list or even roll over. You can't just grab the nearest container with your crane.
Yes, although that's the same for loading.
As a general rule, container ships are unloaded tier-by-tier, breadth-first if you will, not shaft-by-shift (depth-first), so this is not much of a problem in practice.
That does start to change if you want to do simultaneous loading and unloading operations, then you'd want to clear out a vertical shafts first so you can start loading operations as quickly as possible. Which is one of the many reasons dock workers hate that style of operations.
Clearly, should have used a queue instead of a stack!
I wonder if unloading is in some sense greedy, in a way that loading isn’t. I have no justification for thinking so, just a gut feel.
That's a pretty reasonable mental model. The only real requirement during unloading is ship stability, other than that just use max concurrency with all the cranes and equipment to max throughput. Even just on the crane level, you can just keep unloading stuff to shore, and wait until vehicles pick them up. If they are slow, just keep on unloading until they catch up. Chance of stalling ops is close to zero.
Loading operations are much more variable, especially if your yard is not stacked well and you need to 'dig out' specific containers. If you run out of containers underneath your crane, your operations are stalled until the terminal vehicles catch up and bring you new boxes to load.
> Even just on the crane level, you can just keep unloading stuff to shore, and wait until vehicles pick them up. If they are slow, just keep on unloading until they catch up. Chance of stalling ops is close to zero.
It's not done that way, much. When a container is taken off a ship, it's usually placed on something that moves - a truck chassis, a railroad car, or an AGV. If you clutter up the dock with containers, unloading will stall.
Using human-driven trucks on the dock side: [1]
Full automation with AGVs: [2]
> What I’m wondering is how do U.S. ports compare to, say, Europe or Canada where the situation would be more comparable
Did we read the same article? It’s constantly calling out examples in Europe and Japan, with every data source citing global patterns, not limiting itself to China and America.
My understanding is that majority of non-raw exports are in shipping containers and those have to be shipped back. So I would expect counts of loaded and offloaded shipping containers to be roughly similar. Interestingly, there are some synergies there - if a truck / train brought a shipping container to the port it's more efficient to put one, potentially empty, back for transport compared to running an empty train / truck.
Notably I am assuming that shipping containers survive a large number of trips and their total number is not growing fast.
> My understanding is that majority of non-raw exports are in shipping containers and those have to be shipped back.
Not always, that's partly why shipping containers are so inexpensive to buy.
If you compare a port ANYWHERE to the US, odds are that it is more efficient. The US ranks last.
Well not _last_ :).
South African ports ranks last, apparently.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-06-10-abysmal-r...
China is 63-37 exports to imports. US is 44-56. It's different, but it's not so drastically different that I think it would mean a totally different approach to automation is needed.
Are there any businesses that both have unions and grant employees equity? If so, can the employees transfer their equity to the union, perhaps in lieu of paying dues? I feel like it could be a good way to align incentives, but I'm not sure it's actually feasible in the US.
I suppose unions at public companies could always just buy the stock regardless of employee equity grants.
Wouldn‘t that be the opposite of aligning incentives? Unions want the workers to do well, stockholders want the company to do well. The company paying people less is better for stockholders, worse for employees obviously. So that seems like an awful idea.
The union could hold shares in a trust, pledging not to sell. Then vote with the shares, and distribute any dividends through to the workers.
Yes. Not just the physical assets, but the data, too.
My favorite example is with rail ports. To pick up a container at a rail yard, the truck driver needs a pickup number. The pickup number is associated to the container and is shared (often times on a piece of paper) when the driver checks in.
The pickup number needs to make its way from the cargo owner to the truck driver. How does this happen?
Rail carriers issue the pickup number to cargo owners via email when the train arrives. Cargo owners email it to a freight forwarder. The freight forwarder emails it to the broker. The broker emails to the trucking company. The trucking company emails it or texts it to the driver. This needs to happen in less than 2 days, else someone along that chain is on the hook to pay a storage fee to the rail yard.
You should look into Secure Container Release, Certified PickUp, Secure Chain, and a whole bunch of other initiatives doing this. Here is the Dutch one: https://www.portbase.com/en/programs/secure-chain/
"Should we just fire all the people on strike at the ports" is how container shipping started in the first place
Yes, Peter Drucker(0) said that shipping containers were one of the greatest inventions of the last century
0) father of modern management and coiner of term "knowledge worker"
Great only if your goal was to make things on one side of the planet, and ship it all to the other side of the planet. If that's your goal, then the invention of containers makes that so much easier. Should we have this goal? Is international shipping (at the scale we engage in it) a good thing? If it were (just for the sake of the argument) a bad thing, then containers would in fact be a horrible invention that enables a very bad thing to happen even more than it could otherwise.
