Skilled Labour. The Metric System. Technological Progress.

It is sad to see the state of the workers, whose misplaced rebellion to keep their jobs skilled, results in strikes against more advanced machinery being used in the industries they work in. 

“U.S. ports already lag those in Europe and Asia in their use of technology. And Daggett (International Longshore Workers Union president ed. ) wants to keep it that way, by prohibiting the operators of marine terminals from automating cargo handling.”

““If it was up to them, they’d like to see everybody lose their jobs. … They don’t want to pay anybody,” he said in a recent union video. “Someone has to get into Congress and say, ‘Whoa, time out.’ This world is going too fast for us. Machines got to stop. … What good is it if you’re going to put people out of work.””

“The dockworkers’ challenge is not unique. Technology has been eliminating some jobs and creating others for more than two centuries. In recent decades, elevator operators, secretaries, and steelworkers all have seen demand for their services upended by mechanization.”

Washington Post 10 5 2024

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/05/port-strike-workers-jobs-automation-union/

This group of people who profess to be a radical workers organization are trying to organize to keep low wage workers out of their industry.  They want to be superior to the unskilled workers, the proletariat.  They are more like an aristocracy than a movement to organize the workers.

To accomplish this they are trying to keep their jobs skilled labor, by coming out against improvements in industry.  By keeping the skill in their labor they hope to remain high paid, as opposed to unskilled labor.

They seem to be fighting modern technology.  

“On the picket line outside Red Hook Terminal at the Port of Newark, strikers this week agreed that automation is their chief concern.”

“Lydia Ortiz, 60, said she notices each day the work that is performed by machines. No humans sitting in the toll booths, thanks to E-ZPass. Scarcely a worker to be seen at the grocery store checkout lines, filled with self-checkout machines.”

““They want everything automation,” she said. “We’ve got to support families, no?””

 Washington Post ibid.

Which is misguided; it is the system of capitalism that is making the machinery a burden for workers, who are losing their jobs and becoming proletarians.  It is the fact a capitalist is using the machinery and is incentivized by the profit he can make by using it, instead of technological development to make life easier for the workers, by making it take less labor to produce the same product, that the ILU feels threatened by modern industry.  

In an environment where workers owned the means of production,  like a cooperative, technological achievements would absolutely lower the hours needed to be worked by the worker in his respective industry. 

It is in this respect that organization of the proletariat becomes imperative. That instead of strikes for wage increases, by keeping labor skilled, a new method is tried.   

The ILU is facing a losing battle.  It is impossible to stop modern technological improvement,  regardless of the fact it throws people out of work.  We saw this with the power loom, an invention that shook the foundations of Europe. It allowed for a 12 year old boy moving a stick and pulling a lever to replace the labor of more than a dozen hand weavers.  It was burned publicly, according to Karl Marx in Capital.

This caused the previously skilled workers to become proletarians. But it did not stop the march forward of technology, the loom was eventually adopted. 

The transition from the integrated steel mills to the electric arc furnace struggle is occurring now.  US Steel is a coking mill, producing virgin steel.  Losing money, it was being sold to Nippon Steel, a Japanese company, planning to invest in coking steel technology.  The unions were against the Japanese company buying it; skilled workers were needed in US Steel, but the industry was becoming rapidly outdated.  The electric arc mill technology that smelts recycled materials, the steel that it produces is the same, but it is not virgin.  Nevertheless it looks unlikely the sale of US Steel will go forward, Trump is against it..

Obviously it saves a ton of money to simply recycle, and most new mills are recycling mills.  It requires less labor to produce steel in an electric arc mill, and they are often not union.  The workers are more often relatively unskilled, compared to conventional steel production. And here again we have the struggle of skilled workers vs unskilled, union labor and unskilled general laborers.

US Steel will not be sold, both Trump and Biden agree.  What will become of the skilled workers clinging to privilege, well paid with generous pensions, seems to be being decided.  Nippon Steel will not be buying US Steel, or so it seems.  But the issue of recycling vs virgin steel production will not be going away any time soon.

It is the same with the longshoremen.  It’s like being against the metric system because it is going to cost American workers jobs.  Obviously it will cost less to use a more scientific system of measurement; how can a non metric company compete in the world market?  We see this with Chinese Electric Vehicles, 100 % tariffs, taxes on import, due  to the inability of non metric gasoline powered motor producing industry to produce EV’s competitively. 

But good luck getting a metric conversion  through Congress and the Senate.  The Republican bourgeoisie will vote against it for protectionist reasons, the liberal progressive bourgeois will do it to keep American skilled labor, like the US Steel workers and the longshore workers, in their well paid jobs. 

America will go metric, they are the last country in the world not to.  Technology will continue to advance whether or not it is advantageous to the labor union aristocracy. The very presence of a proletariat proves this. As productivity increases, machinery always becomes easier to use, and the producers less skilled.

As far as these ILU workers go, and skilled workers in factories general go, they should organize unskilled workers.  Strikes to increase wages, by keeping labor skilled that could otherwise be done easily with machines, is futile.  Lowering hours, with a decent minimum wage, makes more sense than trying to reform capitalist shops.  

Employee ownership works; in retail, a branch of production, for instance. It is cheaper, and higher quality products are available for far less cost than the capitalist stores.  The only strikes should be to gain control of the means of production, towards worker control of industry.  If anything, less hours, even with less pay, would be a start to the road to employee ownership.  The workers could pack a lunch, and give up bars and restaurants for their own stoves in the kitchen.

This may sound ridiculous, but is it any more strange sounding than suggesting technological progress is detrimental to society?  Machinery may put men out of work, the power loom’s introduction caused suffering.  But attempting to stop it, rather than taking control of it and using it to benefit everyone, seems wrongheaded.  

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic