We Demand That Ports Stop Using Automation, Ships Without Sails, Any Containers Whatsoever
By ILA President Harold Daggett
Dock workers are on strike! 36 ports handling 60 percent of America’s containerised traffic are affected — it’s the first labor dispute at East Coast ports since 1977. My union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, won’t work until our demands are met. Shipping companies have offered a 50 percent raise, but if they think that they can buy us off by substantially increasing our already-generous pay, then they can think again. The strike will continue until we get a fair deal, which includes halting automation, stopping the use of non-wooden ships, and forbidding the use of any containers whatsoever.
America depends on shipping. $588 billion worth of goods came through the affected ports last year, including just about any product you could name — food, clothes, cars…everything! That’s why my threat to “cripple” the American economy carries weight. And that’s also why shipping companies must preserve jobs by forbidding automation, not to mention other fad technologies that have displaced workers in the post-Victorian Era.
Let’s start with automation. It’s true that many American ports are some of the least-efficient in the world, but that’s because a port like Oakland (ranked #397) doesn’t have the built-in advantages of a global hub like Luanda, Angola (#389) or Port Sudan (#388). The ILA will not to be dragged into the mid-20th century against our will. Some foreign ports are already automated, using dangerous, untested technology like computers, bar codes, and video cameras. In Mobile, Alabama, the port tried to install something called an “automatic gate” — what in the devil is that?!?!? We will never allow greedy corporations to deny someone the dignity of earning a living by standing next to a gate all day. If we don’t act, it won’t just be the standing-next-to-a-gate-all-day jobs that will go away; jobs like guy-who-carries-an-orange-flag-around-sometimes, guy-who-stands-next-to-a-guy-who-is-loading-things, and guy-who-leans-on-a-forklift-all-day-listening-to-sports-radio will be threatened, too.
But why should the pro-labor measures be limited to the docks? It’s time to confront the fact that modern, diesel-powered ships destroy jobs. Dock workers would benefit if shipping reverted to wood-built, wind-powered ships that served humanity just fine for thousands of years. That’s true for two reasons: First, today’s steel-and-diesel behemoths slide into port with virtually no help from the docks. In contrast, a three-masted schooner laden with spices from the orient would require at least 20 stout men to pull her ashore. Second, modern ships haul huge amounts of cargo with sparse crew, which reduces demand for hardscrabble chaps from port towns who wear cable-knit sweaters and clinch corn cob pipes in their teeth. Sailors and longshoremen share many things: A love of the sea, a penchant for feeding peanuts to pet monkeys who perch on our shoulders, and a stew of venereal diseases contracted from dockside whores. What’s good for sailors is also good for dock workers, so we must retreat from this post-Monitor/Merrimack hell that has befallen us in the past 160 years.
Shipping containers have made global trade dramatically more efficient, so that must stop, too. In the 1977 strike, we made the mistake of acceding to the use of large, metal containers that make ships easy to load and unload, so we need to roll that change back. But we can’t stop there: All containers of any sort that hold goods must be forbidden — that means no crates, no boxes, no barrels, and no gunny sacks…nothing. The ILA envisions a future in which wooden sailing ships arrive with goods just rolling around on their decks. ILA members will then board the ship, scoop up what they can, and carry the cargo off one armload at a time. This will create jobs! I’ll smile from ear to ear when the first brig with a load of barley heaped on its deck pulls into port, because — as I watch my men carry the loose grain off one handful at a time — I’ll know that the future of American labor has arrived.
If we win this fight — correction: when we win this fight — I’ll continue to search for new ways to protect my members’ interests. For example: Trucks make shipping easy — maybe we should go back to horse-drawn carts. You’d need two union men to hold your horses and another to scoop manure while ILA members dump arm-loads of unpackaged goods into your wagon. And come to think of it, the wheel is doing a lot of the work when you drive off…maybe we should replace wheels with runners so that ILA men are needed to pour animal fat on the ground in front of the sleigh — it worked for the ancient Egyptians! Plus, why are we letting horses take our jobs? Instead of six horses, perhaps a hundred union men could affix themselves to long ropes attached to the load. Yes, that’s the future of labor: Scores of sweaty, grunting men pulling a pre-Bronze Age conveyance slowly across the landscape. Just think how many jobs will be created!
President Biden has said that he won’t force us back to work. I applaud his decision to affirm union solidarity as we cause supply chain disruptions that will bring back inflation right before the election — that is true commitment! Vice President Harris and former president Trump have also expressed support, so there seems to be a broad consensus that the ILA will not be forced to accept technological change just because it makes goods cheaper, facilitates commerce, and increases productivity. The future of global commerce will be decided in the coming weeks. And I will do everything in my power to see that that future closely resembles the distant past.
For the lawyers and ILA-connected mafia members: This is a bit. So, you can’t sue me or kill me and toss my body in a drainage ditch off the Jersey Turnpike, because satire is protected speech.
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This guy (the real one, not the satirical Maurer version, though it’s somewhat hard to tell the difference) is such an obvious villain out of mob boss central casting, complete with racketeering indictments, that you could almost believe he’s some sort of WTO/Amazon plant designed to cripple the union and generate public support for a massive infrastructure bill to turn every port into an unmanned fully robotic operation out of a Jeff Bezos wet dream. Hell I’d throw some bucks at that cause right now if it would wipe the smug smile off that Tony Soprano looking motherfucker and make him sell his multimillion dollar house.
Do they realize their absurd demands will generate zero sympathy? Do they even care (it kind of seems like they don’t, they just expect they have leverage - the pain is the point)? Because I don’t think “we’re making your lives expensive and miserable so we can continue to make more money than you in jobs that literally should not exist” is going to play all that well in middle America.