Yes, domestic and international trade is a worthy human endeavor. Shipping containers are awesome.
Shipping containers are also multimodal and are loaded up on trucks and rail cars at ports to be hauled away.
agree - an example is container shipping into "food miles/km", as in South America fish and avacado shipped to the USA for a small change in price to the consumer.. Food miles is widely seen as out of control and makes no sense from fairly simple systems analysis
No, some things just make sense. Having everything shipped in randomly sized containers is terribly inefficient.
> No, some things just make sense. Having everything shipped in randomly sized containers is terribly inefficient.
That's half the value. The other half is that standardized containers dramatically reduce "shrinkage" at the port. Which was a longstanding problem.
Shrinkage was a workers benefit!
I don't think normalizing petty theft is good, but taking away 'perks' is still unpopular. Imagine the riots we'd get if FAANG workers couldn't take snacks home with them?
I thought it was also the Vietnam War
We should back up and ask, "Why do we have an economy?"
If the response is to benefit people, then actions which benefit the economy at the expense of benefiting people are misaligned to our goals. It's an alignment problem and boy if we can't solve this, then I have some bad news for you regarding the next 30 years.
It's not an alignment problem, it's a distribution problem. Automated ports would acutely hurt a very small group of people and help all other people a small amount.
It's an alignment problem, don't be fooled.
Is our economy aligned to the benefit of people? Are we capable of aligning it to our benefit? Do we have any obligation to people we hurt through the decisions we make?
We have the economy to get the maximum output for the minimum input
Having 100 people working doing something that could be automated is bad for mankind. It's a total waste. Might as well have them digging a hole then filling it back in.
The problem is that we don't allow for changing work requirements, both on an individual basis with retraining into jobs of equivalent satisfaction and compensation, but also into keeping areas which lose their industry relevant. This causes people to blame the automation.
It's nothing new, in the past workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation flung their wooden shoes, called 'sabots', into the machines to stop them. ...Hence the word 'sabotage'.
Are you saying more automation or less automation would benefit people?
The article talks a lot about automated ports, but I am wondering what the variation in these automated ports is?
Surely a port built today from the ground up with automation in mind would outperform a port that was retrofitted 20 years ago? Or a port that was upgraded today performing much better than when it was first automated 20 years ago?
The US needs more unions.
Would you prefer EZ pass lanes to disappear and everything be manual toll workers? I can say for sure the Golden Gate Bridge moves a lot faster now.
One thing abut cargo work is that it's always been at full scale since before anybody living was ever born.
Ships have always been as big as they can be, and fewer people handle more (retail value) quicker per person than during less-bulky links in the supply chain.
So fundamentally plenty of money is being made at the port, regardless of the state of automation, this boils down to the lowest priority until all the other elements leading up to the port are taken to a dramatically improved next level automation themselves.
The cargo container was invented in 1956. The industry completely changed in just a few years. Look up the "docklands" area in the UK for example.
I'm reasonably certain people alive today were born before 1956.
Very few people alive before 1956 are working today.
>Very few people alive before 1956 are working today.
I resemble that remark ;)
I am quite few people indeed.
Starting a new company soon anyway, and it's going to take a lot more effort than just working there.
Plus it does have something to do with automation and cargo subcontracting in my niche domain.
>The industry completely changed in just a few years
That does sound about right, IIRC it did only take from 1956 until about the mid-1980'a before containers were everywhere, a relatively few years when it comes to cargo operations.
Joe Biden is.
Huh? Ships have been continually getting larger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...
What OP is arguing is that each ship is built to the largest possible size at the time of its construction. There are plenty of external limitations at hand, e.g., the size of docking facilities, canal clearance, etc. that mean that a container ship can’t get larger than X.
Exactly. There's literally classes of ships that are something "max". e.g. Panamax. Panamax ships are literally built to the absolute limit of what will fit through the locks at the Panama Canal. And yes, sometimes the locks get bigger, and the ships follow.
For the original commenter to be wrong you'd have to argue that they've been underutilizing what's possible in the state of the art. Looking at the Wikipedia page, I don't get that impression. It sounds like giant engines and equipment on the terminal side are the main limitations, and I assume those capabilities have increased over time. Maybe the original commenter is wrong, although I highly doubt that cargo technology has been underutilized unless the cost of state of the art is/was truly so astronomical such that it genuinely doesn't make financial sense.
With crude oil tankers decades ago the indicators were the bigger the better financially, so that's what was done, and bigger ships were built and financial gains realized.
It was only proven how big was too big once a few ultra-large had been built, and the point of diminishing returns had been exceeded enough so accurate math could finally be accomplished.
Routine commercial operation has been scaled back decades ago to less than the max.
Less than the max that is physically possible, focused now more accurately on better returns.
