When unions hurt their members

Good idea

I believe they were offered the wage increase but refused the contract because the "company" would not agree to their wanting to limit the use of automation.

Is the "company" being disingenuous?

I agree to pay increase while they build the automation infrastructure ending the need for the vast majority of human workers?

Maybe... probably?

The higher their wages, the more economical automation becomes. Best to switch to a career building and maintaining automated dock machinery.

In the near future, many labor jobs will be performed by automated systems and many office jobs by AI systems.

Trained primates can feed paper into a scanner.

Your cell phone can easily replace a human executive assistant.

Yes. Best to get into engineering or mechanical maintenance.

And got Trump elected too

Until they figure out how to off-shore jobs to cheap labor.

China uses automated cranes and transport vehicles in it's ports loading and unloading 24/7/365 (366 in leap years).

Why would they do that when they have hordes of human assets they can force to work the docks as slaves?

Because it it much more efficient and less of a pain in the a$$ than people.

Amazon went the opposite route. It uses humans as robots