Unions Should Gird for Robot Invasion
Humans are still doing hundreds of millions of boring, dirty, hard and often dangerous jobs worldwide despite earlier predictions that by now millions of robots would be doing most of those jobs better and faster.
It has been nearly 20 years since industrial robots were introduced, and today there are only about 250,000 in operation in the United States, Europe and Japan, which has more than all others.
But robotic technology has made tremendous strides, even if the steel-collar workers need to be more finely tuned. And some futurists insist that those who expected far more humanless factories by now were wrong only in their timing.
A just-released study by the International Labor Organization says the global robot population is more than doubling every two years and that 10 years from now the total will reach 10 million.
Many experts say the ILO estimate is unrealistically high. