Will Automation Replace Jobs? Port Workers May Strike Over It.

Longshoremen have grim memories of how past innovation reduced employment at the docks. Shipping containers, introduced in the 1960s, allowed ports to move goods with fewer workers. "You don't have to pay pensions to robots," said Brian Jones, 73, a foreman at the Port of Philadelphia. He began working there in 1974, when bananas from Costa Rica were unloaded box by box. Workers throughout the economy are worried that technology will eliminate their jobs, but at the ports it threatens one of the few blue-collar jobs that can pay more than 100,000.