Dockworkers are waging a battle against automation. The rest of us may want to take notes

The dockworkers striking up and down the East Coast are, culturally and geographically, a world apart from the Hollywood actors and writers who staged a four-month walkout last year. But their protests share a common core principle: They don’t want bots taking their jobs.

The dockworkers striking up and down the East Coast are, culturally and geographically, a world apart from the Hollywood actors and writers who staged a four-month walkout last year. But their protests share a common core principle: They don’t want bots taking their jobs. It’s a fight you can expect to see playing out a lot more as advanced automation and AI creep into virtually every workforce. Here’s the deal: The East Coast port strike is getting a lot of attention for its potential disruption to the economy — which is precisely the point. Longshore work can be grueling, and the people working at ports are vital to getting all of the stuff we want to buy onto store shelves. No dockworkers means no bananas (or whatever), which means no profits for the companies that produce and ship them. The strike that began early Tuesday is about two main issues: wages and automation. Around the ports, workers can be seen wearing signs that read “robots don’t pay taxes” and “automation hurts families.” They’re fighting a trend that port operators largely want to see accelerate: more cranes and driverless trucks shuttling goods from container ships, with fewer humans around demanding compensation. Of course, the economics of automation aren’t so simple. While research shows automation has obvious benefits, like lower operating costs and fewer human-related errors, port automation does not, on its own, significantly improve performance, according to a 2018 McKinsey report.