Dock workers are striking for better pay and an end to automation

Longshoremen strike at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts. These are the workers who unload and load cargo, and they are demanding better pay and limits on the use of automation.

At the Port of Baltimore – one of the largest car ports in the country – about a hundred striking longshoremen marched on Tuesday. Trucks and car transporters honked happily in front of them.

One of the striking longshoremen is 68-year-old Glenn Young, who has worked at the port for more than four decades.

Part of Young's job is to help secure containers on cargo ships, and he worries about the impact increasing automation might have on his younger colleagues.

“I mean, it's all over the world, you know, it comes at some point, but you don't just let it go,” Young said. “You work it in.”

The group representing its employers, the United States Maritime Alliance, said in a statement that it did its part to prevent a longshore workers strike. And that their “current offer of a nearly 50% wage increase exceeds all other recent union agreements.”

The last time there was a coast-wide longshoremen's strike in this part of the country was in 1977.