We have been told there are 10,000 longshoremen at 29 ports. The concern seems to be doing away with marking containers with chalk and using bar codes instead. There is a long-term concern that dock unloading may become automated as it is in other countries. This would eliminate the need for longshoremen.

Our national economy has been impacted by the action of the longshoremen and the owners. My company employs 5500 people and we produce cars and trucks for Toyota and General Motors. Toyota runs the plant. Toyota has never had a layoff. This is unusual in the auto industry. We had to stop production last week when we ran out of motors and transmissions that come from Japan. Also we cannot ship our new Voltz model to Japan. We are the first American company to be successful in selling a car to the Japanese market. We build quality and are recognized for our efforts.

When 160,000 programming jobs were lost last year in Silicon Valley there were no complaints. There were many jokes and many people were hurt. Who cared? Programmers are geeks.

Why should I worry about a longshoreman? Get rid of manual labor and automate. This will save everyone money and there will be no labor problem. Many types of work become redundant and disappear.

The last longshoreman labor problem occurred in 1971-72. It was about “Containerized Cargo”. The San Francisco Longshoremen would not allow containerized cargo to enter the port. The strike lasted for about 134 days. In the end San Francisco lost and Oakland won. Oakland embraced containerized cargo and that is now the main port for cargo.

By the way, longshoremen were famous for how they handled cargo before there was containerized cargo. Several of my friends owned restaurants in San Francisco. When they ordered wine from Europe they would order 12 bottles with the expectation of getting 6. Traditionally, when a cargo ship stopped in New Orleans, two bottles of wine would be removed, in Los Angeles another two and two more at San Francisco. Thus you would get the six bottles you needed. The longshoremen saw this as a “freebie”. It was normal and went on for decades. Since 1972 when you order 12 bottles of wine from Europe you get 12.

The poor longshoremen. No more “freebies” and they have a starting salary of only $80,000. Perhaps they should join the ranks of unemployed developers. I think longshoremen should take up another profession. .NET programming perhaps?


Tom