[nkurz]

Can someone make the case for why we should support the port workers in this situation? My intuition is that while they are probably competent at what they do, there are likely many people who would be eagerly and immediately replace each of them if offered the opportunity to do the same work for the same wage. And increased automation and efficiency at the ports seems like it would have significant benefit for rest of the nation.

[skhunted]

There is no need to make a case. They have the right to strike. In general though one should support workers when they seek higher wages since the pay has increased at a much lower rate than productivity the last 40 years or so. Enough wealth has been extracted from labor. It’s time to give labor its due.

[seizethecheese]

I just looked up FRED data on productivity and total compensation (including benefits) and they look roughly in line. Actually, compensation seems to have gone up faster.

To be honest, this comment reads like a political campaign statement, and I’d like less of this on Hacker News.

[skhunted]

To be honest, this comment reads like a political campaign statement, and I’d like less of this on Hacker News.

To be honest this comment reads like a statement from someone who can’t dispassionately discuss something. The validity of what I wrote is independent of the motivation for writing it.

[seizethecheese]

I was reacting to this: “Enough wealth has been extracted from labor. It’s time to give labor its due.” It sounds like a campaign speech.

[skhunted]

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

This next paper is funny. Notices the decoupling and tries to hand wave it away without explaining why there was no decoupling before the 80s. At any rate note that the graph is from FRED.

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/03/when-comparing-wages...

[ethbr1]

The FRED blog discussion makes an interesting point about whether deflators are calculated from import or export prices changes (or both), and the effects it has on the analysis.

Reminder of how difficult it is to make real-terms adjustments to economic measures over multiple decades spans when a country's balance of trade with the world in different sectors is also changing!

[skhunted]

Notice though that the FRED blog post does not explain away the discrepancy but merely mitigates it a bit. Note the decoupling still starts in the 70s. The great wealth disparity that exists today started at the same time. I don’t believe this is a coincidence.

[ethbr1]

"A bit" is imprecise for the adjustment. I'd say more than a bit.

It also suggests that if you dice it up by sector you might get different amounts of decoupling, which makes logical sense given productivity gains aren't equally spread.

[seizethecheese]

The link is absurd. The productivity data is for everyone while the wage data is for a subset of data. If you look at compensation for everyone against productivity it tells a different story

[0xdde]

Can you post your comparison?

[whatever1]

Can you share the links because from what I see the federal minimum wage is stagnant for decades.

[seizethecheese]

Search FRED employment cost index.

The federal minimum wage is irrelevant. Something like one percent of workers make federal minimum wage. It’s a good political talking point though…

[whatever1]

The annual raises seem to be in the order of 2-3% [1]. Inflation is also in the same order [2].

I am asking you again to show me convincing numbers.

[1]https://www.bls.gov/eci/home.htm

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA

[skhunted]

Yes, let’s ignore the million plus workers getting minimum wage. A wage that hasn’t increased in a very long time. It’s not a political talking point; it’s a moral talking point.

[s1artibartfast]

If you want to make a minimum wage argument, you have to look at total receipts and benefits.

For better or worse, we have opted for a systems where much of the receipts for low income works flow directly from the government. A minimum wage worker qualifies for free healthcare, food subsidies, and greatly subsidized housing if they can navigate the waitlist.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the million plus workers getting minimum wage

Neither of you have a point. Median wages have lagged productivity growth. But most Americans don’t earn the minimum wage.

[seizethecheese]

This argument shifted the goal posts. First, it was about compensation in general against productivity. now it’s about minimum wage workers, who comprise 1% of the workforce ? What is the productivity change of minimum wage workers? (I actually don’t know.)

[HDThoreaun]

Less than 1% of workers are on federal minimum wage.

[lotsofpulp]

What if the workers are opposing automation?

[JumpCrisscross]

> What if the workers are opposing automation?

The union is demanding “a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and moving containers in the loading and unloading of freight” [1].

That said! They are negotiating. This is their opening ask. If they stick to it, fuck them. But maybe they can permit modernisation alongside a pay raise.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-ports-pay-con...

[zifpanachr23]

Workers have a right to oppose automation and strike over it if they so choose.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Workers have a right to oppose automation and strike over it if they so choose

Workers have a right to strike. But there should be room, at the same port, for trying a more-efficient approach.