Because the upper bound on how big they can be has been getting larger.
You are generalizing too much. The article is specifically about the efficiency of US ports (compared to ports around the world).
The striking docker workers called a bit of attention to themselves this month ... and this article makes the interesting point that US dock workers are one of the least efficient in the world.
Who or what does not need more automation?
>current ILA president Harold Daggett has complained about EZ passes for highway tolls eliminating union jobs.
I mean that says it all right? I get union's pretty much exist to protect jobs, but it'd be comically inefficient to still require toll booth attendants in this day and age.
And you can pretty much extrapolate this to every industry. Improving technology has always eliminated jobs, in pretty much every field.
I think of there were honest, actually effective and humane means in place to get new, we'll payed jobs in the area for the folks in the union (or financial support for this those for who a career change isn't as easy for one reason or another) the automation would be seen quite differently.
There is no such thing however, not really. Yes, the world doesn't owe these workers indefinite employment in a specific job. But reality also doesn't owe us or the employer a steady progression towards more efficiency, and workers can (and often will) organize against it of they stand to be hurt.
There is such a thing. Unemployed former dockworkers in the US get "container royalties" - fees that shipping companies pay to compensate dock workers laid off due to innovation. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/longshoremen-union-strike-ports-...
I think this is the big point that we, as a society, are missing.
Take a look at Walmart greeters. Why does that job exist? It's pretty much worthless. Now look at who works the job: elderly people past retirement age, physically disabled people, mentally disabled people.
Physical laborers often work a physical labor job for a reason. There's a reason they didn't go to college and sit at a comfy desk writing shitty websites.
It's not as simple as "oh those people can just work another job!" Extrapolate this out. Say we eliminate all physical jobs; how many millions of people will be left behind? What happens to them? Do they die?
This is a great argument for voting in the government most likely to support social assistance, e.g unemployment, retraining assistance, UBI, etc.
Regardless of who you think that might be, Americans should make sure their voice is heard on this issue in the upcoming elections.
I agree, but these measures are extraordinarily unpopular with the American public. They won't be forever, but until then, we HAVE to keep around "useless" jobs.
> the ILA demanded a complete ban on introducing new port automation
"The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
The one basic principle to automate can be that automation should be used as a means to supplement human productivity , but if it replace the basic livelihoods of human beings then it should be taxed and the proceeds distributed as UBI. After all what is the point of automation of it ends up causing suffering for us?
This is a tough one, and I think is a bug of the current system, and only serves to hold us back. I'd like to think that one day we'll reach the point where UBI is practical. We're not there yet, and we need to do more in the interim offset the impacts of automation to workers losing their livelihoods as a result.
These workers, in particular, I think would be the most ideal candidates to make and monitor this automation. Send them to college part time to learn the skills they need for this.
Re-training programs to teach them new skills to make a horizontal (or upward) shift in the workforce seems like a no brainer.
Problem is, who's going to front the capitol for this? If we forgo automation at the ports, it will impede the potential cost savings of shipping goods into the US, making importing goods less attractive to everyone involved. Re-training can be expensive as well, who's going to front the capitol to pay a mid-career worker with a family a similar salary to re-train?
Our system has failed horribly with this, and it needs to come up with something as more and more jobs are sought to be automated out of existence. There's no reason why we should have to avoid technical progress just to make sure people can keep collecting a paycheck.
I wish the article dug in to the role that unionized labor plays in the productivity of US ports.
> the video of Daggett threatening to “cripple” the entire economy, or the fact that Daggett is alleged to have connections to organized crime.
Half of our economy is built around making as many people replaceable as possible so that their wages can be driven into the ground. Pearl clutching about people resisting downward social mobility by any means necessary is cringe. This put me off to the rest of the article.
> Half of our economy is built around making as many people replaceable as possible so that their wages can be driven into the ground
Amusingly, this is both true and has the exact opposite effect of what you imply here.
The data does not show a downward spiral of individual wages and wealth, and in fact shows quite the opposite. And this is driven by real economic growth, which is driven by tech, which is frequently deployed in the hopes of automating away some work.
However, just from a first-principles point of view, more automation is better. We can't do things unintelligently just because that means more work. The goal is more wealth, not more work.
> The data does not show a downward spiral of individual wages and wealth
Not sure what data you are using. All data I have seen from the Federal Reserve and others show stagnant/negative wages accounting for inflation (since the 1970s). Not to mention the fact that key factors of social mobility like housing and education have outpaced wage growth drastically.
> However, just from a first-principles point of view, more automation is better.
I never said it wasn't. Automation is inevitable. However I am not going to complain about people smashing the machines meant to replace them. That is the only logical course of action for them, unless the government steps in with a free retraining program or someone else has unionized jobs lined up for them.
