The Longshoremens Union fight against automation is strangling US growth

It’s the processing gate that roared.APM Terminals at the Port of Mobile in Alabama uses a semi-automated gate to process trucks without union labor, and this supposed outrage is one of the reasons the International Longshoremen’s Union went on strike.Never mind that the gate has been in operation for years and is a more efficient and safer way to check and admit trucks. The strike, affecting ports on the East Coast and in the Gulf, is off for now with a tentative deal on wages.But the larger issue of automation, wholly opposed by the union, is unresolved; it’s been put off until an extension of the current contract expires on January 15. “Machines don’t pay taxes,” the president of the union local in Mobile complained.Yeah, well, neither do wheelbarrows or iPhones, yet we still use them as tools to make any number of tasks easier and less time-consuming. Harold Daggett, the president of the union, has pledged an unceasing war on automation.He famously makes nearly a million dollars a year and lives in a New Jersey mansion.No word on whether he insists that he and his family hand-wash their clothes and dishes — or employ a laundress and personal dishwasher — in order to forswear reliance on labor-saving devices.Technological advance is necessary to economic advance.It would be disastrous if the longshoremen’s union successfully blocked it at our ports, or, even worse, an alarmist view of automation were to prevail in our society at large. We may think that we live in a time of revolutionary technological change, but we aren’t seeing big productivity gains.This is important because higher wages (and lower prices) ultimately depend on increased productivity — or being able to do more with equal or fewer inputs.Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation points out that much of our new technology has been poured into the consumer market — smart phones, social media, online retail and the like.

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