Port workers face an uphill battle against automation, and history shows they can’t win this fight
Retraining is essential for those that lose their jobs, but the U.S. isn’t prepared
The port dispute will be repeated across all industries as automation takes hold
The longshoreman’s effort this week to push back on automation is a highly significant first skirmish in a man-against-the-machines war that is starting to sweep the globe. Spoiler alert: this doesn’t end well for the humans. Eventually all industries will be overtaken by AI, automation and yes, robots.
Is this the stuff of science fiction? No. What we’re seeing now is phase one in a tech-incepted metamorphosis that in the next 20 years will completely reset the nature of what it is like to live and work on this planet — something I have been saying here on Fierce Network since the start of 2023 (read more of my coverage here).
Mainstream media calls this trend “automation” but the catalyst for the revolution is actually a set of five virtual technologies: cloud, 5G, AI, automation and predictive analytics. Vendors are combining them into Smart Cloud product suites integrated into traditional industries using APIs — delivering huge benefits in efficiency, expense and profitability.
How easily these advantages can be recognized depends on how structured an industry is. Ports have been one of the first verticals to receive the Smart Cloud digital upgrade because they are highly structured, operating in a clearly delineated environment with lots of identical repetitive tasks. Manufacturing is another structured industry.
Agriculture varies. A field of corn? Structured. A herd of angry cows that you forgot to feed yesterday? Unstructured — very, very unstructured.
What about telecom, my alma mater? A mixed bag. Automation has already swept through the software side of the telecom industry, and fully autonomous networks, which operate without any human involvement, are coming. On the other hand, ditchers, trenchers and linemen doing hard physical tasks out in the unstructured world are assured some job security — at least for now.
The beginning of the end
America’s 45,000 striking port workers are in the vanguard of an army of human workers destined to fight a desperate rearguard action against being laid off by machines. History shows that this is a war the workers can’t win. From the spinning jenny to the mechanical reaper, to the automated telephone switchboard, technology always prevails.
And in the US, there is too much at stake for government and business to allow the dockers to succeed. The U.S. port infrastructure ranks amongst the worst in the world. To stay competitive, America has no choice other than to upgrade it with digital technologies.
The same goes for the rest of the U.S. infrastructure, which is little changed from the 70’s. America has some of the leakiest water systems, falling-downiest bridges, narrowest broadband networks, and dimmest electrical grids of any developed country. Expect engineers, architects, steelworkers, utility engineers et al. to meet the same fate as the stevedores as automation spreads.
False prophets
Consulting firms like McKinsey are confident that the loss of human jobs will be balanced out by a wave of new occupations, something that happened with previous technology transitions.
Consulting firms like McKinsey are wrong.
The current digital revolution is N-dimensional — combining multiple technology breakthroughs — and ubiquitous. Simply, there has never been an equivalent transition where everything everywhere changes all at once.
Also, the new jobs that consulting firms claim will arrive on the back of the automation revolution are simply a list of software-based proficiencies — AI specialist, automation consultant and so on — that will unquestionably be handed over to AI once the automation revolution becomes ubiquitous. (I’m not sure why the consultants can’t see this. Perhaps because they’ve never had a real job themselves?)
Finally, workers in heavy industry can’t simply move into a new high-tech role. Extensive retraining is required. This is something the U.S. is unprepared for, ceding the responsibility to state-level, where availability is spotty at best. In contrast, the EU, China, and others already have extensive centrally funded retraining strategies in place.
Welcome to the American dystopia
The longshoremen are right to be worried about automation, and the fact that they are destined to lose this fight doesn’t make them less right. The U.S. is a bad place to lose your job and it’s about to get a lot worse.
Compared to other developed nations, Americans are more likely to stigmatize the unemployed and less likely to help them. We pay less unemployment benefits for shorter time, and we are the only developed nation without universal healthcare.
On top of this, America has no national government-funded strategy to tackle industrial/infrastructure digitalization, and no national strategy to tackle the human consequences of uncontrolled digitalization.
Where does this all leave us? One of the key characteristics that defined the fall of the Roman Empire was the collapse of its world-changing infrastructure. It got distracted with overseas wars, political infighting, and a collapse of morality (orgies, amirite?) and let the aqueducts fall. Reader, can you spot the parallels?
At the heart of the coming American automation dystopia is the U.S.' real skill: industrial strength hubris. In the words of the Romans, "tu ipse causam fecisti, fornicati."
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