Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. seaports need to consider the interests of organized labor as they move to automate jobs performed by dockworkers today, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said in an interview.
“You can’t impose by fiat automation and expect it to succeed,” he said.
Port automation has hit snags in Los Angeles and most recently in Rotterdam, where earlier this month workers staged a 24-hour strike at the port’s container terminals over concerns that automated operations would replace hundreds of dockworker jobs.
The president of the ILWU Local 13 in Los Angeles, Bobby Olvera Jr., said there was a “huge loss” of jobs when one L.A. terminal introduced automation technology two years ago because the need for many truck drivers and container gangs was eliminated. But Mr. Olvera said that automation doesn’t have to mean job losses, as long as port terminals and labor groups innovate together.