Unions are hoping a $30 million grant to electrify tractors at a port terminal in Long Beach, California, the latest push to become the world’s first zero-emissions facility, will serve as a bulwark against job losses in a time of energy transition and increasing automation.
Money from US President Joe Biden’s administration for Long Beach Container Terminal’s purchase of 60 electric yard tractors, which haul shipping containers from stacks to service trains, comes with strings attached: the new devices must be operated by people.
The drivers of these new tractors will work alongside more than 100 automated vehicles and 70 driverless container stacking cranes at America’s most automated port terminal, which aims to be zero emissions by 2030.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US transportation sector is the largest contributor to the country’s climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions. As seaports struggle to replace diesel equipment like tractors, trucks, and cranes with cleaner electric models, they’re also looking to new automation technologies to handle more cargo.
More automation means fewer jobs, union leaders say, and they have found an ally in the White House.
While the $30 million grant is only a fraction of the total cost of the terminal’s $2.5 billion modernization program, unions and their allies hope this and similar programs will show the value of prioritizing jobs when introducing greener ones Technologies by US employers will show.
While the unions representing US seaport workers declined to comment during labor negotiations in West Coast ports, the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Division, whose membership includes railroad and airline workers, made clear what the unions are focusing on place.
“We’ve been at the forefront of technological change affecting transportation work for 100 years,” said Department President Greg Regan. “In recent years we’ve seen a lot more of the realization that you have to think about the people aspects.”
Biden’s government, said to be the most pro-worker in recent years, is also pushing for union representation at the plants that will make batteries for electric vehicles. Unions fear the next US presidential election could bring a less likable leader to the White House, Regan said.
The money for the Long Beach terminal’s electric tractors comes from the $684 million 2022 port infrastructure development program, which funds projects like improving freight efficiency and reducing emissions. The catch is that these efforts must not include the installation of equipment or infrastructure that would result in a net job loss or deterioration in job quality.
RELY ON ELECTRICS, AUTOMATION
The potential to increase automation in the port sector is huge: according to a 2021 report by the International Transport Forum (ITF) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, only 4% of global container terminal capacity comes from partially automated facilities, according to an intergovernmental policy think tank.
The Long Beach terminal, built in 2019 by the Hong Kong-based owners of the wealth management unit of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd. was purchased relied on both electricity and automated equipment in its decade-long refurbishment, which saw two old terminals merged into one.
The new facility now processes three times more volume and has reduced emissions by 90%, CEO Anthony Otto told Reuters.
It ranked among Southern California’s port terminals by volume in 2022, and truck drivers spent less time picking up cargo or dropping empties — increasing efficiency and reducing diesel vehicle downtime, Otto said.
Otto referred to ongoing labor contract negotiations at the West Coast port and declined to say how many workers at the terminal site have lost their jobs. With the new technology, rod-sized sensors embedded in the sidewalk determine the movement of flat-top vehicles picking up containers from ships, and software controls cranes that stack containers.
Union members still secure containers on ships, operate the giant ship and railroad cranes, joystick containers onto the trailers of waiting articulated lorries, and haul containers to and from waiting trains.
The terminal’s commitment to the union was that “while there was some shedding of some typical offshore jobs, new jobs would also be created,” Otto said. The terminal’s payroll is now higher than it was before the refurbishment began about a decade ago, Otto added, without addressing whether that increase was due to additional jobs or inflation.
Data shows that electrification reduces emissions and automation reduces labor costs. But a 2021 report by the ITF, which bills itself as politically autonomous, and a 2018 study by consultancy McKinsey & Co found that automated ports are generally no more productive than their work-based counterparts. This is because fixed automated systems cannot expand and contract like human crews with load fluctuations, and automated operations may not increase performance enough to justify the higher equipment costs.
A report prepared by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents dockers on the west coast, found that the Long Beach terminal had 392 fewer jobs in 2020 and 2021 than it would have had without automation.
A competing report commissioned by the Pacific Maritime Association employers’ group found that from 2015, the final year before automated operations, through 2021, paid hours at the automated terminal in Long Beach and another in Los Angeles increased by 31, have increased by 5%. The authors, who said the gain was double that of non-automated terminals, declined to give figures just for Long Beach.
Jaime Hipsher, an ILWU tractor operator based in both the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, said in an interview last summer that she’s seen the employment impact of changes in energy use and increased automation.
Her father was an ILWU worker at a coal processing plant for the ports – a job that was eliminated.
“Often electrification is coupled with automation,” Hipsher said. “That’s not necessarily the way electrification has to go.”
Source: Reuters (reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, editing by Ben Klayman and Claudia Parsons)