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By Lisa Baertlein and Eric Beech
LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appeared to back an anti-automation stance on Thursday for some 45,000 unionized longshoremen in the eastern U.S. and on the Gulf Coast, whose labor negotiations have been deadlocked over the polarizing issue.
The ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMCS) employers’ group face a deadline of January 15 to complete talks, which have been stalled by automation. That interruption comes just five days before Trump’s inauguration.
The ILA says automation is killing jobs, while employers say it’s necessary to keep U.S. ports competitive in a rapidly changing global economy.
“The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, injury and damage it causes to American workers, in this case our Longshoremen,” Trump said of the automation projects in a post on Truth Social. The message came after a meeting with Harold Daggett, who heads the International Porters Association union that represents port workers, Trump said.
The union and employers agreed to end a three-day strike Oct. 3 after the union won a 62 percent wage increase over six years with significant buy-in from the White House and other officials from President Joe Biden’s administration.
The employers, which include the U.S. operations of Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping, Denmark’s Maersk and China’s COSCO Shipping, are posting record profits in part because of access to U.S. markets, Trump said Thursday.
“I would rather these foreign companies spend it on the great men and women on our docks than on machinery that is expensive and will have to be replaced all the time,” Trump said.
ILA President Daggett thanked Trump for his support in a separate message in which union Vice President Dennis Daggett also said he hoped Trump’s message would encourage the USMCS to remove any language on automated or semi-automated equipment in its proposals moving forward.
“It is clear that President-elect Trump, the USMCS and the ILA share the goal of protecting and adding good-paying American jobs to our ports,” the USMCS said in a statement.
“We need modern technology proven to improve worker safety, increase port efficiency, increase port capacity and strengthen our supply chains,” the employers said, adding that dock workers earn more money when seaports handle more goods.
