Dockworkers waging battle against automation. The rest of us might take notes | Hacker News Reader

Dockworkers waging battle against automation. The rest of us might take notes

cnn.com

4 pointshoward9413 comments

It's a sad affair. Our hearts go out to the longshoremen and freight workers. But this isn't going to end well for them this time. Striker tactics only work when you're effective at suppression of all possibilities for the employers to fill the work gaps. The more you strike in 2025 and onwards, the more you incentivize the move to replace the missing human bodies with a robots.

This is a tired argument. Companies will replace you no matter what if they can, outsourcing, automation, whatever, they don't care about you. You are just a line item expense regardless.

Structural demographics means the working age population will continue to shrink year after year [1] [2]. Mass immigration is off the table, at least half of Americans want to deport the undocumented folks already here [3] and heavily curb legal immigration [4]. You can't outsource jobs that require someone be on site in country. Striking is the least pain workers could cause companies. Younger cohorts are much more pro union than older cohorts (Gen Z = ~80% support for unions) [5]. General population support for unions is at historic highs (~70%). 1.8M voters 55+ die every year (per the CDC). 4M voters age into voting. The contract currently being discussed is a 6 year contract. At time of renegotiation at that time, ~10M voters 55+ will have aged out, tilting the electorate further pro union (assuming youth support remains robust). These are one way ratchets being pulled as the Overton window around pro labor slides.

TLDR The evidence does not support that companies will be able to automate their way out of labor exerting its leverage. They cannot even do it today.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-11/withou... | https://archive.today/iZHvg

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-18/us-faces-... | https://archive.today/Lyr5t

[3] https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/trump-biden-americans-illeg...

[4] https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...

[5] https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/03/gen-z-is-the-most-pro...

It's an interesting case because they're one of the groups that you can't outsource. In fact, the more everyone else's jobs are outsourced, the more dockworkers benefit.

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