Port workers and employers restart talks
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dockworkers are back to the negotiation table with employers, and automation is a big sticking point. Mechanizing port operations can make them more efficient, but the Longshoremen’s union is concerned that efficiency comes at the price of jobs. The deadline to avoid a possible strike is next week. Also in this episode: probing the mysteries of Spotify’s powerful algorithm, snowplowers take a hit from climate change, and the trade deficit isn’t as bad as it looks.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Been a while since we've had a supply chain story, huh? |
| 0:05.3 | We'll fix that today. |
| 0:07.2 | From American Public Media. |
| 0:09.7 | This is Marketplace. |
| 0:20.6 | In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizznell. |
| 0:22.8 | It is Tuesday today. |
| 0:24.1 | This one is the 7th of January. |
| 0:26.1 | It is always to have you along, everybody. |
| 0:28.4 | Hey, so you got everything you needed for the end of last year and over the holidays, right? |
| 0:32.6 | Gifts, new cars, perhaps, maybe new furniture for the house or the apartment, what have you. |
| 0:37.7 | Credit that to the very human, but also very corporate urge to procrastinate. |
| 0:43.4 | The International Longshoremen's Association and their employers, the U.S. Maritime Alliance, |
| 0:47.5 | you might remember this, representing ports and shipping companies, they reached a tentative deal back in October, |
| 0:52.3 | then included a 62% pay bump for East and Gulf Coast dock workers. |
| 0:57.1 | But they left until January the 15th, the most bitter part of the dispute. |
| 1:02.2 | Automation talks resumed today. Marketplace's Supreme Benishore brings us up to date. |
| 1:08.2 | Automation networks could be as basic as just using an online scheduling app to book trucks. |
| 1:13.2 | It could also be a robotic rail-mounted crane nine stories tall and 200 feet wide. |
| 1:19.1 | Container cranes that can essentially automatically unload chips or also cranes that can be used |
| 1:24.8 | to stack containers. Jason Miller is professor of supply chain |
| 1:28.6 | management at Michigan State University. The International Longshoremen's Association told Marketplace |
| 1:33.0 | it has no updates, but it's previously made clear it is concerned automation will take jobs. |
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