Tad DeHaven
Tad DeHaven
The recent port strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association was suspended after dockworkers received a massive pay increase. However, the union’s opposition to port automation technology on job preservation grounds remains the major sticking point to the union accepting a new contract by a January 15 deadline.
As I previously discussed, worker opposition to labor-saving technology is hardly new. In the short term, new technologies can cause job losses in the affected industry. That was the result of the introduction of shipping containers in the mid-20th century. In the long term, technology enhances productivity and thus fosters higher living standards, better wages, and more jobs in the broader economy. That was also the result of containerization.
Striking dockworkers on the picket line often held up signs that said, “Machines Don’t Feed Families.” The sentiment is understandable from the view of a dockworker concerned that automation could lead to the loss of his job. Alas, it simply isn’t true, and we need only look at the US agriculture industry to see why.
According to US Census data, farm workers accounted for 38 percent of the US labor force in 1900. Today, that figure is about 1 percent. As the following chart shows, the number of farm workers dropped precipitously over the course of the 20th century.
A US Department of Agriculture article explains what happened:
The decline in farm labor occurred as workers sought higher wages and other income opportunities in the nonfarm sector, especially after World War II. In addition, the transformation of the farm structure toward fewer and larger farms and the development of labor-saving technologies—such as bigger and faster tractors and combines and automated feeding equipment—reduced demand for farmworkers.
Farmworker employment plummeted but total US agricultural output soared. That’s because total factor productivity—the amount of agricultural output generated by a combination of land, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/machines-do-feed-people