As LA ports automate, some workers are cheering on the robots

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Day after day, Walter Diaz, an immigrant truck driver from El Salvador, steers his 18-wheeler toward the giant ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Will it take him a half hour to pick up his cargo? Or will it be as long as seven hours? He never knows.

Diaz is paid by the load, so he applauds the arrival of more waterfront robots, which promise to speed turnaround times at a port complex that handles about a third of the nation's imported goods.

"I'm for automation," Diaz says. "One hundred percent. One hundred percent."

But what about the thousands of International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers who have mounted massive protests, saying the robots will replace human jobs? The ILWU members, who transfer cargo from ships to trucks and direct terminal traffic, "don't care about the drivers," said Diaz, 41, who has serviced the ports for two decades. "Never. We sit in line while they take two-hour breaks. With automation, we don't have that problem."

The arrival of robots at the nation's largest marine terminal, a 484-acre facility run by Danish conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk, is exposing