While the mainstream press continues to salivate over the buoyant labour figures in OZ post the GFC, I often wonder just what happens to the people who used to work in the factories that made stuff. In some cases the factories move to another country where wages are cheaper or taxes are lower, sometimes they just stop making stuff and sometimes they buy a robot.
YouTube – ABB Robotics – Picking pancakes.
Now automation in production lines is really big these days so spare a thought for all the economies of the world with big manufacturing sectors, Japan and Germany for example. Where are the thousands of factory workers going to go and more importantly for everyone, what do we do when your ‘job’ is replaced by automation. If you think it is just factory workers, wake up and step outside. Take a look at Detroit.
In the normal debate it’s assumed that the gradual drift of people away from jobs that are technologically threatened will be absorbed by other employment opportunities but when the system is as broken as one that produced the GFC, how confident can that appeal to the unknown be?
Worse still is the notion that automated factories still make stuff, stuff we consume and pay for. One of the vaguely saving graces of manufacturing was that it employed people, a kind of acceptable social trade-off for all the wasted resources and pollution. Consumerism drives the modern economies of a lot of places, Oz included. What is the trade-off if your manufacturers are busy installing robots to “reduce labour costs and improve productivity”?
