At midnight on Monday this week, 45,000 dock workers operating 36 ports across America walked off the job as part of their union's first strike since 1977. These ports handle trillions of dollars' worth of trade every year and are an essential bottleneck in global supply chains. This will affect everything from the fight with inflation to manufacturing jobs to just your ability to buy some junk off Teemo. Oh, and I don't know if you have noticed, but this is also happening right before an election. The accusation has been made that this is just an opportunistic money grab directed at the most vulnerable part of the economy, made by workers who are already earning much more than the national average. So why are these workers striking, and what the happens now that they are workers from the port of New Orleans say they were on the picket line at 1201. Union reps say they're demanding fair wages and an end to the use of robots.

tonight, crucial ports that fuel the American economy from New England to the Gulf Coast are at a standstill after tens of thousands of Union Dock Workers walked off the job. If it's a fight they want, the current standoff is between the International Longshoremen's Association, which is a union representing dock workers, and the US Maritime Alliance, which is negotiating on behalf of the ports. The union is asking for the standard renegotiation of pay and conditions, but the Maritime Alliance is arguing that their demands have gone too far. And I can't believe I'm going to say this, but they might have a point. According to the Associated Press, the union's demands are a 77% increase in pay across all workers to be implemented over the next 6 years, and a complete ban on automation, which could replace workers' jobs. The pay demands are high, especially considering that longshoremen earn well above the national average to begin with. According to the current agreement, the most experienced dock workers make $39 an hour, which

is a base annual salary of just over $81,000 a year. That's before overtime, though, which at these ports can be plentiful, with the 2020 report by the Waterfront Commission suggesting that about a third of all these workers are making about $200,000 per year. The union is arguing that despite these earnings, the pay increase is not unreasonable, considering this is just an opening offer, which is already being negotiated, and it's meant to be an incremental increase across six years, which means their pay will only increase by around 9% year to year. That's probably a lot more than you are getting as a regular pay increase for your own job, but the union president, Harold Daget, said in a statement that this is only to make up for the inflation spike in the last few years. If you still think that's a pretty sizable pay bump, it's probably a good sign that you should look into a union. If workers' wages had kept up with productivity, $200,000 wouldn't be a crazy income.

for someone putting up with overtime at a tough job anyway. According to reports by ABS and the Associated Press, the Union has already rejected a compromise offer from the shipping Alliance of a 50% pay increase over the same time period. So, as heated negotiations continue, their pay raise will be somewhere between these two numbers. Either way, it will be a big win for the workers. But surprisingly, pay is not the biggest thing that the maritime Alliance and the long shans Association is butting heads over. The central focus of the Union's demands is on blocking automation Technologies. American ports already Trail their Asian and European counterparts in terms of Technologies to increase efficiency by automating tasks that otherwise need to be done manually by doc workers. Analysts have noted that most US ports take longer to unload ships than these Asian and European ports. This represents a major additional cost to shipping companies who not only have to pay higher fees to Ports that are paying 20 men to do what could have been

the work of one man with the modern automated machinery. They are also stuck in Port longer instead of making more Crossings in a given Year. American workers on average are also paid better than their peers working the docks in Europe and especially Asia because of the generally High incomes in America and because of the strong negotiating power of this Union. This means that American Dock Workers are more expensive and less efficient because of their historic resistance to automation. The associate director of supply chain resilience at Texas A&M University said in a report published by PBS that if shipping ports get much worse, shippers might send more cargo to Mexican or Canadian ports and then on to the US by rail or truck, circumventing the union altogether. The ports have also offered the union a continuation of the language around automation, which is present in their current contract, but the union is pushing back on this since technology has changed so much since the last contract was signed. That has become difficult to predict how workers

jobs could be undermined with this new wave of AI and advanced robotics. Union workers believe that they are in a fight for the future of their jobs, and the ports are desperately trying to catch up with other global rivals. It's unclear how either of them are going to back down from their non-negotiable positions, so it's time to learn how many works to find out what shutting down a crucial supply chain means for everybody else in the world. This week's video is sponsored by Brilliant. Brilliant is an interactive learning platform that helps you master complex subjects through hands-on problem solving. With thousands of lessons across math, data analysis, programming, and AI, Brilliant's unique approach makes learning not only more engaging but also six times more effective than traditional video lectures. I've been diving into their creative coding course, and it's incredible how quickly I've been able to build my problem-solving skills by writing real programs. The interactive lessons are fun and super effective, and the best part, you can learn anytime.

