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Remember the short-lived dockworkers’ strike which crippled ports on the East and Gulf Coasts in October?
The strike only lasted three days, but cost the American economy billions in lost revenue. The work stoppage was temporarily resolved when the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) agreed to a 61.5% wage increase over the next six years. The ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance tabled other issues, the most important of which is the automation of ports.
The contract extension that was negotiated expires on January 15, 2025 – five days before President-elect Trump takes office for his second term.
DOCKWORKERS’ UNION WALKS AWAY NEGOTIATIONS WITH EAST AND GULF COAST EMPLOYERS
However, there is a major glitch, which had been under-reported by corporate media: the two sides stopped all negotiations in mid-November, with the ILA walking away from the negotiating table, stating, “USMX introduced language in their proposal for semi-automated equipment to be used at ILA ports, which this union outright rejected. The ILA recognized this as a renewed attempt by USMX to eliminate ILA jobs with automation and broke off talks.”
The president of the ILA, Harold J. Daggett is adamant that no automation enters American ports under his control. Mr. Daggett is against almost any use of technology. He is even against E-Z pass use on the nation’s tollways, lamenting the loss of toll booth workers’ union jobs because E-Z Passes allow “motorists to zip through like it’s nothing and then get billed in the mail… all those union jobs are gone,” he claimed in a post to the ILA’s YouTube channel in September.
Perhaps Mr. Daggett should do some reading. According to a recent survey by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence, United States ports are some of the least efficient in the world, with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach being ranked as the two least efficient ports in the world, losing to such ports as Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo.
Yes, ports in the United States are less efficient than ports in third-world nations. No American port was near the top 10 most efficient ports in the world. The culprit – the lack of automation. It takes between one and three days to unload a container ship in the United States. By comparison, ports in Japan take 0.36 days to unload a similarly sized ship.
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Mr. Daggett is focused on the wrong fight. Instead of fighting automation, he should embrace it. Instead of walking away from the negotiating table in order to protect antiquated union jobs, he should be pushing the USMX to automate faster, while protecting jobs.
A simple position of embracing automation but guaranteeing that any union member who loses his or her job to automation will be hired by the USMX with the same salary and benefits package, would avoid a strike and would help the United States transition its ports to being world-class, moving us out of the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first century.
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Newly nominated Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, will have to address this challenge on day one of the Trump administration. Secretary Duffy needs to show that he will remove the DOT’s focus on equity in roads and bridges and drive efficiencies, returning the United States to its rightful position as the most advanced nation in the world.
The answers are not hard, they only take courage to implement.
