Tag: inequality

The Global Search for Education: Jobsolescence – A Conversation with USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson

The Global Search for Education: Jobsolescence – A Conversation with USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson

“I think the guiding principle for government should be to protect and enable/retrain the worker, not protect the job. Policy makers and educators should focus on making sure that workers are as equipped as possible to transition to new opportunities…”

— Peter Robinson

A recent OECD report finds that low and middle income earners have seen their wages stagnate and that the income share of middle-skilled jobs has fallen. Rising inequality has led to concerns that top earners are getting a disproportionate share of the gains from global “openness and interconnection”. This summer, the OECD Employment Outlook 2017 […]

Invasion of the job snatchers? Use of robots in workplace on the rise

Invasion of the job snatchers? Use of robots in workplace on the rise

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It’s only about 50 feet to the shipping station, but if employees at Cochlear Americas had to walk each order back and forth, they would work longer days.

They used to do the walk. That was before “Morty,” the autonomous-moving cart, joined the hearing-implant company in Centennial in January. Morty — also called Robbie or Suzy, depending on which Cochlear employee you ask — maneuvers between workstations, curious visitors and unidentified objects as it thoughtfully takes packages between workstations to the shipping area all day long. […]

The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society

The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society

Employees of the workers’ cooperative Scop-Ti at the their factory in Gemenos, southern France. The workers’ cooperative took over the factory, formerly Fralib Gemenos, after struggling nearly four years with the multinational Unilver to prevent the relocation of the factory. John Bellamy Foster is the editor of Monthly Review . His latest book is Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce , forthcoming from Monthly Review Press.

This article is a revised version of “ The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society: A Marxian View ,” published in March 2017 by the Center for the Understanding of Sustainable […]

Jobs at stake in B.C.’s minimum-wage hikes, critics say

Jobs at stake in B.C.’s minimum-wage hikes, critics say

Increase targets workers reliant on minimum wage, but trade-off could be lower demand for young workers and tighter margins for small businesses B.C.’s minimum wage is set to increase to $15 by 2021, a move that is being praised as overdue by some, though restaurant-sector leaders fear that the hike is being implemented too quickly | Sorbis/Shutterstock B.C.’s plan to raise the province’s hourly minimum wage to $15 by 2021 will benefit some workers but will also reduce demand for young workers, increase prices and squeeze margins for small businesses, especially in the food services sector, experts say.

The B.C. […]

Is catastrophe the only cure for inequality?

Is catastrophe the only cure for inequality?

Author Walter Scheidel explains why violence is “the great leveller”.

Inequality, authors of the left usually argue, is not inevitable. The gap between the rich and the poor was made by man and can be undone by man. But Walter Scheidel’s recent book on the subject, The Great Leveller , ends on a sobering note: “All of us who prize economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions, it was only ever brought forth in sorrow.”

In his 528-page study of inequality “from the Stone Age to the 21st century”, the Stanford historian finds that significant […]

Driverless lorries could mean 600,000 lost jobs. It’s time we took a universal basic income seriously.

Driverless lorries could mean 600,000 lost jobs. It’s time we took a universal basic income seriously.

With trials for self-driving commercial lorries to take place in the UK within the next twelve months, the work days of thousands of Britain’s long-haul drivers may soon be numbered.

Of course, these are only preliminary tests – it may well be a decade or more before driverless deliveries and long-distance haulage are an everyday reality. However, with the beginnings already upon us, a boom in automated jobs is surely coming sooner rather than later.

Driverless haulage lorries are just the latest in a range of technological upgrades to manual jobs. From driverless taxis , and Amazon’s long-awaited drone deliveries, to […]

Driverless lorries could mean 600,000 lost jobs. It’s time we took a universal basic income seriously.

Driverless lorries could mean 600,000 lost jobs. It’s time we took a universal basic income seriously.

With trials for self-driving commercial lorries to take place in the UK within the next twelve months, the work days of thousands of Britain’s long-haul drivers may soon be numbered.

Of course, these are only preliminary tests – it may well be a decade or more before driverless deliveries and long-distance haulage are an everyday reality. However, with the beginnings already upon us, a boom in automated jobs is surely coming sooner rather than later.

Driverless haulage lorries are just the latest in a range of technological upgrades to manual jobs. From driverless taxis , and Amazon’s long-awaited drone deliveries, to […]

Robots will not lead to fewer jobs but the hollowing out of the middle class | Larry Elliott

(MENAFN Editorial) iCrowdNewswire – Aug 21, 2017 Weak wage growth could already be a sign automation creating economy in which small number of very rich employ armies of poor Throughout modern history there has been a recurrent fear that jobs will be destroyed by technology. Everybody knows the story of the Luddites, bands of workers who smashed up machinery in the textile industry in the second decade of the 19th century. The Luddites were wrong. There has been wave after wave of technological advance since the first Industrial Revolution, and yet more people are working than ever before. Jobs […]

Automation, Unemployment and Moravec’s Paradox

Automation, Unemployment and Moravec’s Paradox

Writing in the Guardian , here’s Larry Elliott on automation. The whole article is well worth a read, even if it’s too simplistic to argue (as he does) that the Luddites were wrong. Over the longish term they most certainly were. The industrial revolution paved the way for an immense improvement in living standards. But what that happy history omits is the fact that it took a while to do so, a phenomenon known as the ‘Engels pause’: In the first half of the nineteenth century, the real wage [in Britain] stagnated while output per worker expanded. The profit […]

Automation will not lead to fewer jobs – but it is hollowing out the middle class

Automation will not lead to fewer jobs – but it is hollowing out the middle class

Throughout modern history there has been a recurrent fear that jobs will be destroyed by technology. Everybody knows the story of the Luddites, bands of workers who smashed up machinery in the textile industry in the second decade of the 19th century.

The Luddites were wrong. There has been wave after wave of technological advance since the first Industrial Revolution, and yet more people are working than ever before. Jobs have certainly been destroyed. Banks, for example, no longer employ clerks to log every transaction in ledgers with quill pens. At this time of year, 150 years ago, the fields […]