My point is that the author takes capital owners acting in their own naked self-interest for granted, and whines about workers/union leaders doing the same. Either be consistent or admit that you have disdain for the working class.
I completely agree that in a free market, the longshoremen are entitled to throwing whatever tantrum they like.
Is that actually in their best interest? Opinions differ.
By the way, here are some examples of what I mean:
Real disposable income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0
Real median personal income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
I have some issues with CPI that are used in these charts. I don't mean to be like "argh this data disagrees with my worldview therefore it is bad!", but lots of people have made complaints about the CPI not showing the full picture.
I dislike how CPI handles housing costs: "If a unit is owner-occupied, the BLS computes what it would cost to rent that home in the current housing market."
This does not take into account quality of housing or things like closing costs or insurance payments.
CPI also does not factor in things like pensions or benefits. So we are unable to see what proportion of people's money they are spending on things like their 401(k) which potentially would have been paid for by employers in the past.
Education cost calculations are also not ideal:
"Various types of student financial aid are also considered for eligible colleges. Loans or other types of deferred tuition are not eligible for pricing. Charges for room and board and textbooks are covered elsewhere in the CPI sample."
And lastly, healthcare costs appear to not take into account deductibles:
"The CE tracks consumer out-of-pocket spending on medical care, which is used to weight the medical care indexes. CE defines out-of-pocket medical spending as:
patient payments made directly to retail establishments for medical goods and services; health insurance premiums paid for by the consumer, including Medicare Part B; and health insurance premiums deducted from employee paychecks."
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm#:~:te...
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical-care.htm#:~:text=...
CPI is very tough to determine.
For example, how do you calculate the CPI on computers? They’re a million times better now, but are also cheaper. My Macbook is not the same product as my 486 from decades ago.
This affects everything. Take medical care as you said. The outcomes there are much better than before, so how do we calculate inflation on medical expenses?
If you provide a 10% better product/service for a 10% higher price, is that inflation? What if all of society gets richer and insists on the second, better version of your service as a minimum?
If houses get bigger and nicer and our standards for “a house” go up over time, and houses also get more expensive, then what is the inflation on housing?
I think they’re genuinely doing their best with the CPI calcs, even though it’s not possible to get a true number.
Long story short though, life has gotten dramatically better in material terms, for everyone, especially the poor.
Ah yes, the poor, benefiting from the new corporate 'zero hour jobs' meaning you can't count on having hours next week or what your schedule will be other than that hours will be kept at less than full time to make sure you don't accidentally qualify for benefits.
For 'the poor' tt was hard enough to juggle multiple 'part time' jobs that companies created to avoid full time benefits, but now multiple part time 'zero hour' jobs is ridiculous (especially when both expect you to work around/prioritize their non-consistent schedule you get last minute).
Do you even know anyone who's 'the poor'?
I too hated my last minute scheduling when I was working retail while in college, but it's also equally ridiculous that benefits like health insurance are tied to an employer in the first place.
Most port workers don't even work. They can have a little downward mobility, they've earned it.
Your average dockworker is infinitely more valuable than trust fund nepo babies that sit on their ass all day playing with investor money opening up yet another useless AI startup that's going to crash within a year.
Where is this same energy for trust fund kids?
Port workers are physical laborers and therefore in our popular culture are perceived as stupid. Humans of lesser value.
This inherent bias exists in all of us, whether we admit it or not. That's why we view knowledge workers getting paid more than they deserve in a MUCH different light than physical laborers getting paid more than they deserve.
Trust fund kids are just spending money that is already earned. They're not taxing future transactions.
Would you say the same thing about software engineers? Because it's likely just as true if not more so.
If you value people solely by their economic output then I am just going to immediately discard your opinion.
what a stupid question
The best part about the unions is there are 50k on strike for 25k jobs. How? Because we already paid off 25k of them so that we could do containerization. That's how it goes. You pay the danegeld and you get more Vikings.
I find this dockworker strike interesting because it's forcing people to re-evaluate their principles and beliefs about workers' rights and unions.
>yass! go labor unions! strike! power to the workers!
>NO, NOT LIKE THAT!
Some questions for those struggling with this:
- How will you reconcile your unconditional love for unions and laborers with the fact that you do not approve of what this labor union is striking against?
- Given that you believe these workers' complaints are invalid, will you continue to support the proliferation of unions?
- If you've deemed the complaints of a labor union to be invalid, what do you think should happen in that case? Would you like to see the union dissolved?
- Would you like to see "shell unions" that severely limit the power of the plebeians but still look good on paper because it's a union and "union == good"?
yes
Half the so called dock workers don’t actually work. They sit at home and collect, “container royalties”.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/04/business/how-did-50k-dockworke...
Longshoreman unions are some of the most powerful and corrupt.
