The impact of technology on the world of work If it can be automated it will be automated

Should we be optimistic about the impact of technology in the work place? Yes, because New technology has always been a net creator of jobs Economies adapt by inventing new types of work It frees us from drudgery We choose what we adopt More barter and handcrafted goods The unemployment rate has not changed since 2000. No, because It affects blue collar workers but now white collar as well. Will create more low paid jobs or permanent unemployment Educational and political institutions are not equipped to prepare people for massive change. More people are underemployed.

Then and now

Which jobs are disappearing? Librarians (London – 65% disappeared since 2001) Travel agents. Check out operators. Bank tellers. Video shops. Phone directories. Production workers (e.g. Car industry workers) Data entry workers. PA workers and secretaries (London again – 50% gone) Wharfies (with the rise of container shipping) 50% laid off at Botany since 2000. Post Offices? Melways. Real Estate agents DVDs Sales people (self reliant customers using the Net?) What do all these have in common?

And some surprising ones Delivery drivers – Uber, drones Food service workers – robots make burgers, $15 ph threatens employment. Cleaners – auto vacs, auto window cleaners etc Health care – very expensive. Self diagnoses and auto dispensing, Watson more accurate diagnoses than actual doctors. Companionship – eharmony, humanoid robots. Machine profiling. Manufacturing and construction – bricklaying machines. 3D printing of anything including, homes, engines, for NASA? Security – robot spies and soldiers.

Job losses

Tradies – will we still have them? Yes. Have done very well over the last 10 years but they will have to acquire new skills. opportunities for forward-thinking tradies lay in adapting to building and technology processes. “The way we build is changing — materials are changing, as are the methods of construction.” In the engineering construction sector, structural steel workers, plant operators and concreters are set to be in high demand.” Picks jobs from the Internet that are nearest to him or her. Computerises accounts and invoices and payments. The end of cash? Parts arrive by drone. Use drones to do remote checking Uses 3D printers to create parts on site. Visualise problems – google glasses.

The changing nature of work

A creator or destroyer of jobs? Someone still needs to build websites. Someone still needs to create new products. Still need people for assembly, packaging and sales in some areas. (Harvey Norman) ATMs replace tellers but enables new branches to be opened. Still require people to fill jobs that require empathy, creativity and innovation. Jobs that require judgement and/or critical thinking. Safe zones jobs that require human effort – gardening, painting, babysitting People need to be employed otherwise who buys things?

And the negatives? Those who cannot be replaced will get high wages. Those who can be replaced, will be. Income inequality will lead to social unrest? Technological revolution is moving faster than any previously – no time tor retrain? What are people for if they are no longer needed? Customers do more of the work – press 1 for etc, Dyson. Automated check outs, Myki. Paying to use a teller in the bank. Car industry worker loses job, drives taxis, replaced by Uber or driverless cars. Education cannot keep up – coding a desperate attempt? Politicians do not look beyond a 4 year cycle.

Examples of the impact of technology on white collar work. Robots – Baxter costs $25,000 but can handle loading and packaging.. Doctor Google. Software – Quill – crunches data and generates journalistic reports. Only in English at the moment. Data analysts on the way out? Artificial intelligence - IBM’s Watson – handles vast data analysis jobs and delivers diagnoses. Won “Jeopardy” so not just a chess playing machine. AI growing exponentially after a slow start. Neural networks Examples – Google Search, Amazon shopping recommendations, Apple’s voice assistant, Tesla self driving cars.

A robotic factory – no aircon, no lights no downtime.

The rate of change In the middle Ages not much at all. Jobs handed down for generations Technology developed slowly if at all In our own time – air travel (1903 -1969), First IBM PC – 1982 The Internet mainstream in Australia in 2000 The mobile phone (colour display and touch screen) - 2000 Have a look at this

Heures de notre Dame 15C and Van Gogh Harvester 1885

The evolution of the mobile phone All the Iphones sold on the first week end of sale in 2015 had 25 times the computing power of the whole world in 1995.

From Wright brothers to the 747

The rate of change

The Human cloud and the future of work – what is it? This is a type of workforce where tasks or projects, not jobs, are performed remotely and on-demand by people who are not employees but independent workers. The type of work stems from white-collar jobs - chopped into hundreds of discrete projects or tasks, then scattered into a virtual “cloud” of willing workers who could be anywhere in the world, so long as they have an internet connection. Some of these tasks are as simple as looking up phone numbers on the web, typing data into a spreadsheet or watching a video while a webcam tracks your eye movements. Others are as complex as writing a piece of code or completing a short-term consultancy project. Examples of human cloud online platforms include Upwork, Freelancer and People per Hour, which feature skilled tasks such as copywriting, IT and design work.

The human cloud Freelancers who bid for work e.g. web publishing, publishing Talent willing to work. No overheads for employers – insurance, OHS etc Pay for project work when needed. Colgate Palmolive ad for the Super Bowl- $17,000 outsourced. Cut work up into chunks to avoid costs. Philippines, India benefit? People don’t want to work in offices. Service professionals for $18 ph to do personal shopping, furniture assembly, house cleaning etc The poor working for the rich? Like Mumbai?

