ILA Leaders Declare War On Employers In Video From Global Maritime Conference in Portugal
Nov 25, 2025
The two top leaders of the International Longshoremen's Association charged up the more than one thousand Global dockers and maritime unions at the November 2025 Anti-Automation Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, announcing a global war on shipping companies that continue to push automation at ports to eliminate dockworkers and destroy their unions.. Harold J. Daggett, ILA President, and Dennis A. Daggett, ILA Executive Vice President declared in their remarks: "That's why we are here in Lisbon to draw the line together to say that dockworkers from every nation, every coast, every terminal will not be replaced by machines. This fight is not just about preserving jobs, it's about preserving identity, community and human dignity, The unions that sign on to this Lisbon Summit Document now make up the MOST POWERFUL LABOR ALLIANCE THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN."
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EDIT: Kinda a repeat of what I posted some time ago...my mistake...but still, IMHO, valid reading...)
Who's their Head of Strategy? Ned Ludd?
(Look him up, but not on Wikipoliticia. They claim he's fictional. He was not...)
There are two problems with this. First is, you can't stop progress. Now, AI-ing everything is not progress, it's Technocracy; but simple jobs that can be done with better organization, most-assuredly IS progress. Containerized shipments, for example. How much different than loading six pallets on a bigger skid and craning that off on the dock, to again be handled by pallet into a truck, dockside. Containers come off, are quickly dropped on dollies (highway fifth-wheel undercarriages) and moved by a yard tractor to an area where truckers can tie on, like any trailer.
Now they think they can stop further streamlining. As a railroader, I know better...what happens is, the union looks more ridiculous by the year; loses credibility; eventually DRASTIC changes are FORCED onto them, and the union has lost bargaining power. It becomes just an extortion network, taking working-men's dues and offering little.
On the railroad, there were - from the beginnings - five men to each train. One to drive it; one to stoke coal; a head-end brakeman, to wind down brakes to stop the thing; and a rear brakeman to do the same, rear to front. That's how trains were stopped until about 1900.
The Westinghouse air brake eliminated the need for two brakemen, but the union was strong, and they stayed on trains. Meantime, GM perfected diesel-electric drive systems (
direct-drive diesel or gas engines was tried and obviously, failed, for obvious reasons; steam stayed around so long because a steam engine delivered full horsepower from its slowest movement) and now, nobody needed to shovel coal. At first the "fireman" would be used to control radiator fans (manual on/off controls) and work a second locomotive behind; but automatic controls quickly did away with that need.
So. One man to drive the thing, another man to manage paperwork. The brakemen were used as signalers - relaying hand signals to the head end of longer trains. Radios, in the 1950s, did away with that.
Then, radio telemetry devices eliminated the need for cabooses. Which cost money, and caused injuries with slack-action.
STILL there were five men on trains! Until 1982.
When it happened, the cuts were deep in the roster...men with 25 years' work, gone. They weren't gonna Learn-To-Code. They were (expletive)ed. By then the three major rail unions looked buffoonish to the public - with the Penn Central, Erie-Lackawanna, Illinois Central, Milwaukee Road, all bankrupt, and the union "protecting" "jobs." Nobody had patience for that. Probably that's part of why Reagan's PATCO firings were so supported by the public.
Now, here. People may, right now, be sympathetic to the dockworkers' plight; but just as Ned Ludd tried to protect the jobs of hand-weavers...progress, improvements, do not go away with militant union leaders' orders. That just creates more stress and divisiveness.
AND. This shipment of everything from Trashkanistan or wherever, is also not gonna last. Free passage on the open seas, is a hallmark of the American Epoch; and THAT, people, is just about to end. We are gonna relearn hard truths about piracy and the nasty kinds of people who live in the Turd World, and what they're capable of.
A union that truly represented its people, now, would maybe be steering its displaced members into retraining tracks. Learn to wire (electricians) or to unplug toilets (plumbers). Or to hang sheetrock. Or fix cars...right now, that craft sucks; but in ten years, when Ford and GM are both bankrupt and their very-expensive SUVs of this era are all falling dead...we'll NEED Smokey-Stover fixes to have any kinds of personal transport.
• Dave Adam, Chairman and CEO, United S... 
