On Oct. 1, longshoremen went on strike for the first time in nearly 50 years. The main sticking point was, of course, money. Also high on the list of issues is the use of automation in the ports and its impact on jobs.
COVID-19 has accelerated deglobalization in manufacturing, but that shift was already underway before the pandemic. Between 1990 and 2016, global trade had been growing at average annual rate of 4.9 percent, according to the World Trade Organization.
TOLEDO, OH—Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, has introduced legislation to provide critical resources to workers when companies decide to adopt new technology that will affect their jobs.
Numerous pundits have forecast that U.S. manufacturing will follow the path of agriculture: Automation will replace human workers and steal all of our jobs. It will be an automation doomsday. Clearly, returning jobs will be, on average, higher skilled and fewer in number than when the work was lost offshore years ago. However, in reality, automation is key to reshoring and thus to U.S. job growth.
WASHINGTON—Trade pressure and faltering U.S. competitiveness, not automation, were the main reasons the U.S. lost 5.7 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010, according to a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
