Editorial: Longshoremen strike underscores AI challenges faced by workers

“Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life.” — from the 2004 film I, Robot

More money is always good, but it’s clear now that wages were never the most critical issue leading to the now-suspended three-day strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association. The ILA’s bigger concern is that automation being allowed at America’s ports will lead to most of the union members’ jobs becoming obsolete.

The ILA has agreed to a tentative pact on wages (a 62% increase over six years), which sent its 45,000 members back to work under the current contract, but negotiations on automation will resume Jan. 15. The agreement came after President Joe Biden pressed both sides to reach a deal to end the union’s first full strike since 1977.

The upcoming talks are likely to be just as contentious so long as ILA leaders continue to ignore that U.S. ports only want to do what their counterparts in Asia and Europe have already done. Harold Daggett, the ILA’s 78-year-old president, says he doesn’t want dockworkers to suffer the same fate as store cashiers. “Machines got to stop,” he said. “What good is it if you’re going to put people out of work?”

It’s a valid question, one that pertains to far more than the workers involved in loading and unloading cargo ships. Thousands of blacksmiths lost their livelihood after cars were invented, but a Brookings Institution study says advanced robotics and artificial intelligence will eliminate millions of jobs for vehicle drivers, retail and health-care workers, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals.

Isn’t that something the nation should be preparing for? Abortion access, illegal border crossings, and the price of eggs are concerns our presidential candidates should be talking about, too. But just like global warming, technology’s impact on America’s workforce is a longer-range problem that also should be figured out sooner rather than later.

Many blacksmiths became auto mechanics by adding the skills needed to service and repair cars to their repertoire. Similarly, dockworkers and others likely to lose their jobs to automation will need to learn new skills to remain employed. Instead of trying to prevent the inevitable, their unions should argue for programs that will train their members for different jobs being created by evolving technology.

Look at Amazon, for example. It has increased job security with programs such as its Machine Learning University, which has taught thousands of employees coding and other technological skills. Its mechatronics and robotics apprenticeship teaches its employees the computer skills needed to move into technical maintenance jobs.

A Harvard Business Review analysis says these types of reskilling initiatives allow companies to build talent internally and fill skills gaps that help those firms beat their competitors in achieving strategic objectives. The analysis cited McDonald’s for developing an app called Archways to Opportunity that outlines skills its restaurant workers can learn on the job to seek career opportunities either within the company or in other industries.

It’s understandable to fear that no matter what new skills a person acquires, some technological innovation will one day do the work better and faster. But that doesn’t mean you have to join the unemployed. “Breakthroughs in generative AI, such as ChatGPT and other large language models, will likely transform the economy and labor markets. But there’s no convincing evidence that we’re on a path to a jobless future,” says MIT Technology Review editor-at-large David Rotman.

Technology billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have both suggested a universal basic income for people who lose their jobs to technology. Zuckerberg said Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, which provides annual grants to residents from the state’s oil revenue, would be a novel approach that “comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net.” Of course, divesting the oil industry of its federal tax breaks could also help fund the larger safety net Zuckerberg dismisses.

Meanwhile, as technology both eliminates and creates new jobs, workers must be retrained to perform different tasks. Here’s hoping that when the longshoremen and port operators resume contract negotiations in January, they don’t get caught up in haggling over how much AI can be used to handle cargo. They also should discuss creating new programs that will train dockworkers for those jobs that will still require a human component.

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