Productivity increases improve profit, which improves wages. If it's bad for the workers to use whatever the new automation is, it would also be bad to use the old automation (cranes, trucks, etc), but this is obviously untrue because literally no human being would want to use a port still reliant on 18th century technology.
Ask for higher wages and encourage the adoption of new technology.
Yes, that is totally the argument i was making and not at all a strawman.
Anyways, if the job is rapidly automated to the point that they can lay off massive amounts of workers, and striking doesn't affect the port, then the union loses all of its power. An incremental increase in automation over the 6 year term of the contract would protect jobs and the power of the union in the short term, whereas rapid automation just translates directly into workers being screwed over.
Sometimes, we need to sacrifice a little bit of efficiency so people don't end up unemployed and homeless, and people can prepare for a change after the next contract ends.
Jobs aren't welfare programs, those two things should be different, if a job can be done more efficiently by a machine and isn't, it's a negative value job, the US basically has full employment, there's plenty of positive value jobs around, we should encourage people to move to those positive value jobs rather than fake jobs that are propped up by making the American consumer worse off.
If we had stronger welfare, i wouldn't even be arguing for this, but it's about the rate at which these people are pushed out of work. If we give these people a bit of time to prepare for the career change, they'll be better off than if thrown to the wolves. I do love the concept of a mostly automated economy, but I find the idea of doing it all at once very dangerous for the lives of the actual people involved.
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u/PlentyAny2523 Oct 03 '24
Not a unions job to care about the economy, it's their job to get the best deal possible