The management of this unionised workforce shouldn’t have a choice. But this union’s members shouldn’t have dictatorial power over our Eastern seaboard’s port infrastructure.

(Also, I have the right to demand a personal battleship. Not everything one has the right to do is reasonable.)

[talldayo]

> But there should be room, at the same port, for trying a more-efficient approach.

I'll gladly steelman the opposite idea. If you're running a McDonalds and you fire half your employees to replace them with burger-flipping robots, you damn well better expect the cashier to quit or go on strike. People aren't that stupid - they can see the Looney-Tunes ACME anvil suspended over their heads, they know when they have to negotiate themselves off the red painted 'X'.

Similarly, I think introducing automation to a historically-human career like longshoring is absolutely an all-or-nothing shtick. You're either displacing your human workers entirely with unpaid alternatives, or you're dealing with the consequences of a partially human workforce. There is no magic compromise, despite what management wants. You either acquiesce or replace them with robo-scabs.

[lotsofpulp]

Longshoring has had numerous technological advancement over centuries that have resulted in fewer workers being needed.

Far, far, fewer longshoreman are accomplishing magnitudes more work than longshoremen a few generations ago.

[refurb]

Sure they have the right. But the bigger question is - is it a net benefit for society to do so?

[skhunted]

Would that we ask if it is a net benefit for society that so much wealth extraction from labor has occurred the last 40 years.

[ethbr1]

We shouldn't right wrongs by deliberately capping economic efficiency, especially in sectors that are foundational to the rest of the economy (e.g. maritime trade and energy).

[throwawa14223]

And the rest of society has a right to bypass and work around them.

[HDThoreaun]

And society has a right to ignore people who want to make it worse.

[bankcust08385]

Put yourself in their shoes before leaping to hand waiving how it would be "better for everyone else." 100% automation of cranes means lost jobs.

[JumpCrisscross]

> how it would be "better for everyone else." 100% automation of cranes means lost jobs

There is a reason it’s faster, simpler and cheaper to ship stuff via air versus ports in cases where it seems to not make sense. (I recently dealt with this in olive oil and glassware.) The idea that we can run inefficient ports so someone can manually pilot a crane without any cost is ridiculous.

[skhunted]

Someday negative externalities will have to be factored into the costs of doing business. Hopefully it will occur before we turn the world into a toxic shithole. Likely not though.

[refurb]

Plenty of furriers lost jobs when we moved to cars. Bloodletters lost jobs when modern medicine was adopted.

I’m not sure jobs should be the priority over progress.

[darth_avocado]

We are all going to pretend that the cost savings will transfer to consumers and not CEO pay and shareholder value like it has every single time in recent history?

[JumpCrisscross]

> like it has every single time in recent history?

You believe you have seen no benefits from industrialisation, electrification and digitisation?

[ars]

No, it means shifted jobs. There's enormous demand for construction employment right now, they would have no trouble finding other employment.

In the entire history of the world automation has never caused employment reduction, only a shift.

[darth_avocado]

No, it means unemployment for a portion of the workers, shifted jobs for some workers and more responsibilities for the rest who get to keep their jobs. And it also means more profits for CEO pay and shareholders, and no net benefits to end consumers.

[redserk]

This is either disingenuous or ignorant of reality.

Yes. Your Econ 101 class may have taught you jobs will shift. Econ 101 does not give you the case study of a 45 year old worker who finds themselves having to restart their career.

So yes, across many years a shift in employment happens.

To the guy who lost his job and now has to figure out what to do, he risks being unable to find a career anywhere near where he was at.

Ideally we would have retraining programs that would meaningfully train and place people into new jobs, but efforts are largely performative.

[ars]

The type of work they were doing translates really well into construction, trucking, and warehouse work. Any retraining is pretty minimal, and all of those fields are desperate for workers.

Also, what's your alternative plan? Just freeze all jobs at current level of technology, because we can never make any changes?

Most ports in the world are automated - they are literally doing pointless busy work!

[ethbr1]

> translates really well into construction, trucking, and warehouse work.

I agree with you, but I think Amazon has shown how much it values warehouse workers.

[tzs]

Automation can be phased in. As existing workers in a given field retire or leave for different work elsewhere automate their positions instead of hiring replacements.

