DOCKERS have to work hard if they want to slow the march of automation that threatens their jobs, a US shipping conference was told.
While visions of non-union, stay-at-hope mums in Iowa operating quay cranes in Oakland and RTGs in Seattle, are the nightmare of dockers' unions, waterfront experts say they only have themselves to blame if this becomes a reality.
"That scares the hell out of labour," said Jeff Smith, a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) legislative committee in Portland, Oregon. "Who knows that we're not going to be loading ships from Billings, Montana, or Salt Lake City?"
But terminals would face less pressure to automate if unions did a better job policing their members to make sure nobody slacked off and undermined productivity, said James Devine, former CEO of New York Container Terminal.
Mr Devine, now a consultant with Mercator International, said the west coast ILWU and the east coast International Longshoremen's Association have failed to discipline longshoremen who short-time employers, reported American Shipper.
"The ILA and the ILWU have to step up to make sure that you don't have one crane operator who does 35 to 40 moves an hour and then another who deliberately does 22 moves to stick it to management," he said.
"And when you call them to task for it, the union puts their arms around them and protects them," excusing the action as falling within a 'sustaining pace'," he said.
"That's the problem. Some of the workforce tries to do as little as they can. And that's what drives automation. Get rid of this guy because he's sitting at his desk playing a word game and he's not attending to the gate.
If the guy was doing his gate job, you wouldn't have to spend money on automation and he would have protected his job," said Mr Devine.
Former APM Terminals North America chief Anthony Scioscia, who now runs his own port consultancy, said new equipment and information technology "requires a different skill set, not only to operate the systems, but to repair them.
"So, the rank-and-file is going to have to be brought into the industry that has those skills and abilities," he said.
Walter Kemmsies, chief economist at port engineering firm Moffat & Nichol, said: "Whenever volumes increase and we use machines because we need labour to do something else. So there will be alternative jobs."
PORTS
12 February 2015 - 00:02
Dockers who do the least, and not their best, speed automation: experts
DOCKERS have to work hard if they want to slow the march of automation that threatens their jobs, a US shipping conference was told.
PORTS
12 February 2015 - 00:02
Dockers who do the least, and not their best, speed automation: experts
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