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Editor’s Note: At a July 4 celebration at Liberty Hill in San Pedro, CA, Greg Mitre, President of the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) Pensioners Associations, spoke about the automation of the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor. This event was organized by San Pedro Neighbors for Peace and Justice. Excerpts from his speech are below.
“Los Angeles Long Beach Harbor is the largest port in the U.S. by volume and tonnage. And we (the ILWU) also handle the most containers of any port in the U.S. So right now, we’re at a crossroads in the ILWU… in a position that we probably have not seen since the early sixties when we invented this big square box called a container.
As you guys know, in the old days, there was no such thing as containers and everything was shipped in bulk… shipped inside the hold of a ship and unloaded by hand or put on pallet boards and taken out of the ships and then put onto trucks on forklifts, on jitneys and it was moved around by labor, by ILWU Longshoremen…”
“You all remember the… early days of San Pedro when men used to walk down and gather right where we’re standing. And they would get in a huge crowd and offer bribes to the bosses of the ships, and they would bring down loaves of bread, half gallons of whiskey… whole fish, and they would bribe their way to get a job. It was called the “shape up” and they would get a job for 90 cents an hour working on the ships and you’d work on that ship until it was done… We’ve been fighting ever since against the bosses…”
“Most of the automation we’re seeing in container handling cargo right now around the world is mainly to eliminate labor and it’s not a lot cheaper and it’s not a lot faster. It doesn’t move cargo any faster. In fact, it actually moves it slower, but it eliminates a very, very large percentage of the labor. The new equipment they’re bringing in that is going to replace 500 Longshoremen a day are automated straddle carriers. When the container is set on the ground, an automated straddle carrier drives over the top of it, picks it up and shuttles it to wherever it’s going to go into the yard.
They’re (Maersk Line, the world’s largest container company) looking out for themselves, their shareholders, and they don’t care about the employees. They don’t care about labor… So, a just transition is something… our employers are not embracing. So that’s where we’re at. Well, we’re in a transition period now. We’re gonna transition into being the largest port that employs the least amount of longshoremen.”
