Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 5
Here was ILA president Harold Daggett over a year ago planning today's strike:
"This foreign company, Maersk, tries to shove its fully automated terminals down our throats, and for what reason? To eliminate good paying American jobs, ILA jobs, and where is our government in all this? President Biden declares he wants to protect American companies, pay decent wages America. How can this administration allow foreign companies like Maersk, and other foreign companies, to get away with this?
Mark my words: there's gonna be an explosion and the ILA and dockers around the world are going to light the fuse."
Daggett sure sounds like a Team Trump guy despite the fact that Biden has been pro-union his entire political life, and walked the picket line alongside union members, while Trump holds rallies with fake union actors and wouldn't piss on a teamster if he was on fire.
Huh.
No. of Recommendations: 3
I sincerely doubt it is just "this foreign company". US companies also would be motivated to further automation in their operations. It's cheaper, doesn't need lunch breaks, or vacations, and can work 24/7. It is -unfortunately for a lot people- inevitable.
I'm reminded of either the convict or Pence -don't remember which- making a big show of giving a grant to keep an air conditioning manufacturer -IIRC- from closing a plant down. It used the money to install automation, and fired most of the workers because they were no longer needed. Jobs lost either way.
No. of Recommendations: 11
US companies also would be motivated to further automation in their operations. It's cheaper, doesn't need lunch breaks, or vacations, and can work 24/7. It is -unfortunately for a lot people- inevitable.
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If you think about how modern containerized shipping works, it's absolutely inevitable.
Once the containers are physically standardized not only in dimension but their "handles" for being picked by cranes and lashed together for stability aboard ship, the focus shifts to WHAT is in each container, how much it weighs and where it should be positioned aboard, not only for weight distribution but for optimization of removal at various ports of call from A to Z. If a ship is going to sail from A to B to C to D before reaching final port E, you don't want to arbitrarily load containers destined for location B at the bottom of the pile, requiring everything atop them to be temporarily removed then replaced on the ship. You want cargo loaded in E, D, C, B order from bottom to top.
All of that planning is computerized from the moment a shipper loads cargo in a container, seals the container and calls for an inter-modal transport company to pick it up at the factory and take it to the outgoing port. If all of that work has been planned on computer, that plan has to be followed to the letter to ensure the ship is loaded safely. If every container is uniquely identifiable from factory to destination and all of the loading and unloading can be mapped to a three dimensional grid 100 feet high (enough to stack 10 containers) and four square miles in area down to the inch, there's not much point in having some of that labor done by hand where human error could make a mistake. The work that remains involves tasks computers cannot do... Driving cars on/off transport ships. Handling bulky shipments that don't fit in containers such as diesel generators, construction equipment, etc. Clearing out bulk cargo holds between loads, maintaining machinery on board and at the port, etc.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 3
It's cheaper, doesn't need lunch breaks, or vacations, and can work 24/7. It is -unfortunately for a lot people- inevitable.
I wonder how many of the ILA rank and file believe that Trump will save them from automation? Anyone who knows the least bit about Trump knows that he sides with the uber rich, the oligarch class...not the working men and women.