Even if you are pro-union, they have a history of attacking or undercutting other unions. The port of Portland Oregon was bankrupted because of a slowdown that was organized over two jobs they wanted to take from the electricians union.
The former president of the ILWU refused to recognize the AFL-CIO. The ILA president has mob connections.
This is why they are striking against automation. Those 25K will be out of jobs. It's funny how conservative (anti-technology, stuck in the past, don't want to make anything efficient) labor unions end up being when it suits them.
It is the same with the cab companies. It took Uber and Lyft for them to lift a finger and actually attempt to innovate and make it better for customers.
> It is the same with the cab companies. It took Uber and Lyft for them to lift a finger and actually attempt to innovate and make it better for customers
This is a complete rewriting of history.
The reason Uber "won" is because they operated on a loss. The reality is that running a Cab business typically has low overhead. You use phone lines, maybe a website, and then pay for cars and maintenance.
Uber "innovated" the field by doing the exact same thing with MUCH higher operating costs. How did they provide a cheaper service then? That's the kicker, they never have. They just ate the loss.
Cabbies, unfortunately, cannot work for a negative wage. Uber can pull that off then. And so, for 14 years, they never turned a profit. Losing hundreds of millions a year.
And that's how they won.
Of course, now Uber is actually more expensive than your average cab. Which makes complete sense when you consider calling someone's phone has got to be a lot cheaper than running one of the largest networks in the country.
And, is it really more convenient to tap around as opposed to make a call or even just stick out your hand? Maybe. But I think when it's double the price, people won't feel this way.
I got an uber the other day, had to wait 5 minutes for it. There were some taxis sat outside the station, but I chose uber because
1) I know it will take card. Last time I took a taxi the "card machine was broken" and "I'll drop you at an ATM"
2) I know I'll get a receipt, as a PDF, which I put into my expenses. Taxi drivers tend to be very grumpy about giving receipts
3) I know I won't get adverts - maybe this is just a New York thing, but last time I took a yellow cab in New York I was bombarded with adverts
4) I know I'll be going to the right place, without having communication difficulties and ending up at the wrong hotel or whatever
Price doesn't come into it.
And if uber can't gets its operational costs down below a taxi firm paying for a dispatcher and manager to handle paperwork etc, given the scale they operate at, then they really need their tech stack sorting.
Uber/Lift won not by being cheaper, but because their fixed fare prevented the typical taxi scams
Again, this is a rewriting. I'm sure this played a role, but Uber fares are not actually fixed! There's no "per mile" rate, the algorithm is a complete black box! They won because they were cheaper for the consumer.
It's an up front cost that doesn't magically change during the journey, and you can pay on the app. That alone was an amazing selling point.
As someone who grew up in NYC, lol. Taxis were horrible and tried to rip you off at least 20% of the time. Ubers have a transparent rating mechanism and transparent pricing.
Uber has a rating mechanism. They do not have transparent pricing and have a history of building tools to misrepresent their activities to legal authorities so nobody can trust them not to play games with pricing at any time in the future.
Better than cabs were 15 years ago but we should expect more transparency.
Did you never take a cab pre Uber? It was a poor experience. At best it went ok. But you have to be constantly paying attention, know the local roads (when on vacation/business that didn't work, or even when it did, you are having to straight call out old boy for being a scummy scammer and taking the wrong streets), deal with the 'sorry the mileage ticker is broken' 'sorry I can't take credit cards' after saying they did at the start. Uber fixed a TON of that experience.
I've seen Uber come up with the most outrageous routes to take me around NYC, so I don't think this is true at all w/r/t to being something that Uber "solved."
No really, taxis were the first thieves of the world, on paar with politicians.
Look, I went to Russia, I took Yandex Taxi. I went to Indonesia and took Grub. Whether you pay double of half is i consequential compared to “Yes I take credit cards” then “Oh my credit card apparatus doesn’t work” then “Let me find an ATM for you, at your expense”.
The one brand than invested on marketing is for nothing in the death of the taxis; Everyone was wishing they’d disappear.
The price was the cherry on the cake, the bottle of water was the finger to every awful taxi driver that has existed in history.
Also, because you actually know whether or not a vehicle is going to show up.
They won by not having a credit card machine that mysteriously broke at the end of your trip. Fixed fare was very late to Uber and Lyft.
In which city do you live?
"Cabbies, unfortunately, cannot work for a negative wage. Uber can pull that off then. And so, for 14 years, they never turned a profit. Losing hundreds of millions a year."
I'm not even talking about the wage aspect of the business. Before Uber and Lyft, getting a cab was inconvenient. Mostly telephone or hailing it in-person. Uber and Lyft forced them to innovate. There are now apps available to get a cab in almost every major city.
