Posts tagged automation
Union Gets Big Pay Raise at Inefficient West Coast Ports
June 21, 2023 // The disruption tactics the ILWU has been using over the past few months to gain leverage in negotiations appear to have hurt its own members this year, with paid work hours down 25 percent through April 14 compared to the same period last year. That’s partly due to shippers choosing other ports and partly due to dockworkers working less on union orders. Common work actions include assigning fewer workers and slowing down the pace of work. The JOC said that cranes at the port of Seattle–Tacoma went from 25 container moves per hour to fewer than ten. As Peter Tirschwell argued on June 6 in the Wall Street Journal, by delaying negotiations for as long as it did, the ILWU might have missed an opportunity for a bigger pay raise. Ocean carriers earned extraordinary profits due to soaring container rates in 2021 and 2022, but those rates came back down to Earth at the end of last year and are largely back to normal now. And the constant uncertainty every time a West Coast contract expires contrasts with the relative ease with which the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents East Coast dockworkers, has come to contract agreements for decades. The delay-and-prolong approach of the ILWU helps encourage shippers to go elsewhere, leaving less demand for longshore labor on the West Coast.
For ILWU, West Coast port deal to be union-ratified, here’s what has to happen next
June 16, 2023 // West Coast port management and the labor union representing port workers reached a tentative deal late on Wednesday after the intervention of California labor market pro and Biden acting Labor Secretary Julie Su in the negotiations in San Francisco, but it could be months before the full union votes to approve the deal. The tentative agreement was a welcome development after weeks of escalating tensions between workers and port management, resulting in delays in vessel servicing, congestion at ports, in containers and out to trucking, as well as some port shutdowns. But the proposed labor deal is a far way from being fully approved, according to the International Longshore & Warehouse Union. While the union statement on the deal was positive, it laid out a process that still has several steps to go before the deal moves ahead.
Bill To Require Driverless Trucks To Have A Driver in the Vehicle is Backed by Labor Unions
April 18, 2023 // A bill to require driverless trucks to have a driver in the vehicle moved closer to a crucial Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee this week, but it wasn’t just a safety bill – labor unions are backing the bill in anticipation of a close vote. Assembly Bill 316, authored by Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) would prohibit the operation of an autonomous vehicle with a gross vehicle weight of 10,000 pounds or more on public roads for testing purposes, transporting goods, or transporting passengers without a human safety operator physically present in the autonomous vehicle at the time of operation. While AB 316 was authored by Assemblywoman Aguiar-Curry, it was introduced with a bipartisan group of legislators, including Assemblymen Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) and Ash Kalra (D-San Jose). While a few Republicans have been in favor of the bill as a way to keep jobs in rural areas, many Democrats have been in favor of the bill due to it protecting thousands of union trucking jobs and alleged safety benefits. “You don’t create a safer environment if you have a 10,000-pound vehicle out there without a human safety net,” noted California Labor Federation leader and former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who previously authored the independent contractor reclassification law AB 5, which truckers themselves had adamantly opposed.
Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs At Risk of Automation and AI Replacement in New Jersey
March 1, 2023 // Several media and tech companies, including BuzzFeed and Microsoft, have already stated their intentions to use artificial intelligence to generate content and improve their products. And while BuzzFeed claims that AI will not impact the size of its workforce, the announcement came a month after the company laid off 12% of its employees to cut costs. The advantages AI can offer businesses is undeniable, and the implications are impossible to ignore. AI is capable of automating a wide range of tasks that, until now, have been performed by humans. But unlike human beings, an AI does not need regular paychecks or breaks. And as AI capabilities continue to develop, virtually no industry will be left untouched. (Here is a look at the fastest growing industries in America.)
Millions of Jobs At Risk of Automation and AI Replacement in California
February 27, 2023 // According to a recent report from NetVoucherCodes, a U.K.-based voucher code website, automation and AI pose a high risk to 2,322,630 jobs in California in the coming years - or 16.9% of all jobs considered, the seventh smallest share among states. Distinct from AI, automation - such as the software used in automatic checkout counters or robotics used in manufacturing - poses risk to the largest number of jobs in the coming years. In California, automation poses a high risk to 2,000,730 jobs, compared to 321,900 jobs exposed to risk from AI technology.
Opinion: Imagine there’s no public employee unions
February 21, 2023 // But try as President Joe Biden has, it just hasn’t been enough. Automation (including not only factory machinery but also the gig economy), trade, high-profile union corruption cases, failing pension funds, and a string of adverse court rulings are among the many factors rendering private sector unions irrelevant to workers in most modern fields. This has led the unions to desperate measures, such as organizing esoteric, low-income professions, including graduate student teachers and video game testers. Yet the story is quite different for unions in the public sector. The unionization rate of public employees remains robust, at more than 33% of all government workers nationwide. Local government workers are the most likely to be unionized, at a rate of nearly 39%, and public sector union members are concentrated in states that mandate collective bargaining. The states with higher rates of unionization seem to correlate with the nation's least functional state governments: California (54.5%), Illinois (48.7%), New York (66.7%), and New Jersey (59.3%) among them. As their private sector cousins starve, public employee unions are fat and happy — a strange development, given that there was no public sector collective bargaining at all 70 years ago, when unions were at their apex.
Union membership grows the fastest of any state in Tennessee over the past two years
January 24, 2023 // The number of Tennessee workers belonging to labor unions has grown over the past two years at the fastest rate of any state in the country. Fueled by a growth in unionized government employees, building trades and autoworkers, union membership in Tennessee jumped by more than 39% from the pandemic low in 2020 to reach 163,000 members last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For all its gains, however, organized labor still represents only a fraction of workers in Tennessee, especially in the private sector. Last year, 5.5% of all workers across Tennessee were union members, or only about half of the 10.1% share of workers nationwide who belong to a labor union, according to the statistics bureau.
Starbucks will go grande on workforce-lite future
January 6, 2023 // At the same time, Starbucks is moving quickly to automate, which will continue into 2023 under incoming CEO Laxman Narasimhan. In September, it laid out a reinvention plan that includes robotizing more in-store tasks. An investor presentation recently outlined plans to “simplify operations” and “leverage automation.” Many companies like McDonald’s (MCD.N) and Target (TGT.N) have had to find technological solutions just as workers seek higher wages. Over 12 months through November, hourly wages for private, nonfarm workers have increased more than 5% to $32.82, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistic. Labor costs are eating into margins that are also being squeezed by rising prices for materials and transportation. If an ornery workforce can be replaced by a robotic one, there’s no better time than the present.
Amazon’s new robot can recognize objects!
November 16, 2022 // The company says it can run operations more efficiently and safely by using robots in its warehouses. Amazon, “Sparrow “By taking on repetitive tasks, it will allow our employees to focus their time and energy on other things, while also increasing safety.” sparrow, It will help us increase efficiency by automating a critical part of our order fulfillment process so we can continue to deliver fast to our customers.” He added that he was able to create more than 700 new job categories using robots.
Op-ed: Competition key to determining effects of increased unionization
September 27, 2022 // We often take it for granted that businesses would prefer to bargain individually with workers, rather than collectively through a union. A cynical explanation might be that profit-hungry corporations prioritize greed over worker welfare, but academic research offers some deeper insight. It shows that companies that are unionized experience reductions in product quality and face a higher likelihood of going out of business. Professors Omesh Kini (Georgia State University), Mo Shen (Auburn University), Jaideep Shenoy (University of Connecticut) and Venkat Subramaniam (Tulane University) find that unionized manufacturers experience a higher rate of product recalls than non-unionized companies.