The arrival of robots at the nation’s largest marine terminal is exposing a stark economic divide between two sets of Southern California workers: highly-paid unionized dockworkers, and largely immigrant truckers. margotroosevelt reports:
at the Port of Los Angeles — have largely automated over the last five years. Both now have the shortest cargo turn times at the ports, less than half those of Maersk’s APM.
Automation, he said, will make his terminal “more competitive. If you don’t remain cost competitive, you lose business.” Tensions between truckers and dockworkers are “cultural,” LaBar added. “Most people in the ILWU are from families that have been in the union for generations. They wear a certain sense of pride, whereas the trucking community is made up of a lot of immigrants and English is their second language. They get treated really unfairly.”
In the past, truckers picked up full containers, dropping off empty ones at the same terminal. Today, they race around the ports delivering an empty container to one terminal and fetching new cargo at a different terminal with operators often issuing confusing signals over where containers are located.
“You would think drivers would be empathetic toward the ILWU, but they’re not,” said William Flores, driver relations manager for Pacifica Trucks, a Long Beach company. “It’s adversarial. That’s the sad reality. Everyone is concerned about their own profitability.” As for dockworkers’ fear of robots, “I feel sorry for them,” he said. “But honestly, they’ve been lazy. If it’s hot, they get more lazy. If it’s cold, they’re lazy. They’re paid by the hour, so they don’t care if they move a container in one hour or two hours.”
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