Why did it take the Uber/Lyft disruption to get something like this? Because the cab companies didn't need to compete and the unions kept this monopoly in place.
Yeah that's nonsense. Uber/Lyft "won" because hailing a cab was - and still is - a shitty experience. The cab industry was unapologetically exploitative and I will Not. Shed. One. Tear. for it.
No it wasn't. I prefer to hail a cab any time I have the opportunity. Because of Uber, that's less and less frequent.
> because hailing a cab was - and still is - a shitty experience
Consumer don't actually care that much about this. They care about price - they're very price sensitive. Uber WAS cheaper, so they won. The experience being better matters a little, but not much. And, again, it's not that much better! Certainly, I can catch a cab much faster than an Uber, and consumers are also time sensitive!
> unapologetically exploitative
As opposed to Uber, who categorizes all their employees as "gig" so they don't have to pay out benefits. And they don't take on any risk with the capital, the employees bring their own capital.
Uber is extremely exploitative both to you, the consumer, and to workers. For you, you're not offered a fix rate. Your rate per mile varies by the minute and by who you are - not unlike a scammy Taxi. The difference is the Taxi's at least would sometimes not be scams and advertise a rate, this is not the case with Uber.
| Consumer don't actually care that much about this. They care about price - they're very price sensitive. Uber WAS cheaper, so they won. The experience being better matters a little, but not much. And, again, it's not that much better! Certainly, I can catch a cab much faster than an Uber, and consumers are also time sensitive!
You are rewriting history here. Most NYers have a story about a cab that either tried to take them for a ride and take a shitty route, charged them an exploitative fee to return their cellphone, had their credit card machine "break" until you insisted you didn't have any cash and it was either a CC card or you are getting out right now... etc. There was absolutely no accountability for them at all and Uber fixed this problem- getting a ride is now actually pleasurable and everything is negotiated up front with no haggling and a full paper trail.
Your whole argument is ridiculous, not sure what your axe to grind against Uber is, but its clear you are not being objective here.
The world is bigger than NYC, and even New York is bigger than NYC.
you are right about Uber bringing accountability, but Europe solved that through regulation. NYC could have done that-- the right to run a cab is linked to owning a government-issued medallion-- but regulation is not the US way.
Cabs in Europe are shit too, to be clear. New York probably has the _best_ taxi system in North America though.
And NY Cabs were actually generally trustworthy. Cabs were absolutely worse everywhere else in the US, with many more shenanigans.
>You are rewriting history here. Most NYers have a story about a cab that either tried to take them for a ride and take a shitty route
I've had Uber try to go through the Throggs Neck Bridge, over to the Triboro in order to take me to LIC from eastern Queens. Of course the Uber driver, who only spoke Chinese had no way of understanding why this was incredibly and obviously stupid.
Consumers like knowing the price for a trip before taking it so they can decide if it's worth it or not.
I have no problem with variable pricing, provided it's stated before I agree to pay, not after. It can't be a scam if customers have full information before they agree.
> It can't be a scam if customers have full information before they agree
It absolutely can be, if customers don't know how that price is generated, which you don't. You agree but you don't have the full facts. Your friend could be paying half and you're getting ripped off.
And, to be clear, many taxis before Uber did actually advertise their rates. This is the same situation then, but even better, because you know your rate isn't for you, it's for everyone.
How the price is determined is irrelevant in my mind.
If you know the price, you can choose to accept it or not.
I never took a taxi with posted trip cost. Best was price per mile/time and the cabbies wouldn't tell you how for or long it would take
You mean the remaining 25k will also be out of a job?
The article linked above doesn't go into detail on what container royalties are, but it sounds like it was a protection from being laid off negotiated in the past.
And in the context of AI so frequently discussed here, perhaps more workers will need those types of protections as automation takes hold elsewhere.
Everyone is in it for their own self interest.
There are no liberals or conservatives. Their are people with lives that share common traits and a policy set that suits those traits best.
Remember that Jesus (the generous saint of the needy) is the hero of conservatives and that liberals are the chief NIMBYs for affordable housing.
Nobody has lifelong rigid beliefs, it's all a matter of convenience. Everyone is in it for themselves.
*yes this is a generalization and you can find outliers. But don't let those outliers distract you from what is going on.
That's a fairly thin article. The one note about how much these laid off workers are making is just an allegation aimed at less than 3% of the total number of laid off workers, not a value with any citations. It would help a lot if there were actual figures on how much the container royalties are.
And while ongoing payments are unusual, it's still basically a severance package. Those dock workers no longer work at the docks because they were let go due to automation. Do they have other jobs? Probably. The article doesn't provide any info about that either.
It is the NY Post though. So I'm not super surprised by the lack of substance, just allegations.
Thin, Heck they did not even mention Norfolk Virginia.
