Lowry: Dockworkers for economic stagnation

It's the processing gate that roared.

APM Terminals at the Port of Mobile in Alabama uses a semi-automated gate to process trucks without union labor, and this supposed outrage is one of the reasons the International Longshoremen's Association went on strike. Never mind that the gate has been in operation for years, and is a more efficient and safer way to check and admit trucks.

The strike, affecting ports on the East Coast and in the Gulf, is off for now with a tentative deal on wages. But the larger issue of automation, wholly opposed by the union, is unresolved; it's been put off until an extension of the current contract expires on Jan. 15.

"Machines don't pay taxes," the president of the union local in Mobile complained. Yeah, well, neither do wheelbarrows or iPhones, yet we still use them as tools to make any number of tasks easier and less time-consuming.

Harold Daggett, the president of the union, has pledged an unceasing war on automation. He famously makes nearly a million dollars a year and lives in a New Jersey mansion. No word on whether he insists that he and his family hand-wash their clothes and dishes – or employ a laundress and personal dishwasher – in order to forswear reliance on labor-saving devices.

Technological advance is necessary to economic advance. It would be disastrous if the longshoremen's union successfully blocked it at our ports, or, even worse, an alarmist view of automation were to prevail in our society at large.

We may think that we live in a time of revolutionary technological change, but we aren't seeing big productivity gains. This is important because higher wages (and lower prices) ultimately depend on increased productivity – or being able to do more with equal or fewer inputs. Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation points out that much of our new technology has been poured into the consumer market – smart phones, social media, online retail and the like. The key is applying technology to other sectors of the economy.

Which brings us back to the ports. The productivity benefits of technology – automated gates, cranes and cargo-handling, among other things – are obvious.

Yet, China, the Netherlands and Singapore are outpacing us. Rotterdam began automating in the early 1990s. In contrast, we have fully automated only three terminals at our ports, with another three considered semi-automated. We don't have a port that cracks the World Bank's list of the top 50 around the globe.

Depending on the circumstances, automation does eliminate some jobs, but it creates others. If the catastrophic warnings about the job-destroying effects of technology were accurate, we'd all be unemployed farmers. Recently, we've seen how the disruptive innovation of the likes of Amazon and FedEx has led to huge increases in warehouse and storage jobs, and in trucking as well.

In the maritime sector, union officials hated the shipping container revolution of the 1960s, too. The containers did reduce port jobs, but brought a nearly miraculous boost to efficiency. Would anyone really want to go back to taking days to load and unload ships, or workers trying to figure out how to fit random stuff on a vessel?

The longshoremen's union on the West Coast accepted fully automated machinery in a 2008 contract, and hasn't been devastated. It has added jobs since 2020, and got a generous wage increase in its latest contract.

Thriving ports capable of handling larger ships and more cargo are a national economic asset. An analysis for the Pacific Maritime Association, representing shipping companies and port and terminal operators, noted of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, "These economic engines anchor a network of 29 West Coast ports that supports 12.5 million jobs and generates nearly 9% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product."

Our ports should be run for the benefit of all of us, and the wider economy, not for a union advancing a worldview that can only bring stagnation and mediocrity.