Similar when expanding. Fill the new positions with automation.

[redserk]

What is your experience with construction or working on docks to make this assumption?

Assuming that because someone may arrive home with some debris and grease does not mean the work is directly transferable.

[giantg2]

Yeah, and I should be able to get a Go job if I know Python, Java, etc. Not as easy as it looks on paper.

[ars]

You absolutely should be able to do that. If you know how to program another language, then a couple weeks of using the new language should get you the point of employment, and a couple months should put you close to where you were with the previous language (other than some of the rare esoteric stuff).

And employers know that, and (other than contracting work) they'll usually hire with the expectation of rapid training, and it's not an issue.

[toomuchtodo]

Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture (Marx). They strike because they can, and their labor has value. If it didn’t, the strike would not be feared.

Why should we care if the corporation profits more? I am not in the top 10% owning 93% of total US equities, so I do not care. Automation so the wealthy get wealthier doesn’t help anyone but the wealthy, and they need no help. Consumer excess can come from there as well, vs the pockets of people who do actual work.

[ahupp]

The cost of shipping contributes to the cost of every product we export and import. Treating this as a purely zero-sum transfer between longshoreman and shippers is ignoring all the reasons this is interesting & important.

As a hypothetical example, if there was some new method of transport that bypassed ports entirely at 1/10th the cost, would you support an effort to scuttle it to support longshoreman?

This same issue played out with the introduction of the shipping container; if history had played out differently and we were still manually packing ships I don't think you'd choose that world over what we have today.

[toomuchtodo]

Great comment, and I'm glad you brought this point up so we can deep dive. If you read the book "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson," (Chapter 6: Union Disunion) [1] it covers the historical negotiation and agreement between the longshoreman unions and shippers when the shipping container improved efficiencies; they split the gains from the efficiency improvements knowing it was going to reduce the need for labor into the future.

If that was on offer today, I would have a different opinion, for sure. I would strongly support Automating All The Things. I think the grand bargain that was previously made when the world standardized on shipping containers was reasonable and fair. But that is not what is on offer. What is on offer is the Robber Barron equivalent of folks attempting to automate as much as possible to the detriment of labor for shareholder and management returns, and because of that, I hold the opinion that I do. With the decline in labor unions and lack of labor regulation in the US for the last several decades (since the Ronald Reagan era, broadly speaking), Capital has ground down Labor, and Labor needs to grind back to make up for lost time and ground [2] [3].

[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/th...

[2] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

[3] https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-gro...

[seizethecheese]

Automation helps everyone via lower consumer prices. It’s really basic economic theory that capital would not capture all the gains here.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture

Of course it isn’t. To make this construct work in the modern world requires amortising past labour across future automation in a way that almost deifies the first work.

[piva00]

How is that "of course not"? All wealth comes from labour, somewhere, somehow. To build automation requires labour, to create the machines (or the machines that create the machines), operate them, etc.

[s1artibartfast]

Labor is a component. Often a required component. That does not mean it is the source and and value creation can be solely attributed to it.

Labor by itself produces no value. Roll a rock up and down a hill and no value is created.

The labor theory of value is Myopic in this respect.

[piva00]

> Labor by itself produces no value. Roll a rock up and down a hill and no value is created.

The statement isn't that all labour produces value but that labour is the source of all value. Without labour there's absolutely no way to provide value.

I'd like to know an example of something that produces value without labour, I really cannot come up with one.

[s1artibartfast]

Being a requirement is different than the source. It is a component and an input. You can have multiple inputs that each are necessary but not sufficient. The issue arises in describing something as the sole cause or source.

Humans need to Air to breath. Air is the source of all life. Humans need water to drink. Water is the source of all life. Humans need food to eat. Food is the source of all life.

The reality is that humans need all these things and more to live. None of them are sufficient for life by themselves.

The same is true of labor.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I'd like to know an example of something that produces value without labour

A painting by a long-dead artist. That’s what I meant by “amortising past labour across [the] future.” (I phrased it badly originally.)

Also, natural resources. The total value of a chopped-down tree is well in excess of the labour used to chop it down.

[dudisubekti]

If you live in neoliberal capitalist country, your wellbeing is tied to the profit of the private company that runs the infrastructure…

If they don’t find things profitable, then they would just not run said infrastructure, disrupting the lives of many people.