We have like 4 different ports here plus Wind Project took over the old NIT port.
Just like The Jobs Bank program the UAW and the Detroit auto makers had in the 80s and 90s.
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/stellantis-uaw-lawsuit-...
"The Jobs Bank, established by GM in the mid-80s and adopted by Ford and Chrysler due to pattern bargaining, generally prohibited the Detroit automakers from laying off employees," the automaker said. "By the 2000s, Chrysler had over 2,000 employees in the Jobs Bank at a staggering cost. These employees were on active payroll, but were not allowed to perform any production work."
https://www.npr.org/2006/02/02/5185887/idled-auto-workers-ta...
The Jobs Bank was set up by mutual agreement between U.S. automakers and the United Auto Workers union to protect workers from layoffs. Begun in the mid-1980s, the program is being tapped by thousands of workers. Many of those receiving checks do community service work or take courses. Others sit around, watching movies or doing crossword puzzles -- all while making $26 an hour or more.
On the other hand, layoffs shouldn’t be free for companies. These are people who have specialized skills, have setup their families in these areas, have mortgages etc.
What’s the alternative here? An alternative I can think of is a much stronger unemployment program on the federal level so layoffs don’t hurt the community. But this scheme not existing would’ve been devastating for the middle class.
People in greater society are not really an elastic resource.
A great alternative is to tax corporates on the increased productivity that they achieved through layoffs and then distribute the proceeds as UBI to the affected.
"Ubi to the affected" is a contradiction of terms
Do they ever work? The article notes that “as container ships have gotten larger, container volumes have often gotten less steady, with more peaks and troughs. Highly varying volumes might be more easily handled by a human labor force that can be scaled up and down as needed.”
> human labor force that can be scaled up and down as needed.
Is that corporate speak for insecure employment?
No, it seems like the comment you are responding to is specifically arguing that a "bench" may be needed (with workers getting paid) so that they are available during spikes in shipping volume.
Automation can be scaled up and down much more effectively than labor. You just turn off the machines when you don't need them and turn them back on when you do.
There's a social sense in which you're correct - the machine wasn't counting on that wage, didn't cancel plans to be available, etc...
But from a financial perspective, most of the cost for the machines is probably in buying the machines, where most of the cost of the worker is probably hourly wage (or similar). Turning off the machines probably saves less money than sending the people home.
Scale down and back up maybe, but scaling up past existing max capacity would require capital investment to buy additional robots or what have you
Do you have a citation for this? The article makes a fairly compelling argument that the automation in ports is not flexible in its utilization and costs, and that humans actually are more scalable in this regard.
If they were the International Longshoremen Company, nobody would find anything objectionable about that. They just negotiated a good contract. Good for them.
Nonsense. The major difference is that port operators would be free to choose a _different_ company if they were unhappy with the terms offered.
Oh the horror, on-call employees get paid for being on-call.
As opposed to software folks who are 100% nose to the grindstone all day, never yammering on internet forums...
If true, that seems a little nuts. Have any more info on this?
True in that container royalties is a thing, but stated so sensationally as to make it lying.
You don't get royalties for nothing. All the references I have been able to find, say you have to work some amount based on Union agreements but somewhere between 700 and 1500 hours per year, and you have to have worked at the port for at least 6 years. They seem to mostly be paid out as an end of year bonus. I haven't found anything that ballparks the amount so I have no clue how much money we are talking about.
.. watching two City workers having a meeting at a property right now.. it took more than two months to do three small repairs on the City owned lot.. one right now.. This same City is quite wealthy from property taxes and other sources here in western US coastal town.. Do these two City employees "sit home and collect money" ? Does orchestrated, planned and persistent foot-dragging with extra benefits, fall into the same outrage category as "these so-called dock workers" ? Both sets are employees.. the names are different but the outcome seems similar somehow? difficult to reconcile that one is publicly shamed, while the other gets stronger and more entrenched over time.
> Half the so called dock workers don’t actually work. They sit at home and collect, “container royalties”.
How dare they! Only wealthy capitalists should be permitted to do that!
When there's some labor-saving innovation, labor is supposed to get kicked to the curb, and when the fuck cares what happens to them? The shareholders got theirs, and that's all that matters. It's just totally immoral that labor ever share the dividends of that innovation, that money needs to all go to the shareholders!
I agree, we and the union workers should vote in a government that helps people who lose their jobs to progress. After all, it's the job of a government, not a company, to serve the needs of the people.
> I agree, we and the union workers should vote in a government that helps people who lose their jobs to progress.
You have an incorrect, oversimple model of politics (e.g. business interests have shown much more capability in influencing government on economic policy to suit their own goals than pretty much every other group, and there are a lot of reasons for that).
