Harold Daggett has been the main labor leader getting criticized recently for a large salary. He's the leader of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), and makes somewhere in the ballpark of ~$1M a year. The ILA is striking right now in the hopes of getting a ~70% wage increase over the next 6 years, better healthcare benefits, and better retirement contribution.

If I were a longshoremen making $130k, and I stood to get a ~70% wage increase + benefits, I'd absolutely be okay with the person who could make that happen making a low 7 figure salary.

Generally, I think the discussion around labor leader salaries to be very insidious. The truth is that they're fighting for chump change against an industry that's pulling in hundreds of billions in profit. And the same goes for the Teamsters. I'll let the respective unions determine leadership profits, but I'll 1000% support whatever they agree upon, so long as the union leaders are making sure that workers get treated well.

Just divert the container to an area without cameras for a few minutes, pop it open and remove the kilos.

In a manual world, nobody notices that the container takes 15 minutes longer to reach the storage area.

In a manual world, nobody notices that the container suddenly became 100lbs lighter.

In a manual world, nobody notices the GPS trace showing the container going behind the warehouse where the camera coverage is spotty.

Now add that to a bigger time scale and mass inflation happened between the batrhoom and he bedroom. They have to charge more just to keep buying power.

But when it comes to the management of the majority of our lives (the system we conduct our lives within, and according to), right thinking people insist on mediocrity.

There are many paradoxes like this in the world, but for some reason it is not possible to get minds to focus on them. I wonder what the underlying cause of this is...perhaps there is a causal relationship between the two phenomena in this case?

How about this: imagine you're a multi-billion dollar per annum organization openly researching how to put tens of thousands of your core workforce out of a career, and they ask for more money to protect their families and livelihood. And the government forces you to negotiate.

It is pretty unusual here for wageys to be targets of hits.

Also while shipping is a competitive market, the market for ports is not. You're either in a location or not. There are not hundreds of container terminals in a single port in competition because of economies of scale.

(The market for trucking companies IS competitive however, meaning that if you have to err on 'protecting' either party, you should probably pick that one)

Planes can declare emergencies, they can divert to alternative locations, turn around for maintenance issues. And this is just IFR flights. VFR flights can take off, and once outside of controlled airspace, can just fly mostly however they want.

Your doctor takes appointments. That's a more apt analogy for what port appointments will create.

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-the-us-cant-build...

As a general rule, container ships are unloaded tier-by-tier, breadth-first if you will, not shaft-by-shift (depth-first), so this is not much of a problem in practice.

That does start to change if you want to do simultaneous loading and unloading operations, then you'd want to clear out a vertical shafts first so you can start loading operations as quickly as possible. Which is one of the many reasons dock workers hate that style of operations.

Shipping containers are also multimodal and are loaded up on trucks and rail cars at ports to be hauled away.

I don't think normalizing petty theft is good, but taking away 'perks' is still unpopular. Imagine the riots we'd get if FAANG workers couldn't take snacks home with them?

I resemble that remark ;)

I am quite few people indeed.

Starting a new company soon anyway, and it's going to take a lot more effort than just working there.

Plus it does have something to do with automation and cargo subcontracting in my niche domain.

>The industry completely changed in just a few years

That does sound about right, IIRC it did only take from 1956 until about the mid-1980'a before containers were everywhere, a relatively few years when it comes to cargo operations.

It was only proven how big was too big once a few ultra-large had been built, and the point of diminishing returns had been exceeded enough so accurate math could finally be accomplished.

Routine commercial operation has been scaled back decades ago to less than the max.

Less than the max that is physically possible, focused now more accurately on better returns.

Regardless of who you think that might be, Americans should make sure their voice is heard on this issue in the upcoming elections.

That's not an alignment issue, because it's not clear if raising prices on everyone to support a few thousands workers is pro-worker or pre-human. You could just as easily argue (and I do) that lowering prices and freeing up man hours is pro-worker and pro-human.

Baristas provide a point of human contact and socialization which cannot be automated while preserving humanity. Truck driving can, and it’s an isolated job. Automating it would lower shipping costs, which lowers inflation, enables faster turnaround since robots don’t need to sleep, improve safety (theoretically) because robots don’t get tired and robots don’t take amphetamines to work crazy schedules, and can be programmed to respect speed limits etc.

Now that said, truck driving is also an absolutely huge job source. To replace that would be to kill of a decent income for a huge percent of the population. More important than a union, we need to have government/policy handle any massive workforce transition.

[1] https://nypost.com/2024/10/02/business/union-boss-harold-dag...

What do unions have to do with industries where not many humans are needed. If you use unions to protect legacy jobs, in the long run investors will just stop investing in them (or let their investments wither as they withdraw capital) and invest in new industries where unions haven’t stuck their hands in things yet. So goodbye cafes, hello drones delivering coffee via your chimney or something (no barista job was replaced by a robot, they just replaced the entire industry instead). You can’t distort the cost of labor for too long without strong government control over the economy; better to just spread the benefits of automation out more evenly via corporate rather than labor taxation (to fund UBI, universal healthcare, etc…).

For something less speculative, how about elevator attendants? Needing one in every elevator equates to a massive workforce, probably bigger than dock workers. Why shouldn't we bring those back aside from status quo bias?

