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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – New technology replaces old technology. It’s inevitable.
The longshoreman’s strike that began yesterday isn’t about wages, it’s about jobs unloading ships that are becoming obsolete. The union turned down a 50% pay raise over 6 years. They are really fighting against automation.
Consider how relentless automation is:
- There was a news story last month about an automated dental service. A robot dentist can crown a tooth in 15 minutes. Patients need to make multiple visits to a human dentist.
- During my last visit to New York, I took the new AirTrain to and from Kennedy Airport. It’s an 8-mile railroad run completely by computers. No engineers. No conductors. And it has a perfect safety record.
- Here at our Broadcast Centre, verifying that our commercials aired properly is done by computer. Our network commercials are downloaded by computer too – no human intervention.
So longshoremen want a special carve-out that blocks automated cranes from unloading the shipping containers on ships. How do they figure that? This is a double-loss for all other Americans. We lose the efficiencies of lower shipping costs for everything from cars, to medical equipment to food. And the people who do the actual work on the docks get higher wages for the higher costs the force onto everyone else.
The only good thing about the strike is that it puts Kamala Harris and her hair-brained campaign in an impossible position. She’s already in the pocket of the unions. Should the rest of us face empty shelves or higher prices so that one favored group – the longshoremen – can get a special exemption from technology? Kamala: choose sides, the unions or the American people.
Chris Conley
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