Hacker News Reader

Comment by orochimaaru | Hacker News Reader

Unions won’t solve this for you. If a company just decides they have enough automation to reduce union workforce it can happen the next time contracts get negotiated.

Either way, there are layoff provisions with union agreements.

View on HN

Tell that to dock workers, who have successfully delayed the automation of ports to the extent we see them automated in e.g. the PRC [0].

Hell, they're even (successfully) pushing back against automated gates! [1]

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/dock-workers-strike-...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/03/nx-s1-5135597/striking-dockwo...

Isn't that just delaying the inevitable? Yangshan Deep-Water Port in Shanghai is one of the most automated ports. Considering there are more people in China than in the US, China still automated their port.

I'm not making a value judgment on the specific case of dock workers, I'm rather saying that unions can and do prevent automation. If Software Devs had unionized earlier, a lot of positions would probably still be around.

The dock owner may not have a lot of alternatives to negotiating with the union. If devs unionize, the work can move.

In Hollywood, union bargaining bought some time at least. Unions did mandate limits on the use of AI for a lot of the creation process.

AI is still used in Hollywood but nobody is proud of it. No movie director goes around quoting percentages of how many scenes were augmented by AI or how many lines in the script were written by ChatGPT.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com