Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Southern rail dispute reflects workers’ growing fears about rise of automation

Southern rail dispute reflects workers’ growing fears about rise of automation

Trains with a guard become driver-only trains, which then become driverless trains. That’s the fear underlying Aslef’s dispute with Southern railways and accounts for the rearguard action to prevent further job losses across the rail industry.

It’s not the only reason for the dispute. There is also scorn for Southern’s management, which has attacked drivers’ basic terms and conditions, and there is anger at transport secretary Chris Grayling’s anti-union stance. But, at its heart, the dispute is over the status and even the very existence of the job of train driver, which has been around for nigh on 200 years.

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Automation Won’t Create New Jobs Like Technology Did In The Past

Automation Won't Create New Jobs Like Technology Did In The Past

(Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Westfield) “Increased productivity leads to more wealth, cheaper goods, greater spending power and ultimately, more jobs ,” said the Wall Street Journal in the latest entry in the counterpoint to articles declaring the end of work.

This essentially is the problem with calls to put aside worry about automation. They sit on an assumption that, somehow, something will come along to save the day, even though no one has the slightest idea of what it might be. Call it the Magical Job Savior, the inexorable and unstoppable unforeseen something that increases the number of jobs even as technology eliminates them but somehow enables the rescue.

Full Post at www.forbes.com

CNN Host’s Attempt to Explain the U.S. Economy Was So Bad I Started Yelling at the TV

CNN Host's Attempt to Explain the U.S. Economy Was So Bad I Started Yelling at the TV

Young technician checking solar panels on factory roof Photo Credit: zstock/Shutterstock Honestly, I don’t usually talk back to the TV. But I couldn’t contain myself during Poppy Harlow’s December 10 interview with John Feltner, the United Steelworkers vice president of the Rexnord local union where 300 jobs are moving from Indianapolis to Mexico.

In discussing the move, Harlow twice resorted to the much repeated trope that the loss of American manufacturing jobs is really about automation and technology.

HARLOW: What is the number-one thing you would like to see the incoming administration do that you think will help people in […]

Sheila Kennedy

Sheila Kennedy

The other day, I looked into a mirror and suddenly realized that my mother was looking back.

It sneaks up on you.

Most of us don’t notice the day-to-day changes in ourselves, or our environments, unless something triggers that recognition. That is especially true of the inexorable increase in automation–and it matters, because it is automation, far more than trade, that has eliminated so many American jobs. And that automation isn’t limited to spiffy robots on a factory floor; it is all around us.When I first started to drive, gas station attendants pumped my gas and cleaned my windshield. These days, […]

How robots will change the American workforce

How robots will change the American workforce

Let’s Make San Diego ‘Robot Valley’. Henrik Christensen, director of the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego discusses the affect of robots in the workpalce. Thirty of the world’s top scientists will meet at UC San Diego in February to discuss the toughest challenges in robotics and automation, including making driverless cars safe for a mass audience.

The researchers are being brought together by Henrik Christensen, the prominent Georgia Tech engineer who was hired in July to run UC San Diego’s young Contextual Robotics Institute.

Christensen said at the time, “I want to build a research institute that, ideally, will […]

Automation Doesn’t Always Kill Jobs. Sometimes, It Adds Them.

Automation Doesn't Always Kill Jobs. Sometimes, It Adds Them.

‘When the University of Maine at Augusta launched its first noncredit course for commercial drone pilots in October, the seats quickly filled up. Among the 37 students are a cattle rancher, a construction company executive, a photojournalist, and several realtors.

‘“We are a bit of a motley crew,” says Tom Abbott, project manager for the university’s drone pilot training center, who is also taking the course. When they finish in mid-December, the students can take a test for federal certification to operate commercial drones, which are now being used in trials for everything from inspecting Maine’s potato crops to delivering […]

Beyond the Factory Floor: The Changing Work Force

Beyond the Factory Floor: The Changing Work Force

The other day, I looked into a mirror and suddenly realized that my mother was looking back.

It sneaks up on you.

Most of us don’t notice the day-to-day changes in ourselves, or our environments, unless something triggers that recognition. That is especially true of the inexorable increase in automation–and it matters, because it is automation, far more than trade, that has eliminated so many American jobs. And that automation isn’t limited to spiffy robots on a factory floor; it is all around us.When I first started to drive, gas station attendants pumped my gas and cleaned my windshield. These days, […]

Trump’s Carrier Deal is Even More of a Fraud Than We Thought

Trump’s Carrier Deal is Even More of a Fraud Than We Thought

Though Donald Trump will likely never stop bragging about the handful of jobs he negotiated to save at a Carrier manufacturing plant in Indiana, but though there are several major holes in his hero narrative, one major one has just been discovered that should put Trump’s bragging to an end for good.

According to CNBC , the carrier plant plans to use investments into the company in order to automate the factory, eventually resulting in the loss of many more jobs than any overseas move might have caused.

United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes admitted to CNBC ‘s Jim Cramer that the […]

America Faces Catastrophic Employment Numbers

America Faces Catastrophic Employment Numbers

We’re Hiring sign (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File) Americans continue to drop out of the labor market as employment numbers reach catastrophic levels, warned a panel of experts Thursday.

The economy has lost a staggering percentage of its workforce over the decades. The number of people employed or looking for work as a percentage of the population sits at only 62.7 percent. Experts warned during the panel discussion that the numbers show a quiet catastrophe.

“I’m not trying to be hyperbolic in describing this as a quiet catastrophe or calamity,” American Enterprise Institute Economist Nicholas Eberstadt said. “From 1965 to the present […]

The despicable inequality and cruel egalitarianism of wealth: towards a draft wealth tax to fund a basic income

The despicable inequality and cruel egalitarianism of wealth: towards a draft wealth tax to fund a basic income

Part 3 of a series. To those who have, more shall be given. Cities get more investment. From those who have little, more shall be taken. Small towns are finding that they are excluded from the excitement happening everywhere else and little investment goes their way.

The idea of capitalism – that goods should bear market prices, that justly acquired property is yours, and exchange between willing participants be free of encumbrances – is everywhere under threat.

There is, however, little policy difference between the extreme-left and extreme-right populist response. Both demand a remarkably statist approach to government, and both are […]