I grew up in the 1980s in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, where Irish-American families long scorned by elites finally reached the middle class, thanks to the Transport Workers Union and other unions that fought for good wages, health benefits, and pensions.

I’m not speaking figuratively. The history of the labor movement includes pitched battles against hired strikebreakers, labor leaders getting thrown into jail, workers being hurt and even killed, all for demanding the right to improve and defend their livelihoods.

Now, a modern strain of tech-based elitism has emerged. It poses an existential threat to working families, including members of today’s incredibly diverse transit workforce, with men and women from Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, India, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and many other countries.

In a recent guest essay in the New York Times, two academics who have worked for Democratic politicians at the highest levels of government, argue that Democrats need to change how they govern and reach “a new bargain” with organized labor in several areas, including technology.

Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon contend that unions wrongly “resist technology that could save money and improve lives,” citing two actions by the TWU: our groundbreaking contract requiring the transit agency in Columbus, Ohio, get TWU Local 208’s approval before deploying autonomous buses; and our push for New York legislation requiring all subway trains to have a conductor and train operator.

We’re not against technology. Our job is to deliver people safely to their destinations, and we can work with any tool that helps us do that. But when Big Tech evangelists tout automation as “improving lives,” they ignore that, unchecked, it will destroy millions of them — pushing countless workers into unemployment and leaving them economically and emotionally unmoored. Where will people work? What will they do? Those questions get little attention.

The primary impetus and massive investment behind robotaxis, autonomous shuttles, self-driving trucks, and self-driving buses is not safety. You can equip vehicles with sophisticated accident-preventing technology. Big Tech’s motivation is more sordid — to make billionaires even richer by eliminating the need to pay blue-collar workers’ wages.

Safety, satisfactory customer service, and ensuring riders feel secure are best achieved by maintaining — and even increasing — staffing in transit systems. Bus operators and conductors are lookouts for first responders and are on the scene before emergency personnel arrive. They have located lost children, assisted women in labor, reported fires and crimes in progress, evacuated riders in danger, and relied on their training to respond to a wide range of other emergencies.

When a gunman opened fire on a subway train in 2022, Conductor Raven Haynes helped keep riders calm and directed them to another train across the platform that carried them to safety. In January, Bus Operator Christopher Accettulli helped deliver a healthy baby girl aboard the B37 bus in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

The TWU is proud to win contracts that force employers to listen to workers before implementing potentially job-killing technology. Bagley and Jordon apparently believe that their elitism and tech-bro cronyism are reasonable political positions. They are not — at least not if the Democratic Party seeks to return to its roots as an ally of workers and a builder of the middle class.

The Democratic Party that I envision fights for workers. It stands up for blue-collar jobs, safety, pensions, and better wages — all the things these two brainiacs refer to as “inefficiencies.” The policies presented by Bagley and Gordon assume that Democrats ought to govern by spreadsheet. It is heartless, cold, and electorally disastrous. It should be rejected.

Samuelsen is international president of the Transport Workers Union.

© NY Daily News