The human cloud 2 One third in the US do freelance work. People who do not or cannot work full time. Working your whole life for one company effectively ended in 1980 The cloud uses under used resources – Ebay, Uber, Airbnb 2008 – Pfizer discovered that its employees spent 40% of their time on non productive work –e.g. Data entry, preparing PowerPoints, social media - so they outsourced it. Workers can work from anywhere on any device No idea who they are working with on a project On demand work.

Working from home

The generations and their attitudes to work

Baby boomers and work Boomers are committed, hard working and career focused – which has caused them to be tagged as workaholics by Gen X and Gen Y. The Baby Boomer work ethic is also characterised by dedication, loyalty and a willingness to stay in the same job for a long time. They have a lot to offer businesses with their work and life experience, skills and knowledge that many younger people can’t offer. They tend to work longer hours – and respect is paramount when managing a Baby Boomer. Boomers need stability and a life long career. Focus on government employment. Wary of the stock market. Popular with employers because less likely to be absent. More computer savvy with passwords and security than Gen Y.

Gen X attitudes to work Gen X occupies a massive 60 per cent of the current workforce. They possess an entrepreneurial spirit, a do-it-yourself attitude and, in contrast to the generations before them, embrace change in the workplace. They are career-oriented but place a strong emphasis on family time and strive for a good life – work balance. They enjoy freedom and autonomy – they work to live rather than live to work, which is often frowned upon as slack and difficult to manage by the Boomers, who prefer to do the long hours.  Where boomers have the experience, Gen X-ers also have the qualifications to go with it. Brought up in an era of technological and social change, Gen-X is tech- savvy and open to change. They possess a different work ethic to the boomers – Gen X thrives on diversity, challenge, responsibility, honesty and creative input, compared to the boomers’ preference for a more rigid, work-centric approach.

Gen Y and work - born between 1975 and 1995 Often seen as lazy, shiftless and wanting immediate gratification. A job defined our generation. Not so Gen Y – a job is just a job. Gen Y works differently – grew up in a digital age. They Skype instead of travel and research on the Internet. Social media a must. Work more efficiently and do not take work home. A mobile generation who have children near 30 Multiple jobs – often a second job is their passion or hobby. Do not expect to be in a job for more than 3 years. Job hopping – a chance to gain more skills and promotion faster. Does it look good on their CV? Want to be free. They have been constantly surrounded by choice and therefore don’t tend to stay in one job for very long. They require constant stimulation and the opportunity to develop their skills – if they don’t get it, they will walk out the door.  the financial sector was seeing a 25 per cent turnover of Gen Y staff each year.  Other generations see them as arrogant, selfish, lazy and unethical.

What GEN y sees as important

What Gen Y wants

Gen Z – born between 1996 - 2010 These are your grandchildren. They are set to occupy roughly 10 per cent of the workforce by 2020, experts predict that with Generation Z there will be a return to values such as respect, responsibility and restraint. However, with the way technology is heading, most of the jobs that Gen Z will be filling have not even been created yet. Gen Z is part of a generation that is global, social, visual and technological. They are the most connected, educated and sophisticated generation ever Gen Z’s have been born into the crisis period of terrorism, the global recession and climate change. They are predicted to spend their young adult years in a time of economic and social renewal. They are also living in an era of changing household structures, and are the students of today and university graduates, employees and consumers of tomorrow.

A perspective Western economies are Deindustrialising. Deindustrialising is coming too soon for the Third World. In rich countries wages are stagnant. UK and Germany wages flat for a decade. The US for nearly four decades. 42% of the US work force earns less than $15 an hour. (2015). 50% lived from pay check to pay check. Skilled benefit and the rest stagnate as permanently under employed or unemployed. Much of today’s work is low to medium screen sitting. Time for a guaranteed $15,000 a year for everyone (Holland and Finland are thinking about it). Greens – a 4 day week and a universal basic income. US polls most prefer extra $20k than extra 4 weeks leave.

The new Industrial revolution

The Third industrial revolution First Industrial revolution – Britain late 18th C in the textile industry – weaving tasks done by hand in cottages brought together in a factory 2nd revolution – early 20th Century – Ford and the production line and mass production 3rd revolution – now – manufacturing going digital. Ford – everything the same but now with mass customisation is there a return to the cottage weavers? Converging technologies – smart software, robots, new processes (3D printing) and web based services. 3D printing can make anything and do so unattended. Everything from a jet engine to a hearing aid. Use it in space? Great for remote work needing parts.

3D Printing- already in our schools

The Third Industrial revolution Start up costs are minimal – a laptop not a factory as it was for Ford. Easy collaboration on the Net for ideas. New technology – nanotechnology bandaids that heal cuts etc Jobs move from factory floor to the office but they will be full of professional engineers, marketers tec.– clean factories. Widespread high tech reduces the need to move companies offshore to lower paid areas. 3D printers and communal art spaces to create a new artisan society? People make things they enjoy making including digital things – photo albums, Facebook pages, YouTube clips. Cultural expression on a vast scale – return to craft industries?