You use "progress" in a really suspect way, like it's a line pointing one way. It's really about whose progress it is.
etc.
> After all, it's the job of a government, not a company, to serve the needs of the people.
I disagree, and I think that idea is actually at the root of a lot of problems.
> You have an incorrect, oversimple model of politics
I disagree, I believe I have a correct, appropriately complex model of politics. I guess our opinions cancel each other out, and we'll have to agree to disagree on this point, friend.
> business interests have shown much more capability in influencing government on economic policy to suit their own goals
I actually agree here: business is great at influencing policy in a way that suits their goals, but not necessarily in a way that suits the goals of society or individuals. The 2 goals are different, that's why we can't rely upon the former to achieve the goals of the latter.
It's the goal of business to make money, it's the goal of unions and people to make sure people are taken care of, so unions and people should vote for a government that takes care of people.
>> After all, it's the job of a government, not a company, to serve the needs of the people.
> I disagree, and I think that idea is actually at the root of a lot of problems.
That is a valid viewpoint. Another valid viewpoint is, thinking that idea is at the root of a lot of problems, is itself at the root of a lot of problems. Unfortunately, without any detail provided either way, all we have now is 2 conflicting, equally-valid viewpoints.
These people are nothing more than glorified Amazon workers. You're being downvoted for making an idiotic, bad faith, argument.
The point you offered no charity is: there isn't any value moving around the economy with container royalties. This isn't the hill to die on. People viscerally feel this isn't a job which can justify itself—because it can't.
Besides, royalties are an artificial construction enforced by governments through courts and obedient police force that will kill you if you don't go along with what they say.
> These people are nothing more than glorified Amazon workers.
And what's that supposed to mean? It sounds like you feel they're low status and therefore undeserving.
> This isn't the hill to die on. People viscerally feel this isn't a job which can justify itself—because it can't.
But somehow, the job of just owning a bunch of shit and living off the proceeds doesn't seem offend people the same way, when it's literally the same thing.
> Besides, royalties are an artificial construction enforced by governments through courts and obedient police force that will kill you if you don't go along with what they say.
You know what else is like that? Private property.
> These people are nothing more than glorified Amazon workers
Yes, with one key difference: They were smart enough to recognize the value of their labor in the market, and have joined together to have better leverage.
Interesting bad actor problems, whereas a union (which is typically a good thing) does a bad thing (25k job grift, making goods more expensive for everyone), and gives all unions a bad public image and weakens them as a result (bad thing, since it erodes worker leverage/rights in the long term)
What's the proposed solution here?
Recognizing that unions are not typically a good thing is the first step.
In a 0 sum game, a bad thing for one group is a good thing for another group.
Step 1 would be realizing what type of games unions promote.
0 sum would be an improvement.
Yes, industries need to be made strike proof.
Let's start with software. Drive those wages into the ground!
He didn't say "wages need to come down" he said "industries need to be strike proof."
Software engineers don't really strike in a way that harms their company.
Strikes are the most powerful tool that unions have to drive up wages. It's not like these are unrelated concepts. There are many union activists and social scientists who can persuasively argue that without the ability to strike, unions cease to function.
"strike proof" industries can mean one of the following:
1. Labor is so automated that you need little to no workers.
2. Workers are exploited and union-busted to such a degree that they cannot organize.
You'll notice both outcomes are bad for the workers. What you're suggesting is so incredibly one-sided no worker in their right mind would take it up.
This is about compromise, as is all things in life. If your solution is "one side loses heavily and the other side wins everything", you don't have a solution, you have a delusion.
In the long run yes, it would be nice to not require labor, and everyone lives happily ever after. In the short run people suffer. They starve, they live on the streets, they turn to drugs, and they die. If that sounds harsh that's because it is. There's a reason these people are working manual labor jobs and aren't fucking around on a computer for 3 productive hours a day. There's a reason they've "chosen" to toil away for 8+ hours for a comparatively low wage. If you're not considering what happens to them, you're not seeing the problem as a whole.
3. Government has made it illegal for you to strike
Although I'd argue there should be a 4th
4. You have a negotiated CBA and re-negotiate in advance of it's expiration ...
> He didn't say "wages need to come down" he said "industries need to be strike proof."
They're plesionyms
> He didn't say "wages need to come down" he said "industries need to be strike proof."
Those two statements are equivalent. Or do you think the capitalist business owner is going to pay is employees more out of the kindness of his own hard, if only they couldn't strike?
The whole point of a strike is that it "harms their company," because being able to do that is the only way many workers have any leverage.
> Software engineers don't really strike in a way that harms their company.
Software engineers have been the beneficiaries of some really cushy market conditions over the last couple decades, which are pretty much guaranteed not to last.
Absolutely. Especially after listening to that one prick talk for more than a sentence.