Not a single longshoreman was hired at ports on the East Coast from 1964 to 1977. A technological revolution was underway, replacing workers who manually hauled goods from ships’ bellies with cranes that could move enormous containers full of cargo from the deck of a ship in a matter of minutes.

“How to preserve jobs in the teeth of the container revolution is the question that haunts the waterfronts,” Anthony Scotto, vice president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, said at the time. Unable to stop it, the union focused on protecting its members’ jobs. It negotiated a “guaranteed annual income” and other protections for dockworkers. But hiring largely stopped.

The ILA is again at war with automation. The brief strike of the East Coast dockworkers this month was suspended after workers were offered a 62 percent wage hike. But the core conflict — over deploying technology on the docks — remains unresolved.

And the union is breathing fire. Harold Daggett, the ILA leader, has demanded “absolute airtight language that there will be no automation or semiautomation” over the next six years. “I’ve been fighting automation for years,” he noted in a recent video. He threatened that he is ready to take the fight across the globe. “We are all together in solidarity around the world. We will fight against automation of the maritime industry,” Daggett said.

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The dockworkers’ battle against automation fits the politics of the moment. Researchers have found that the burst of populism in American........

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