Can you really stop change?

Yesterday I wrote a little bit about the longshoremen strike. I was focused on the Employer side of the house stating that as business leaders, we do need to ensure that our employees get to share in the fruits of their labor. Either via fair pay or company equity. Today, I want to talk about the other request the Longshoremen have and how it is untenable.

Beyond a 77% rise in pay over the next few years, the Longshoremen are asking for a guarantee that the company will not automate. I get the fear that generated this request. Automation generally means lost jobs and thus they feel like they are supporting their union members. But they are on the wrong side of history with that request.

It is simply an untenable ask of a business to not seek out productivity gains or innovation. Innovation will occur regardless of the request and it is more likely that the innovation by another company would cost the loss of more jobs than the automation would. Throughout history there has been a relentless march forward in productivity. Trying to stop it is wasted energy.

As an aside, there is some data on this. Ports on the west coast went through automation already. And while it cost about 5% of the jobs, the study also showed that paid hours for the remaining workers rose by 11.2%. Additionally, at the Port of Rotterdam, one of the most automated ports globally, research from Erasmus University concluded that mechanization did not lead to significant job losses.

The first push back on any innovation is always the same. It will cost jobs. The reality is that it often creates way more new opportunities than it destroys. I remember the nay sayers talking about the internet when it was first coming out. The first thing that they said is that it would destroy the economy and people's livelihood. In some ways, it did. There are some jobs that no longer exists because of the internet. But there are way more jobs available today that we did not even comprehend when we launched the internet.

There are a flurry of new software engineering roles, new marketing roles and we have entire market sectors built around things like technology hosting. Beyond that, we have individuals who are making money as individual content providers...something we could not have even really fathomed in early 2000.

One of the largest lessons in history is that prohibition, of any kind, never works. Standing in front of the freight train of progress does not stop the train, it only gets you run over.

In the case of the Longshoremen, I think that the push for a ban on automation is not going to bode well for them. It will likely prolong this conflict and likely do some damage to the U.S. economy in Q4, but I doubt that they will win that battle. And even if they get the concession from the ports, they will lose in the long run.

But...this post is not really about that strike. I am only using that as a storyline to demonstrate that change is something that is inevitable. You are better off adapting to it rather than trying to stop it. Lean in, not away from the change that you are seeing in the world.