Longshoremen are back to work after hammering out a tentative deal that includes a fat raise, but one key issue remains unresolved: automation.

Why it matters: This isn't just a port worker thing. Workers across industries fear advancements in AI are coming for their jobs.

Where it stands: Last week, the International Longshoremen's Association, the union for East and Gulf Coast dockworkers, ended their strike after hammering out a tentative agreement with their employers for a 61.5% raise over six years.

• The union is seeking more protections against automation. The current contract was extended through Jan. 15 to negotiate further.

The big picture: In industries without union protections, there's not much workers can do, beyond trying to be adaptable and learn new things, to protect their jobs from technological advancements.

• But where jobs are unionized, you're starting to see more pushback. The Hollywood actors' strike took longer to resolve than the writer's strike because performers pushed to be compensated for AI-generated likenesses of their images. And they won.
• AI provisions are a key sticking point for video game actors who went out on strike in July — and still aren't back at work.

Flashback: Unions have been contending with automation taking away jobs for decades, says William Brucher, a professor at Rutgers University's School of Management and Labor Relations.

• The longshoremen's union started negotiating on this issue in the 1960s. The advent of the shipping container meant there was less need for workers to manually pack goods onto ships.

Zoom out: The union knew then, as it surely does now, that it couldn't stop that from happening. But it could make sure the transition was less painful.

• They negotiated for higher pay, minimum pay guarantees, and something called a "container royalty," special payments made to the union to make up for the job losses.

Between the lines: The union also made sure that as the job of a dockworker changed, it was still a union job.

• That's an issue that striking autoworkers handled last year: Their tentative agreement included a provision that would ensure that workers who make electric vehicles see the same union protections as those making cars powered by combustion engines.

Reality check: Not all unions are bargaining this hard. The deal struck by UPS and its workers last year didn't "adequately address automation," Yossi Sheffi, the director of MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics, wrote in a column for Harvard Business Review last year.

• Other unions don't have the kind of leverage that the port workers do.

Citigroup is too big to manage — at least according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who wrote a pointed letter last week to Michael Hsu, the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank's primary regulator.

Why it matters: Per a speech Hsu gave last year, banks that are too big to manage should ultimately be broken up if they fail to successfully remediate their problems.

• Warren's letter makes the case that Citigroup falls into that camp.

Where it stands: Hsu found earlier this year that Citigroup had failed to comply with a 2020 consent order seeking "remediation of its unsafe or unsound practices."

• Citigroup has since then had "multiple and ongoing management failures," says Warren, including the way it accidentally paid off $900 million of Revlon debt and its inability to put together an adequate "living will" describing how it could be wound down without systemic implications.

Between the lines: Citigroup is already kindasorta trying to break itself up — it announced in January 2022 that it would sell off Banamex, the Mexican bank that has long been considered one of its crown jewels.

• So far, however, Banamex remains wholly owned by Citigroup; it should be operationally separated from the rest of Citi by year-end.
• An IPO is now slated for 2025, but the date remains uncertain, along with the degree to which the Mexican bank would still be controlled by Citi even after going public.

What's next: Realistically, nothing is going to happen on the regulatory front between now and January, says TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg.

• If the Democrats win the Senate in November, however, it is possible that Warren might be able to find common cause with populist Republicans like JD Vance and Josh Hawley in terms of pushing to break up the biggest banks in general — and Citigroup in particular.

The bottom line: Citigroup has been trading below book value — which is to say, at less than the accounting value of its assets — more or less continuously since the financial crisis of 2008.

• That's a sign the market agrees with Warren that the bank is too big to manage.

Silicon Valley is increasingly determining who gets elected and who doesn't.

Why it matters: While Big Tech companies learned the value of lobbying in the wake of the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 1990s, it's only much more recently that they've started trying to influence the outcome of elections.

Driving the news: The New Yorker's Charles Duhigg this week delivers a 9,000-word essay on exactly what has changed and how.

Follow the money: The crypto industry alone, says Duhigg, is "responsible for almost half of all corporate donations to PACs in the 2024 election cycle" — as Axios reported in August — and is seeking "to prove that its leaders are capable of political savagery in order to protect their interests."

• Fairshake, the biggest crypto PAC, has almost no interest in "explaining how crypto works, or anything like that," one former Coinbase employee told Duhigg. "It's about hitting politicians where they are most sensitive—reelection."
• Beyond crypto, companies such as Airbnb and OpenAI are finding that spending money on electoral politics can generate substantial returns.
• "Silicon Valley will continue to bully and woo politicians by deploying money—and its giant user base—as a lure and a weapon," writes Duhigg.

The big picture: The strength of unions or of political parties is that they can "organize and really turn out large numbers of voters," political consultant Chris Lehane, who now works for OpenAI, tells Duhigg.

• Internet platforms, however, tend to dwarf unions and political parties in size — and therefore in political power.

The bottom line: Silicon Valley — which once prided itself on its independence — now arguably boasts "the most powerful political operation in the nation."

• Or, as Duhigg puts it: "Tech has learned how to politick."