JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Dockworkers are on strike for a third day on the East Coast and Gulf Coast. One of their demands - a complete ban on automation. Their union wants to make sure humans are moving shipping containers, not machines. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: I was at the Port of Baltimore the other night when midnight struck and dockworkers started forming a picket line.
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UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #1: Let's get it, baby. Shut the [expletive] down.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #2: Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #3: Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #1: (Chanting) What are we going to do?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: (Chanting) Shut it down.
HSU: They marched. They sang. They held picket signs. And one man shouted out a word to describe automation that we can't play on the radio. But I heard another version later in the day.
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UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #4: (Chanting) Hey ho, hey ho.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Chanting) Automation's got to go.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #4: (Chanting) Hey ho, hey ho.
HSU: The fear of robots taking over jobs runs thick among dockworkers. The last union contract already banned the use of fully automated equipment, defined as devoid of any human interaction, and it required that any use of semi-automated equipment be negotiated. But union president Harold Daggett told Fox News...
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HAROLD DAGGETT: Not strong enough.
HSU: He says port operators are sneaking in technology.
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DAGGETT: Circumventing the contract - they don't care. They don't care. It's not fair.
HSU: He said the union caught the Port of Mobile using an automated gate. In fact, the Alabama Port Authority says that gate has been there for 16 years. Geraldine Knatz was puzzled by the union's objection to the gate. She's a professor at USC and former executive director of the Port of LA.
GERALDINE KNATZ: To me, that's, like, sort of standard. You know, I was kind of surprised. I mean, it is a type of automation.
HSU: But there's far more advanced technology also in use on the East Coast, she says. A few ports have automated cranes that move containers around the storage yards and onto trucks, which she says is a real advantage.
KNATZ: That automated storage yard can be operating 24 hours a day.
HSU: The machines can work through the night, prepositioning containers to be picked up by trucks in the morning. I heard about this technology from Pamela Miller. She's a truck driver who's hauled containers from the Port of Baltimore for 40-some years. When the Key Bridge collapsed in March, the port was shut down.
PAMELA MILLER: I had to take my 21-year-old truck and start running Norfolk.
HSU: Norfolk, Va. - the port there made a big investment in automation in 2016. What Miller encountered was rows and rows of robots, each with multiple slots.
MILLER: You go down back into one of them slots, and the lights will tell you what to do.
HSU: You step on a pressure pad, and then...
MILLER: The robot comes up. He takes your box off, or he puts your box on. Then you get a green light. You go lock your box down, go through another portal, get another ticket, and you leave. You're in and out of the port in 20 minutes.
HSU: She loves it because, where there aren't robots, like in Baltimore, she says truck drivers often get into jams.
MILLER: We get in each other's way. The machine can't get to me. The checker can't get to the machine. It's ridiculous.
HSU: The reality is only a small percentage of container ports around the world have introduced automation, in part because it's so expensive. But it is happening, and it's clear jobs on the waterfront will be lost. And that bothers Pamela Miller. While she was wowed by how efficient the robots are...
MILLER: I personally would rather have one of these guys come up to me. It's nice to be able to speak to a human, and I've known most of them forever.
HSU: She doesn't want them to lose their jobs, which is why she was out on the picket line, marching with them in the rain.
MILLER: This breaks my heart. It really does. But, yeah, I'm on both sides.
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UNIDENTIFIED DOCKWORKER #4: (Chanting) Hey ho, hey ho.
HSU: She may be torn, but the business community, by and large, is not. They argue America's ports are already among the least efficient in the world. Why hold them back?
Andrea Hsu, NPR News, at the Port of Baltimore. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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