Tag: manufactur

Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now

Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now

Part One

It is in this serious light that we have to look at the question of the growing army of the unemployed. We have to stop looking for solutions in pump-priming, featherbedding, public works, war contracts, and all the other gimmicks that are always being proposed by labor leaders and well-meaning liberals.

– James Boggs, The American Revolution In 1963, James Boggs, a black autoworker employed for over two decades at a Chrysler plant in Detroit, published a short book focused on the nefarious effects of automation on class struggle in the United States. The story told in The American […]

Sorry, But Amazon Isn’t Actually Annihilating Retail Jobs

Sorry, But Amazon Isn’t Actually Annihilating Retail Jobs

Noah Berger/Reuters Beware the lurking variable. Even if you didn’t suffer through a semester of college statistics, you’re probably familiar with the adage “correlation doesn’t imply causation.” But if you haven’t had the pleasure, it’s a fairly easy concept to grasp.

Take a classic example: When ice cream sales rise significantly, the number of shark attacks escalates as well. But ice cream probably doesn’t cause shark attacks. The two things are correlated because they tend to occur at the same time of year but the relationship is not causal: Summer, in this case, is what’s called a lurking variable . […]

Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

President Trump speaks during a meeting with manufacturing executives at the White House. (Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg) President Trump boasts that his “America First” trade and economic policies are bringing well-paid manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s probably his biggest “deliverable” to Trump voters. But is this claim true?

Trump won the presidency partly because he voiced the anger of American workers about lost jobs and stagnant wages. But in the process, he fundamentally misled the country by claiming that trade is the major cause of job losses, and that renegotiating trade agreements would save the middle class.

What Trump is offering is […]

C.E.O. Who Trump Thanked for Creating Jobs Says Robots Will Take Over by 2050

C.E.O. Who Trump Thanked for Creating Jobs Says Robots Will Take Over by 2050

By Spencer Platt/Getty Images. Late last year, Donald Trump met with Japanese billionaire and Softbank C.E.O. Masayoshi Son at Trump Tower to discuss what the president-elect misleadingly heralded as a new investment. “Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs,” he tweeted . “Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!”

Trump’s victory lap was problematic on several levels. For one, the $50 billion that Son had agreed to invest came from a previously announced $100 billion investment fund, with much of the […]

The Rise of Automation: Why Coding Is Becoming a Job for Everyone

Automation and computerization are rapidly becoming hot-button issues, both journalistically and politically. As many workers are all too aware, the pace of technological advancement is dramatically impacting the jobs market, as much of the work previously performed by human laborers can now be completed by relatively inexpensive robots and computerized systems.

Many global thinkers, scientists, and business leaders are debating the long-term impact and immediate ramifications of this automation explosion in recent years. Industries hit the hardest tend to be those in manufacturing, where core job tasks tend to follow well-defined, repetitive procedures, which can invariably be codified in computer […]

Wisconsin Is a Global Trade Winner

Wisconsin Is a Global Trade Winner

Mining Equipment staged to go out to the Netherlands, April 2015. Photo by Peter Hirthe. Anyone who read a Monmouth College Poll from back in 2011 might have predicted the unexpected rise of Donald Trump . The poll found Midwestern residents — by huge margins — saw themselves as losers from global trade , just as Trump would insist in his campaign.

Some of the poll’s key findings:
-64 percent felt the Midwest lost more from global trade and just 20 percent felt it gained.
-64 percent said it cost the Midwest jobs; only 19 percent said it created jobs. […]

The New Jobs Mantra: It’s Time To Be Selfish, Really Selfish

The New Jobs Mantra: It’s Time To Be Selfish, Really Selfish

Don’t just ask where are the jobs, but ask whether you are ready for the jobs that are available.

The future belongs to the independent and the brave, not the passive.

The message from the IT industry to employees who may be rendered redundant in a changing work environment is: “go, look after your interests by upskilling or right-skilling”.Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president of the software services industry lobby Nasscom, is quoted by Business Standard as saying this: “An aspect of diversity in the industry is going to be self-learning. It is no more going to be like Infosys will take you […]

Geoff Johnson: How do we prepare kids for changing jobs?

Given limitless power, an unconstrained budget and a warm, safe place to sleep, I still would not want to be the person responsible for planning the future of public education. Not at any price.

This is not the place to enter the age-old academic debate about the overall purposes of education — individual fulfilment or preparation for employment. Legendary educator and philosopher John Dewey said: “The general purpose of school is to transfer knowledge and prepare young people to participate in a democratic society.”

The reality is that participation will involve finding something useful and fulfilling to do.But when we read […]

Innovation key to India surviving next industrial revolution

It is not often that the world finds itself at the cusp of a revolution, and an industrial one is even more uncommon. India missed the bus on the first major industrial revolution that was brought about in 18th century Britain, on account of being on the wrong side of colonial history. No other phase of innovation has transformed the industrial landscape to a similar extent, except the digital revolution in the latter half of the 20th century.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, we are about to witness the next industrial revolution, which has the potential to change the way we live, […]

More manufacturing, fewer jobs. Is there a solution?

More manufacturing, fewer jobs. Is there a solution?

Technology and automation have impacted a range of industries, including printing. Manufacturing makes more products than ever before, but not the jobs that once went with them. How can struggling economies resurrect their rust belt regions when factories employ more machines than people?

In a cavernous building on the outskirts of Sydney’s CBD, a lone worker tends to a massive printing machine churning out 70,000 magazines an hour.

Not so long ago, it would have taken six workers to do the job, but advances in technology and automation mean printers at Blue Star Web are able to produce more with less […]