Printing a house

For governments The change over to a high tech economy will be disruptive in the medium to short term. They should not bully business that want to move off shore They should not become protectionist. They should not think that manufacturing is more important than services. Be clever - the line between manufacturing and services is blurring – Rolls Royce do not sell jet engines anymore. It sells the hours they are running. Better schools for a skilled workforce and clear rules for a level playing field for industry.

The end of work? Economic breakdown leads to cultural breakdown – more prisons Work is at the heart of culture not leisure Agricultural revolution led to farms – Industrial revolution to factories – automation to services – AI – unemployment? A slow process! End of work a Luddite fantasy? Triumph of capital over labour and the demise of the working man. Wages as a share of output has been falling since 1950. Also partially a factor of declining union membership? In 1964, AT&T, was worth $267 billion in today’s dollars and employed 758,611 people. Today Google, is worth $370 billion but has only about 55,000. In the US one in six men aged 25 – 54 is either unemployed or underemployed. Since 2000 manufacturing jobs have declined by 30%. Is this why Trump was elected?

Abandoned car factory in Michigan

The Globalisation of work Robots may be taking over many jobs but some robot jobs still need a human handler. However that handler may be a continent away. Language translation is also nearly good enough to translate speech in real time. A person talking Swahili could converse with a hotel manager in Oslo without either of them knowing another language.  Doctors have performed robot-assisted surgery from hundreds of kilometres away, for example. And, of course, drones are telerobots.   In Switzerland, when they cut the grass on the side of the highway, they use remote controlled robots. If you have skills that are in demand and you can deploy those skills remotely  In the building business cranes are controlled remotely by people on the ground. The demolition machines are also controlled remotely. And it could be done from Kenya.

The globalisation of work It will be wonderful for many poor people around the world but more disruptive for rich countries. Tele presence will see a rise in what you can call international telecommuting or virtual immigration. This will allow many more people from developing countries to participate in the world economy Low end jobs are not coming back and even if they did robots would do them. In Japan everything that can be offshored has been offshored. They call it the hollowing out of the economy. But they don’t have an anti- globalisation backlash there and it’s because they take care of their people. Countries with little or almost no social welfare like the US is going to have lot of angry people.

A summary

Enforced leisure? More are graduating from tertiary institutions but real wages for college graduates down 7% since 2000. Automation increases as recessions bite. New industries are labour efficient. Sooner or later we will run out of jobs? People are more creative than machines – who would have thought that the Iphone would have created Airbnb to help home owners beat the hotel trade or Uber? Will it feel people to make more of themselves? But most unemployed do not socialise. Work creates self worth? Will a cyber existence replace the loss of work? Redefine what work is? Harder on Americans – In Europe work hours reduced by 40% since 1950 but only by 10% in the US. Conversely the college educated take more work home. Emails etc. Technology turning people into workaholics?

But we still need consumers with money to spend In the 1950s, Henry Ford II, the CEO of Ford, and Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers union, were touring a new engine plant in Cleveland. Ford gestured to a fleet of machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union boss famously replied: “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?” What happens to a consumer economy when you take away consumers? Job sharing the answer? Tax the owners of capital to keep it all going? The late 1920s is a warning to us. Pay people to do something – national infrastructure projects for example. Pay them to be educated or trained?

Trump and bringing back jobs Trump wants to bring back jobs lost to Mexico and China. Some were lost there but most were lost to automation. 13% to trade but 87% to automation. Steel industry in the US lost 75% of its workers between 1962 to 2005 but output remained the same. Car industry same out put as 1998 with a quarter of the work force. Automation usually leads to more jobs but perhaps not this time as job vacancies for blue collar have not recovered. Current technology could replace 47% of current paid work and probably will as the cost of the machines comes down.

From this to this

While textile mills in the US have lost 69% of their workers since 1990 some are re-opening (but without workers).

Solutions Lifelong learning – bring back tech schools? Schools unable to match changes fast enough. Invest in R and D as the Chinese do – CSIRO? Higher minimum wage to keep spending up. Redistribute income – wealth is wasted on the wealthy who profit most from new technology. Note the effects unbalanced income distribution had in the Depression. Automation leads to less manual labour and therefore longer lives – pensions and super – voluntary work? The Indian railways and level crossing supervisors approach. Make work.

The new work – working for Google Top Perks: Working at Google. Perks play an important part in attracting talented employees and keeping them motivated. With free gourmet cafeterias, massage rooms, nap pods, haircuts and onsite doctors available for employee checkups (free of charge), Google is trying its best to keep employees happy. Employees can relax after a long day by playing billiards, braving the rock climbing wall, or taking a dip in the company pool. Other activities? There’s an onsite beach volleyball pit, video games, Football, ping pong and roller hockey.  They can bring in their pets, laundry, even their dry cleaning. Gyms, language classes ,personal affairs time. Additional perks include ski trips, company movie days, summer picnics, Halloween & holiday parties, health fairs, quarterly group off sites, a credit union, saunas, roller hockey, outdoor volleyball courts, discounts for products and local attractions.

A gender perspective

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