Great post Zvi. I’m shocked Wikipedia failed to create an article for The Foreign Dredge Act prior to your efforts. Two other American shipping issues worth examining are the relative lack of automation in American ports and their inability to operate 24⁄7. Both of these issues have been traced back to unions and sometimes used as anecdotes in the grander pro-market narrative that unions are bad and impede productivity. However, many Western European ports have had far greater success with port automation and 24⁄7 operations despite the strength of their unions. Clearly, something is different in America.
The American shipping industry is behind and dysfunctional. It’s rather disheartening to see how little has been fixed even after a historic general supply chain crisis.
It seems like unions in the US and unions in Europe operate differently when it comes to topics like this. From my German perspective, our unions care about workers being paid well, having secure jobs and good working conditions but they are not blocking using technology to automate processes.
Historically, I have also the sense that the connection between unions and the mafia existed in the US in a way that I have never heard of in Germany.
In progress studies it might be worth to study that difference in how unions work differently in the US and in Europe and maybe how US unions might be turned to be more like European unions that seem to be both better for workers and for the companies.
Historically, American unions have had an adversarial relationship with the owners, and the government has usually sided with the owners.
Some (ie Sarah Taber) have informed speculation that this is a consequence of the systems created for the American version of Slavery.
One specific note: in the ?70s?, the Union at General Motors asked for access to all the company Financials and a dedicated seat on the board of governers. Essentially, to be made partners in the company. GM’s owners refused and conceded additional wages and benefits instead.
I don’t know what the history in Europe is, but my understanding is that Union membership is a much higher % of workforce, and the government supports unions (because when 50% of your voters are in Union households, the political parties don’t put anti-unions planks in thier platforms)
I looked at the data about union membership and it’s surprising to me how much unionization rates differ within Europe. That likely also suggests that what I know about German unions generalizes less across Europe than I expected. If it’s true that government support for unions leads to unions taking less productivity reducing actions and more actions about providing benefits to workers that would be a huge gain.
There is a good chance that the existing study of unions is highly partisan and about whether union are inherently good or evil, so there might be a huge gain from research about how to get unions to work well. With the current push to unionize Amazon, having that go in a way that results in a good union that cares about employee welfare but that doesn’t want to inhibit Amazons productivity might be very valuable.
Great post Zvi. I’m shocked Wikipedia failed to create an article for The Foreign Dredge Act prior to your efforts. Two other American shipping issues worth examining are the relative lack of automation in American ports and their inability to operate 24⁄7. Both of these issues have been traced back to unions and sometimes used as anecdotes in the grander pro-market narrative that unions are bad and impede productivity. However, many Western European ports have had far greater success with port automation and 24⁄7 operations despite the strength of their unions. Clearly, something is different in America.
The American shipping industry is behind and dysfunctional. It’s rather disheartening to see how little has been fixed even after a historic general supply chain crisis.
It seems like unions in the US and unions in Europe operate differently when it comes to topics like this. From my German perspective, our unions care about workers being paid well, having secure jobs and good working conditions but they are not blocking using technology to automate processes.
Historically, I have also the sense that the connection between unions and the mafia existed in the US in a way that I have never heard of in Germany.
In progress studies it might be worth to study that difference in how unions work differently in the US and in Europe and maybe how US unions might be turned to be more like European unions that seem to be both better for workers and for the companies.
Historically, American unions have had an adversarial relationship with the owners, and the government has usually sided with the owners. Some (ie Sarah Taber) have informed speculation that this is a consequence of the systems created for the American version of Slavery. One specific note: in the ?70s?, the Union at General Motors asked for access to all the company Financials and a dedicated seat on the board of governers. Essentially, to be made partners in the company. GM’s owners refused and conceded additional wages and benefits instead.
I don’t know what the history in Europe is, but my understanding is that Union membership is a much higher % of workforce, and the government supports unions (because when 50% of your voters are in Union households, the political parties don’t put anti-unions planks in thier platforms)
I looked at the data about union membership and it’s surprising to me how much unionization rates differ within Europe. That likely also suggests that what I know about German unions generalizes less across Europe than I expected. If it’s true that government support for unions leads to unions taking less productivity reducing actions and more actions about providing benefits to workers that would be a huge gain.
There is a good chance that the existing study of unions is highly partisan and about whether union are inherently good or evil, so there might be a huge gain from research about how to get unions to work well. With the current push to unionize Amazon, having that go in a way that results in a good union that cares about employee welfare but that doesn’t want to inhibit Amazons productivity might be very valuable.