Dockworkers strike ends for now, but the fight over automating jobs continues

After a three-day walkout, the International Longshoremen’s Association and U.S. Maritime Alliance reached a tentative agreement on wages Thursday and extended their existing labor contract until Jan. 15. But the use of automation remains a sticking point as the parties return to the bargaining table to hash out the full contract.

The union’s pushback against automation adds to recent buzz around whether artificial intelligence will displace human labor.

Generative AI has been a wake-up call for office workers, who are, for the first time, facing the possibility of technology writing software code and emails in their place. But the fight against automation predates AI and has been a longstanding battle for industrial workers, who have been sounding the alarm about the risk machines pose to job security for generations. 

While the technology typically wins out, it’s not without a fight. 

In terms of the dockworker contract, the question is less about whether ports will become automated—they already are to some extent with mixed results—and more about what the cost will be to workers. The history of clashes over corporate cost-cutting that replaces human labor can be a guide. 

In the early 1900s, thousands of elevator operators went on strike to protest the impact of easy-to-use elevator buttons that would allow passengers to operate elevators themselves. Meanwhile, some members of the public feared riding by themselves in the newfangled contraptions and demanded operators. The new tech faced roughly 50 years of resistance, including a landmark 1945 strike that shut down New York City, before elevators as we know them became commonplace.

Automated elevators have in recent years drawn comparison to the advent of driverless cars. Taxi, Uber, and truck drivers now fear for their jobs and some members of the public worry whether autonomous vehicles are safe without humans at the controls. 

Worried about the pace of automation, labor unions have fought and won more transparency from management about new tools in the workplace. As new technologies are introduced, unions have historically ensured new jobs for workers who lose them, severance, or retraining, said Lisa Kresge, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley’s Labor Center.  

“It’s not anti-technology per se, it’s really about how the tech is being deployed and who is paying the cost,” she said of union demands.

In 1959, nearly 500,000 members of the United Steelworkers of America went on strike as the steel companies sought to remove a contract clause that required management to be more transparent about the impact of new machinery that would cut or reduce worker hours. After months on the picket line, workers won an increase in wages and got to keep the clause in their contracts.

“The real crux of a lot of these issues, and with automation generally across different industries, is about worker control of production,” explains labor historian Salem Elzway. He noted that workers aren’t Luddites who are opposed to new technology. Most people, he said, see how automation to some extent can be helpful for their jobs. But most would also like at least some say in how and when the nature of their work will change.

Dockworkers on the West Coast yielded some of that control over automation more than 50 years ago, Elzway explained.

In 1960, under the leadership of Harry Bridges, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union reached an agreement on automation with the Pacific Maritime Association. Employers would be able to introduce machines that would reduce the workforce as they wished, as long as the ports agreed to retirement and other benefits for dockworkers. 

That agreement meant management could bring in new technologies without warning or input from the West Coast dockworkers who would use it or be replaced by it. 

In recent years, the union representing West Coast dockworkers has scored big wins on pay, but California ports have also been the first to introduce automated guided vehicles that handle and move cargo without humans in the driver’s seat, eliminating hundreds of jobs.

This week’s East and Gulf Coast dockworker strike was the first in decades in those regions, but the union isn’t new to bargaining over technology.

The ILA’s most recent contract, which was briefly extended under the tentative agreement announced Thursday, included a clause on semi-automated tech: “There shall be no implementation of semi-automated equipment or technology/automation until both parties agree to workforce protections and staffing levels.”

Along with the wage increases, the dockworkers across dozens of ports from Maine to Texas were seeking protection from technologies like driverless trucks, automated cranes, and gate checkpoints that monitor the flow of people and trucks at the port, which could threaten their job security. 

In recent years, U.S. port operators have increasingly eyed “smart port” technologies that have already gained traction in China and European countries. The ILA took a hard line against that trend, stating that its workers are “steadfastly against” any full or semi-automation that would hurt existing jobs.

“We will not accept the loss of work and livelihood for our members due to automation. Our position is clear: the preservation of jobs and historical work functions is non-negotiable,” the ILA continued. The union’s president, Harold Daggett, while on the picket line Tuesday, called for “absolute airtight language that there will be no automation or semi-automation.” 

The International Longshoremen’s Association’s fight against automation comes as the AI boom escalates concern from truck drivers to Hollywood stars to media workers about whether robots will soon be doing much of their work. 

Hollywood actor and writer strikes last year were at the forefront of rising debates about the use of AI in the office. Those strikes eventually led to contracts that set terms around the use of generative AI in the entertainment industry, from AI-generated storylines to deepfaked dialogue. In that case, too, the final agreement wasn’t over whether their work could ever be manipulated by AI—special effects have existed in movies for a long time, after all—but whether the creator has an informed say in it.