Posts tagged automation
The value of union strikes under Trump
January 29, 2025 // Like the UAW strikes, media coverage celebrated the strikes, but the impact appears nonexistent. The Starbucks rolling strike lasted a handful of days and only affected 300 stores and 5,000 employees — a miniscule percentage of Starbucks’ 10,000-plus stores and almost 200,000 workers. The Amazon strike impacted less than 10 of Amazon’s more than 100 locations, and workers generally continued working.
Fearing AI will take their jobs, California workers plan a long battle against tech
January 19, 2025 // More than 200 trade union members and technologists gathered in Sacramento this week at a first-of-its-kind conference to discuss how AI and other tech threatens workers and to strategize for upcoming fights and possible strikes. The Making Tech Work for Workers event was convened by University of California labor centers, unions, and worker advocates and attracted people representing dock workers, home care workers, teachers, nurses, actors, state office workers, and many other occupations.
With Port Strike Averted, Dockworkers Draw New Curbs on Automation
January 12, 2025 // The pact would allow operators of automated equipment at ports in New Jersey and Virginia, where multiple machines are managed by a single dockworker at a time, to continue to use the semiautonomous cranes, according to people familiar with the matter. But the agreement says that companies that add semiautonomous equipment must hire one dockworker for each new crane added, the people said. That means that a gateway such as the Port of Virginia, which operates 116 semiautonomous cranes, will have to hire one extra dockworker for each of 36 new semiautonomous cranes it plans to add over the next few years. “That’s a pretty significant gain,” said a shipping industry official familiar with the contract talks.
Restaurant Minimum Wage Hurting Businesses and the Workers Proponents Seek to Help
January 10, 2025 // For fast food operators, it’s not just this latest minimum wage increase. Since 2013, their minimum wages have increased from $8 to $20, which is 2.5 times. It’s unsurprising that they’re slashing jobs, cutting hours and raising prices. This also coincides with a major turn towards automation. Of course, automation is driven by many factors, not just increased labor costs – but they certainly don’t help.
Second US port strike averted as union, employers reach deal
January 9, 2025 // The talks had been extended until Jan. 15 to hammer a deal on automation. Shipping industry executives, customers and analysts had been concerned that the parties would be unable to overcome their impasse, leading to a second ILA strike just days before President-elect Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration. A three-day ILA strike in October had triggered a surge in shipping prices and cargo backlogs at the 36 affected ports. Longshoremen returned to work after employers agreed to a 62% wage increase over the next six years.
ILA union and port owners held secret meeting on automation as new strike looms
January 8, 2025 // A secret meeting between representatives of the International Longshoremen’s Association and the USMX port ownership group was held on Sunday to make headway on the issue of port automation that needs to be resolved by Jan. 15 to avoid a new East and Gulf Coast ports strike. A document produced from the meeting and reviewed by CNBC indicates ports willing to pair any new technology with new union jobs, but it could also introduce new risks to a deal, with added labor costs threatening terms agreed to in October for a 62% pay hike for union workers.
Dockworkers to resume contract negotiations as strike threat looms
January 4, 2025 // The big sticking point holding up a deal is automation. The union wants to hold it back and stop the installation of more semi-automated cranes at the ports. (Two ports, in Norfolk, Virginia, and Bayonne, New Jersey, already use the technology.) The group representing port employers, the United States Maritime Alliance, wants to advance its use of technology.
From Amazon warehouse to port strikes, shippers and the DOT are preparing for an unpredictable 2025
January 2, 2025 // In recent years, the logistics industry has become familiar with "black swan" events, the biggest being Covid, which brought the global supply chain to a halt. The lessons learned during the pandemic led to new digital solutions for companies to track trade and solve for the lack of communication and data sharing that contributed to massive congestion at ports. Those solutions will continue to play a major role in dealing with trade disruptions.
Unions Reprogram NYS To Do Less With More
December 28, 2024 // And for good reason: these “protections” will bring slower-than-appropriate service delivery at higher-than-necessary costs, slamming the brakes on a multi-generation trend toward more efficiency, both across the economy and in state agencies themselves. Hochul in her approval message indicated she wants the Legislature to make technical changes to the bill but overall played to the unions’ fear-mongering:
Op-ed: Nice dock. Big shame if you modernized it, Trump warns ports
December 18, 2024 // The International Longshoremen Association (ILA), the union that represents dockworkers on the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico, went on strike briefly in early October. They won a whopping 62 percent pay increase but left unresolved a key issue: automation of the ports. The longshoremen oppose any further modernization, seeing it as an existential threat to their jobs. The problem is that American ports are some of the least efficient in the world, largely due to the lack of automation. The World Bank’s Container Port Performance Index does not have a single US port in its top 50 ranking for efficiency. Charleston and Philadelphia come in at number 53 and 55, respectively. The ports are keen to fix that and therefore oppose the union’s demand.