> while bringing huge returns to some lucky corporate winners, in effect a massive transfer of wealth from workers to shareholders.

Everyone else would also benefit from cheaper espressos and goods (through cheaper shipping)

1) I know it will take card. Last time I took a taxi the "card machine was broken" and "I'll drop you at an ATM"

2) I know I'll get a receipt, as a PDF, which I put into my expenses. Taxi drivers tend to be very grumpy about giving receipts

3) I know I won't get adverts - maybe this is just a New York thing, but last time I took a yellow cab in New York I was bombarded with adverts

4) I know I'll be going to the right place, without having communication difficulties and ending up at the wrong hotel or whatever

Price doesn't come into it.

And if uber can't gets its operational costs down below a taxi firm paying for a dispatcher and manager to handle paperwork etc, given the scale they operate at, then they really need their tech stack sorting.

I'm not even talking about the wage aspect of the business. Before Uber and Lyft, getting a cab was inconvenient. Mostly telephone or hailing it in-person. Uber and Lyft forced them to innovate. There are now apps available to get a cab in almost every major city.

Why did it take the Uber/Lyft disruption to get something like this? Because the cab companies didn't need to compete and the unions kept this monopoly in place.

But from a financial perspective, most of the cost for the machines is probably in buying the machines, where most of the cost of the worker is probably hourly wage (or similar). Turning off the machines probably saves less money than sending the people home.

You have an incorrect, oversimple model of politics (e.g. business interests have shown much more capability in influencing government on economic policy to suit their own goals than pretty much every other group, and there are a lot of reasons for that).

You use "progress" in a really suspect way, like it's a line pointing one way. It's really about whose progress it is.

etc.

> After all, it's the job of a government, not a company, to serve the needs of the people.

I disagree, and I think that idea is actually at the root of a lot of problems.

And what's that supposed to mean? It sounds like you feel they're low status and therefore undeserving.

> This isn't the hill to die on. People viscerally feel this isn't a job which can justify itself—because it can't.

But somehow, the job of just owning a bunch of shit and living off the proceeds doesn't seem offend people the same way, when it's literally the same thing.

> Besides, royalties are an artificial construction enforced by governments through courts and obedient police force that will kill you if you don't go along with what they say.

You know what else is like that? Private property.

Yes, with one key difference: They were smart enough to recognize the value of their labor in the market, and have joined together to have better leverage.

1. Labor is so automated that you need little to no workers.

2. Workers are exploited and union-busted to such a degree that they cannot organize.

You'll notice both outcomes are bad for the workers. What you're suggesting is so incredibly one-sided no worker in their right mind would take it up.

This is about compromise, as is all things in life. If your solution is "one side loses heavily and the other side wins everything", you don't have a solution, you have a delusion.

In the long run yes, it would be nice to not require labor, and everyone lives happily ever after. In the short run people suffer. They starve, they live on the streets, they turn to drugs, and they die. If that sounds harsh that's because it is. There's a reason these people are working manual labor jobs and aren't fucking around on a computer for 3 productive hours a day. There's a reason they've "chosen" to toil away for 8+ hours for a comparatively low wage. If you're not considering what happens to them, you're not seeing the problem as a whole.

They're plesionyms

Those two statements are equivalent. Or do you think the capitalist business owner is going to pay is employees more out of the kindness of his own hard, if only they couldn't strike?

The whole point of a strike is that it "harms their company," because being able to do that is the only way many workers have any leverage.

> Software engineers don't really strike in a way that harms their company.

Software engineers have been the beneficiaries of some really cushy market conditions over the last couple decades, which are pretty much guaranteed not to last.

Imagine coming home and finding your car wrecked and your home appliances such as washing machine, vacuum cleaner and microwave smashed into pieces.

What happened is that a guy who could have been your horse guy and a bunch of people who could have been your domestic help (a maid, a butler) in 1900 got angry at the machines which displaced them. Also, a now-unemployed phone exchange operator from the 1930s smashed your phone; why should you be able to connect a call to another city without going through her first?

After all, as a programmer, you are likely a solid middle class, and middle class homes once used to support numerous manual workers to clean, cook etc. for them. Thus, they acted as important job creators. By adopting machines, you destroyed their living and sent them on the dole. Unfortunately, they didn't have unions strong enough to nip microwaves and washing machines in the bud.

From the point of view of 2024, an absurd scenario, right? Because this development is over and we are used to its consequences. Employing people to cook and clean after you is even considered a bit gauche.

The most successful automation usually displaces workers all over the globe, not just in a few factories. Having a phone that connects you from Texas to New York without living people in the middle is a result of many people acting in "naked self-interest".

Is that actually in their best interest? Opinions differ.

By the way, here are some examples of what I mean:

Real disposable income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

Real median personal income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

This is a hard statement for me to agree with.

This inherent bias exists in all of us, whether we admit it or not. That's why we view knowledge workers getting paid more than they deserve in a MUCH different light than physical laborers getting paid more than they deserve.

But high shipping costs? That causes INFLATION. It's a cost they ask all of us to pay, unnecessarily, since they have blocked automation.