The huge dockworker strike. Here's what these unskilled laborers are demanding.

[Cougarbear]

Pretty good pay for work a trained monkey can do. OTOH we got dumb jocks and entertainers making $100 million a year. Wages make no sense in america.

MSN

Sounds more about automation than pay. Why do people fight progress?

 

[toobfreak]

Pretty good pay for work a trained monkey can do.

To be sure, while I don't know all the jobs and work involved on a dock, the guys high up overhead on the big gantry cranes who lift the containers out of ships and stack them on the dock is a VERY highly skilled job of amazing skill, so, I bet you couldn't do it if your pants were on fire. You have to have literal SPOT-ON accuracy or very bad things happen, and you have to be QUICK about it too.

That said, I can see how computer automation could easily replace these guys.

But then, you can probably build a computer to do nearly every job! So let's replace all humans with robots and the only work left for people to do would be building and fixing machines, right?

 

[toobfreak]

They are going to price themselves out of a job. Pretty much everything they do can be automated.

B I N G O

 

[debbiedowner]

MSN

www.msn.com

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He also has ties to Trump. Just finished reading an article and they have been friends for years.

 

[toobfreak]

That is what they are striking for as well. NO Automation. I worked with the IBEW in the bay area at one time and got written up when the steward heard my ratchet wrench. I was written up for using a "speed wrench" instead of a combo because it was faster. SMH. Unions are well beyond their expiration date.

I doubt they will ever win the automation bid in a contract. I mean, there is an entire industry of engineers just drooling at the chance to design automated machinery for most everything now. Automation in food-processing, automation in car making, automation in steel production, it is only inevitable that they will automate ship loading and unloading, and, not only is this an essential right of a business to control its bottom line to improve its productivity, but this strike will almost certainly ACCELERATE their desire and need to automate things sooner after losing so much money over this strike.

Probably what these guys really ought to be doing is to start looking for jobs in other fields and just smell that the bloom is off the rose.

 

[sparky]

So some guy making $20 prr hour is going to affect things? Hard to fathom.

unless there is a nation full of them on the same page ........~S~

 

[BULLDOG]

So some guy making $20 prr hour is going to affect things? Hard to fathom.

One guy making $20.00 per hour probably can't. That's why unions are so important.

 

[sparky]

Anyone else feel Ronnie Reagans ghost here???? ~S~

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

I've been 'sneered' at my entire career as a blue collar Admiral

I've turned it around to a $$$ in my pocket, doing my best Forest Gump as i do.....
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~S~

I was not addressing you, but the other poster's constant disrespect of those who don't get $75 an hour for their consulting job. Thanks for your input!

 

[sparky]

I was not addressing you, but the other poster's constant disrespect of those who don't get $75 an hour for their consulting job.

yes of course Admiral

no skin....

~S~

 

[gipper]

If the job they do is do important to our beloved economy why is the starting wage a mere $20 per hour. Makes no sense.

And these idiots here criticize them while supporting billionaires. WTF!

 

[EvilCat Breath]

So workers making $20 per hour to start are affecting things? Wow. That's likenot getting paid.

That's a good training wage. Training costs more than the work product trainees produce.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

That's a good training wage. Training costs more than the work product trainees produce.

Training wage for what? A nuclear reactor operator?

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Training wage for what? A nuclear reactor operator?

$20.00 an hour isn't the wage it used to be.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

$20.00 an hour isn't the wage it used to be.

That's true. In California that's minimum wage for McDonald's if you can find one still in business.

I went to a McDonalds in southern Mississippi last month at the middle of the breakfast rush. The store had kiosks for orders and I saw a grand total of two employees in the store.

 

[westwall]

That is what they are striking for as well. NO Automation. I worked with the IBEW in the bay area at one time and got written up when the steward heard my ratchet wrench. I was written up for using a "speed wrench" instead of a combo because it was faster. SMH. Unions are well beyond their expiration date.

Their position is a loser. Automation is coming simply because it is far more efficient. What they should be negotiating for is training in maintaining the automated machinery. The simple fact is, EVERYTHING will be automated within the next 20 years. So, they either learn how to live with it, by adapting, or they cease to exist.

 

[Concerned American]

Operating multi-million-dollar container handling equipment is hardly a job for unskilled workers. Go climb up on one of those massive Crains. See if you can get it started without killing everybody close by, and then come back and talk about unskilled labor.

They are striking for less automation.

 

[Concerned American]

That's true. In California that's minimum wage for McDonald's if you can find one still in business.

I went to a McDonalds in southern Mississippi last month at the middle of the breakfast rush. The store had kiosks for orders and I saw a grand total of two employees in the store.

McD's pays $22/hr to start in our little town in eastern WA.

 

[Concerned American]

I doubt they will ever win the automation bid in a contract. I mean, there is an entire industry of engineers just drooling at the chance to design automated machinery for most everything now. Automation in food-processing, automation in car making, automation in steel production, it is only inevitable that they will automate ship loading and unloading, and, not only is this an essential right of a business to control its bottom line to improve its productivity, but this strike will almost certainly ACCELERATE their desire and need to automate things sooner after losing so much money over this strike.

Probably what these guys really ought to be doing is to start looking for jobs in other fields and just smell that the bloom is off the rose.

I retired from a 33 year career in industrial maintenance, manufacture, design. I have been watching the trend for A LONG TIME. It is inevitable and the more these employees clamor for more wages the harder industry will work to automate. McD's with their order kiosks is a fine example. Robotics is real and in wide use already in industry.

 

[Invisibleflash]

MSN

www.msn.com

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