There’s much to

There’s much to do and little time to do it.

Longshoremen’s big concerns

The port workers’ strike that shut down our Eastern seaboard and Gulf coast ports has been temporarily suspended. The new do-or-die date is January 15, a fleetingly short 101 days away.

“Don’t let robots take my job.”

Aside from demands for a 62% pay raise over six years, of primary concern to the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents the approximately 45,000 dock workers, is the looming concern that automation will eliminate their jobs. What that will look like, they say, is automation of gates, cranes, and container-moving trucks – pretty much anything that moves. The longshoremen want this banned.

In the absolute, this becomes a zero-sum game: automate one job, put one worker out of work, maybe more. Whatever the ratio, there’s a winner and a loser.

But it doesn’t have to be. This can be a win-win.

Where does the fear of automation come from?

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution – late 18^th century – the Luddites in England, predominantly in the textile trade, feared loss of jobs to automation and revolted against it. One industry after another through the years – metal working, agriculture, energy (oil, electricity), automobiles, personal computers – the fears grew, but in one after another, history shows, far more jobs were created than were eliminated. They just weren’t in the same places and they needed new skills. So, the unavoidable nature of this progress demands (a) acceptance, (b) compliance, and (c) partnership.

Twelve years ago, I wrote a six-part Commentary touting major workplace trends, one of which – “The Four Partners” – pointed to the early-stage fear we are discussing now. It has only intensified since. I also suggested a solution that also has intensified. Problem is, while we’ve watched the AI phenomenon become more real, more well-defined, and exponentially bigger, we’ve still not moved fast or far enough toward the solution.

Make automation and humans allies, not antagonists.

The force to fear is not AI; it’s the person who uses it better than you do. Workers who can use AI in an integrative way enhance both the output of the automation and their own. They also tend to enjoy higher wages, more favorable jobs, and more leisure time. On the other hand, workers for whom the machines can substitute don’t fare well.

Enter The Four Partners

No one can do this alone. But with a national commitment to making it work, it’s a certainty. Here are the players:

• Employers should recognize the out-of-date skill sets in our workplace and accept that a whole flock of perfectly skilled workers is not liable to show up out of the blue anytime soon. Yet are employers committed to long-term training programs? Those who say it’s the private sector that creates jobs, then, are overlooking the private sector’s new responsibility: to help build an up-to-date workforce. Employers must invest more in long-term, high-level training.
• Education, both secondary and higher, must realize that it has not adequately prepared a nation of students for the competitive global markets of the present, let alone the future. Community colleges have made strides and some four-year colleges are doing so, but so much more has to be done. The tricky balancing act, though, is to rearrange curricular standards to make two accommodations at the same time: increase specific technical skills – STEM: science, technology, engineering, math – while developing a broader approach to the liberal arts. Among the most oft-cited skills deficits are communication (notably, writing), critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving.
• Government must intercede. This is a national issue, (even a national security issue, if you think about it), and if the private sector is stubbornly refusing to do what this nation critically needs – train its workforce – then who will? Someone has to promote the common good – and the government, which in the last four years has stepped up – is the one to do it. High on the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness chart are countries where the government plays an active role (not big, not small, but active).
• The individual must be willing. Once we’re done laying blame on the other three players, it’s time for each individual to take charge, make plans, and then execute. Given the current state of affairs, the only one who can take the first step and do something about this right now is the one to whom this means the most: the job seeker.
• With the current focus on the Longshoremen, the dockworker who realizes that someone’s got to make, design, customize, install, run, maintain, and upgrade all those automated behemoths – and that someone will be sitting in sophisticated tech centers, not on the docks, in better jobs with higher pay. Now, all we need is companies willing to transform, an education system that can handle the workplace readiness aspect (we’re close), and government commitment (Joe Biden’s early-stage legislative successes fit the bill) – and we will have a four-way partnership model to make out economy ready before a strike happens, ready for that fourth partner – the individual – when needed.

History is the story of decisions. There is in front of us the need to make one of the most profound decisions in our history.