“Automation is good, so long as you know exactly where to put the machine.”
Eliyahu Goldratt
In October 2024, tens of thousands of dockworkers along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts walked off the job, halting trade worth billions. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) demanded higher wages and, crucially, a ban on automation technologies like driverless trucks and robotic cranes.1
Workers protested with signs reading “robots don’t pay taxes” and “automation hurts families,” which are legitimate fears of widespread job displacement under the current monetary system.2
The strike ended after six days with a tentative deal that included wage increases but left automation restrictions vague, meaning future battles are inevitable, since the underlying paradox of monetary and/or labour based systems isn’t solved.3
Fast-forward to October 2025, and that is precisely what happened.
Amazon announced cuts of up to 30,000 corporate jobs, explicitly linked to efficiency gains from artificial intelligence software.4
Reactions also came from our wholly inadequate political system, with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders seizing the moment to challenge Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, releasing a report warning that AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million jobs over the next decade, including 89% of fast-food positions.5
While no full-scale strike has erupted at Amazon yet(and with fully automated warehouses increasingly close), union organizers and workers are mobilizing, repeating the port workers’ playbook: resist tech changes to protect employment.6
These aren’t statistical blips, but an increasingly united wave of labor actions where automation is the unspoken villain. In 2024 alone, 271,500 workers participated in major strikes, many tied to tech-driven job threats.7
And they have good reason to do so, since by mid-2025, over 20,000 jobs had already been cut due to AI implementations.8
This pattern of resistance, of fighting to retain jobs simply for the sake of having them, while understandable, even semi-obligatory under our monetary system, is profoundly backwards.
It treats employment as an end in itself, ignoring the bigger picture: that we are reaching a profoundly different stage of economic development, where abundance can be created without the need for mass human labor.
Clinging to outdated roles doesn’t safeguard dignity; it locks societies into inefficiency, delaying the shift to a world where basic needs are met through smart systems, freeing people to do whatever they want, and truly find their meaning.
The shortsightedness here is clear: every day spent blocking robotic loaders or AI diagnostics means higher costs, slower innovation, and a widening gap between what technology can deliver and what rigid labor protections allow.
Let us analyze the port strike, for example.
Dockworkers’ push against automation preserved some jobs in the short term, but at what cost?
Ports in countries like the Netherlands and Singapore have embraced automated terminals, boosting throughput by 30-50% while creating new roles in maintenance, programming, and oversight, jobs that pay more and demand skills workers could be trained for as a stopgap measure, until the realisation of the Convergence Point.9
In the U.S., the delay has kept operations manual and error-prone, contributing to supply chain bottlenecks that raise prices for everyone.
Similarly, Amazon’s AI-driven cuts aren’t just about slashing headcount; they’re reallocating resources to scale services faster, potentially lowering consumer costs and expanding access to goods.
Opposing this wholesale risks not only job losses but also stagnation, why fight for the right to load boxes by hand when algorithms can do it flawlessly, allowing humans to truly enjoy life and civilisation?
This mindset also reveals the limits of traditional socialism in an automated era.
Socialism, at its core, emerged to redistribute the fruits of labor in a world defined by scarcity and exploitation.
It championed full employment as the path to equity, with unions bargaining for job security alongside wages.
But in 2025, with AI projected to expose 300 million full-time jobs globally to automation, that framework is broken and counter-intuitive.
Insisting on job preservation for its own sake perpetuates a zero-sum game: workers versus machines, rather than people using machines to finally solve hunger, poverty, war, and systemic human suffering.
Instead, strikes become rear-guard actions, defending the status quo against progress.
As one labor analyst noted, for every thousand robots introduced, about 5.6 jobs disappear, but the economy grows overall if we adapt.10
Socialism’s blind spot?
It hasn’t fully reckoned with abundance, where work isn’t the measure of worth.
The solution isn’t to abandon social concerns but to realign them. Technology must be directed toward collective good under the scientific method, not just corporate efficiency.
This is the essence of Accessism: a framework for an open-source, participatory economy where automation serves society first. Imagine decentralized AI networks, governed by community input, that prioritize human wellbeing, instead of jobs or money.
Ports could automate safely under transparent oversight, their cargo distributed efficiently and safely to the people, with credit or differentiation.11
Amazon workers, facing 2025’s layoffs, deserve more than pleas to slow AI; they need mandates for its ethical deployment.12
If resistance is preservation rather than redirection, labor movements will inevitably become irrelevant.
It’s time to pivot: let automation take the drudgery, but demand it builds prosperity for the common man. In the end, holding onto jobs out of fear isn’t protection, it’s a barrier to our collective flourishing.
The strikes of 2024 and 2025 are wake-up calls to the gaping chasm that is being created, not victories for the working class.
Accessist International instead demands a reset: program technology for people, not against them.
The automated future isn’t a threat; it’s a tool, if we wield it right.
- U.S. dockworkers strike over wages and automation in fight that could lead to shortages • Louisiana Illuminator ↩︎
- Dockworkers are waging a battle against automation. The rest of us may want to take notes | CNN Business ↩︎
- US port strike throws spotlight on big union foe: automation | Reuters ↩︎
- US Senator Sanders challenges Bezos, Amazon on automation’s job impacts | Reuters ↩︎
- 10.6.2025-The-Big-Tech-Oligarchs-War-Against-Workers.pdf ↩︎
- 500,000 Amazon jobs on chopping block due to automation in next few years – World Socialist Web Site ↩︎
- 271,500 workers went on strike in 2024: Current labor law doesn’t adequately protect workers’ fundamental right to strike | Economic Policy Institute ↩︎
- AI is already replacing thousands of jobs per month, report finds | The Independent ↩︎
- Strike at U.S. Ports Brings Debate Over Automation Front and Center | SupplyChainBrain ↩︎
- How should labor movement handle the challenges of AI, automation at work? – News Bureau ↩︎
- Does the ILA have a point in objecting to automation? – FreightWaves ↩︎
- Navigating Labor’s Response to AI | Insight | Baker McKenzie ↩︎