Dockworkers versus technology

Port strike echoes Hollywood showdown [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Drake Bennett]( Hi, it’s Drake in New York. Dockworkers have something in common with Hollywood screenwriters. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Google begins [wide rollout]( of ads in its AI overviews • Cisco invests in [AI startup CoreWeave]( at a $23 billion valuation • Amazon [is hiring]( 250,000 US workers for the holiday season A fight against technology This week’s longshoremen strike was short-lived: It was [suspended on Thursday]( until Jan. 15, allaying fears that it would significantly disrupt global trade and sap the American economy. But the deeper conflict it dramatized remains unresolved. The strike was partly about pay. East Coast and Gulf coast dockworkers have seen their wages lag behind their West Coast counterparts in recent years. And the leadership of their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, wants to close that gap with a new contract. It was also, though, about technology. That was evident on Wednesday morning when a few dozen workers picketed along the street entrance to Brooklyn’s Red Hook Terminal. They held signs reading, “Machines don’t feed families,” while blasting heartland rocker John Mellencamp. Though the workers declined to speak to me — saying union leadership didn’t allow it — they did hand me a printed one-page statement. “The ILA is fighting for respect, appreciation and fairness,” it read in part, “in a world in which corporations are dead set on replacing hardworking people with automation.” In that respect, their strike is like other recent ones in far different industries. Last year, the screenwriters of the Writers Guild of America walked off the job in part to ensure that TV and movie studios limited the use of ChatGPT-like AI in crafting scripts. These issues are newer ones for white-collar Hollywood creatives. On the docks, however, they’re far older. The invention and adoption of mechanized cranes and trucks all changed dock work in their day. The humble [shipping container]( revolutionized it. It’s the same trend as in agriculture, and other industrial jobs, only perhaps even more pronounced. Today’s American longshoreman have some of the best-paying blue collar jobs out there. That’s largely thanks to the particular leverage they have over the national economy. But it’s also because, thanks to mechanization, standardization and automation, a modern dockworker can do what it used to take an army to do. A century ago, the docks swarmed with stevedores loading and unloading break-bulk cargo by hand. It was poorly paid, exhausting, often mangling work. Today a fraction of that workforce works ships that are orders of magnitude larger than anything that existed then, and in a tiny fraction of the time. That trend is unlikely to stop where it is now. According to Yossi Sheffi, the director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, ports outside the US offer a glimpse of the future the ILA is hoping to forestall. The port of Rotterdam has a fleet of self-driving trucks to move freight around. Singapore has autonomous cranes: The only job for the human operator, sitting in a remote office and watching a camera feed, is to lock the crane’s spreader onto each container, ensuring a secure grip. The crane does everything else on its own, the way a modern commercial airliner largely flies itself after the human pilot handles takeoff. “Each operator runs about 15 cranes,” Sheffi said, “and spends 30 seconds or 60 seconds per container.” A handful of workers can run the whole port. A [field trial]( involving similar technologies at China’s Qingdao port boasted a 70% reduction in labor costs. If history is any guide, those changes are coming to American ports. The fight is only over how soon. —[Drake Bennett](mailto:dbennett35@bloomberg.net) The big story OpenAI has been transformed from a scrappy startup to a corporate behemoth in [a few short years](. Along the way, it was roiled by an exodus of top executives and much of its original brain trust. One to watch Bloomberg's Rachel Metz [joins]( Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on Bloomberg Technology to talk about OpenAI’s funding round and new credit line. Get fully charged Oura is releasing a new smart ring in the face of [mounting competition](. The future of EV charging looks like [an airport lounge](. Interactive brokers get into politics with [yes/no bets on races](. 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