Unions Form Global Alliance to Oppose Port Automation
Unions continue their resistance against efforts by ports and terminal logistics operators across the globe to automate processes in order to enhance efficiency. A group of unions announced that they formed an alliance aimed at fighting automation on the basis that it is killing dock workers’ jobs.
Following a two-day summit in Lisbon, Portugal, that brought together hundreds of trade union representatives from more than 60 countries alongside leaders, academics, and experts from the maritime and port sectors, the unions report that a framework has been adopted to fight any efforts by ports to invest in automating operations. The framework was developed based on the unions’ assertion that automation does not modernize ports but is done to eliminate workers and maximize profits.
The summit, held under the banner of “People Over Profits: Anti-Automation” and jointly organized by the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) and the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), resolved to establish what is being termed a new Global Maritime Alliance. They report it will be committed to halting the expansion of automation in ports worldwide. The goal is to rally port workers across the globe to engage in coordinated strike actions.
In the resolution, the unions were categorical that they will fight any automation process that involves job losses or violations of rights. They went ahead to reaffirm collective bargaining as an essential tool to regulate technological changes in ports. In case ports decide to impose terminal automations without consultations and consent from unions, the union leaders report that dockworkers will act in a united and coordinated structure to paralyze operations.
Though the IDC and the ILA contend that the ports of the future must be modern, green, and efficient, they said it cannot happen at the expense of jobs. The unions are calling for port authorities across the globe to “craft a formula of integrating dock workers in their technological investments.”
Across the globe, unions have been staging disruptive job actions against automation. In 2024, the ILA paralyzed operations across 36 ports primarily along the East Coast and the Gulf Coast when over 47,000 workers staged industrial action in protests over compensation and the use of automation. Similar actions have occurred against automation by ports in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, among others.
“If any company decides to implement job-destroying automation in any port whose workers are part of this new alliance, we will confront it with a global strike of three to four weeks,” said Harold J. Daggett, ILA President.
The alliance hopes that going forward, opposition to port automations will not be a fragmented local resistance but a global strategy.
“If their strategy is global, ours must be too. Wherever there is a port, there will be an organized union, and wherever a worker is threatened, there will be international solidarity,” noted Jordi Aragunde, IDC International Labour Coordinator.