The three-day dockworker strike that crippled East and Gulf Coast ports put a spotlight on one of America’s most important jobs: loading and unloading the billions of products — from food to cars — that keep the U.S. economy humming.
Although the work stoppage has ended for now, the labor dispute reflects how robots, artificial intelligence and other potent technologies are changing the nature of operations in the nation’s supply chains and in other industries.
“We’re really at a moment here where we’re taking about the future of work and what that looks like in America and around the world,” John Samuel, managing director with consulting firm AlixPartners, told CBS News. “And so, how do we combine the natural evolutions of technology with the right to human decency and human work?”
The tentative agreement announced on Friday between the International Longshoremen’s Association — which led last week’s strike — and the United States Maritime …