This is why strikes make people nervous.

[NegativeLatency]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity

[tw04]

Because the working class deserve a share of the wealth they generate and if they don’t get it, it’s a matter of when, not if society collapses?

There has been an unprecedented acceleration of the concentration of wealth to the billionaire class, and that’s fundamentally unsustainable. History has shown the end result is either a decrease in inequality naturally, through government intervention, or violence.

I prefer naturally (a strike and negotiation), I’d accept government intervention, but I fear a lot of people will take your jaded view of “why should they get more money when we can replace them with automation” and we’re going to eventually end up with violence when enough people can’t afford the basic necessities.

[nkurz]

Upvoted because I like and agree with much of your answer, though I'd ask you not to assume my worldview just because I'm asking the question. Growing up, the richest relatives I had were union machinists. I appreciate the role of unions even if I'm not always on their side. I'm asking genuinely because I wonder what the specific pro-dockworker argument is here since I don't know much this particular situation.

My worry would be that by making possibly excessive demands that would further benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of the nation, they may accelerate the demise of their positions altogether. I'm not altogether against this (because I do think would benefit the rest of the nation in the medium term) but like you I also worry about the increased chance of societal collapse if inequality keeps increasing. I'd probably prefer the safer choice of two decently paid new jobs for new workers than one soon-to-be-phased out job at a higher rate. I'm asking so I can understand better the opposite preference.

[rgbrenner]

To be clear, you're not a port worker.. correct? You're just an outsider looking in, making a blanket judgement about how easy other people's jobs are; and how easy they are to replace?

[kortilla]

To be clear, the question was explicitly asking what makes these port workers special to demand this. If it’s just, “we want more money and have the collective power to hold the port hostage”, that’s fine. It’s just not spelled out anywhere what the justification is

[dylan604]

That's the beauty of being in a union. You don't have to be special to have the job. Having the job is the thing that is special. Scabs are always possible for any job. Even the NFL had scabs.

[toomuchtodo]

This is a foreign concept to tech workers, who have been fed a religion that they are special. Surprise, you’re closer to a blue collar worker than a billionaire. Belief systems are rigid and die hard.

You too can organize for better pay and working arrangements collectively. Or, you can live and die by the at will arrangement and how lucky you are wrt comp. But don’t be sour when other people make better choices that empower themselves while you don’t.

[kortilla]

There is zero evidence that forming a tech union would be successful and result in more pay compared to non-union workers. The first thing to go when people unionize is RSU based comp, which makes up 50+% of income for high income tech workers.

Forming a union is an antagonistic action against a corporation. You’re literally forming a cartel controlling one of their critical supplies (labor). There better be significant upside to burn that goodwill because all comp changes going forward are going to be shitty tooth and nail negotiations for salary bumps and RSUs will be kept for management only.

People at the big tech companies are looking to make life altering money and that comes through RSU accumulation and appreciation. That means being aligned with shareholders, which is the opposite of a union. The only place you might have success drumming up support for unions are mid to low tier tech companies where people make a low 6 figure salary and next to no equity.

[kortilla]

Nobody disputed that. The entire point was that if this is just a strike without any particular grievances, the public won’t support it much.

[dylan604]

"To be clear, the question was explicitly asking what makes these port workers special to demand this."

And I answered. The employees are not special in and of themselves. They can be replaced. That's what a scab is. Who cares what the public supports. They are not involved in this. What's the public going to do to show their lack of support?

People supported the strikes from the Writer's Guild and the Actor's Guild. They didn't want AI automation to replace their jobs. This union doesn't want a similar bit of automation to replace theirs.

To me, unions are no longer the thing they were when they were first created. From a non-union person looking in (and based on my one personal experience of going through a union vote), the people in favor of unionizing were unwilling to adapt to new technologies and feared losing their jobs or doing something they didn't want. To them, the union was a way to just say no to change because some jobs will be at stake. Seems like that's what's going on here too.

[johnny22]

any group of workers should be able to do this.

[kortilla]

Sure, but they don’t deserve automatic support from the public for doing it. Unions striking and successfully driving up the cost of their labor can very easily be bad for consumers.

[johnny22]

workers are consumers too.