anywhere, whether you're on a computer, phone, or tablet, brilliant fits right into your schedule, making it easy to build a daily learning habit. To try everything brilliant has to offer for free for 30 days, head over to brilliant.org/howmoneyworks. Plus, you'll get 20% off an annual premium subscription if you decide to continue. The ports affected by the strike handle roughly $5 billion a day in cargo volume and are responsible for almost all cargo entering America by ship, which is the cheapest form of international freight. The only other major channels to get goods in and out of the country are through our land ports with Canada and Mexico, as well as air freight, which is considerably more expensive and only suitable for small, light, and expensive products that aren't as sensitive to the increased shipping costs. Consumer goods are the immediate concern, as price rises have only just now come under control, and any supply disruptions will surely reverse a lot of

that progress, especially since this is happening in the lead-up to the busiest retail months of the year. Companies have not been completely blindsided by this, and reports are indicating that they've been preparing for this eventuality for some months now by diverting shipment supports that are not on strike, as well as just bringing orders forward and warehousing additional stock. Most staple foods outside of imported specialties are also produced inside of America, so economists are confident that food prices shouldn't be impacted as heavily as other goods, with a few exceptions. According to the American Farm Bureau, 76% of the nation's supply of bananas comes through these ports, so prices for these and other imported perishables are likely to be the first major casualty if these strikes last for more than a few days. Components to supply domestic manufacturing might be the biggest problem because American factories rely on a vast international supply network that largely uses shipping containers to control costs. America produces more than 10 million cars a year, mostly

for the domestic market, but thousands of smaller components are shipped in from cheaper global suppliers before they are assembled onshore. These supply chain disruptions could compound on top of other disruptions in the Middle East and the damages caused by Hurricane Helen. Even if these strikes have no actual impact on shipping, a big public supply chain issue like these port shutdowns is a great excuse for companies to justify price increases on consumer goods before the Christmas shopping season. Any pain felt by the American consumer will inevitably influence election decisions, which is why the White House has reportedly been working around the clock to mediate a settlement between the two parties before its impacts start to be felt. Under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the president has the authority to order dock workers to return to work because shipping ports are a strategically important asset. The current White House administration, which is indirectly part of the campaign for Kamala Harris, runs on a more pro-worker platform.

than their opposition, so they are stuck between a difficult decision. They could end the strike and make sure price increases or supply shortages don't affect consumers before the election, but that would undermine a lot of what they are campaigning on. The Longshoremen's Association certainly knew that this would be a pivotal factor in their decision to strike, which is added to the criticism that this is just an opportunistic way to hold the economy hostage to secure big pay increases for people already doing much better than the average worker. I know that covering both sides of this argument is just a surefire way to make everybody angry, but even my own community poll has shown that people are generally a lot less sympathetic to these workers' demands than they were to other strikes like the Auto Workers Union. Then there are the long-term impacts of refusing to adopt some level of automation. If you were a longshoreman, it would make sense

why you would be arguing against systems that have already proven to increase efficiencies in other global ports, even if doing things by hand or with basic machinery is slower and more expensive. It's more jobs and less of a chance that you'll be replaced with an automated loader, even if it does just work out to be a negotiating tactic to use as a bargaining chip to secure their whole pay increase. It's going to be something that is a point of contention with more union strikes in the future. AI content creation was the central focus of the Hollywood rider strike, and on the flip side, you know that if companies could replace all of their workers with automated machinery, they would. We would probably just call it good business, so it only makes sense that unions representing the workers would take exactly the opposite stance, to be directly opposed to systems that are almost always anti-worker. So yes, they are probably a bit greedy, but maybe that's just what workers need to

be for a change. This story is changing so fast that there's a good chance that the situation will be totally different by the time you are watching this video. I'm going to be posting small updates in addition to the regular articles published on my totally free email newsletter. So, if you want to stay up to date, please consider signing up to that in the link in the description. If automation is allowed to completely replace all jobs, then the next problem for companies is going to be who to sell their products to. Unfortunately, they already have a solution, and you are probably not going to like it. So, go and watch my video on that to keep on learning how money works.

Strikes Just Shut Down America's Most Important Ports... WTF Happens Now?

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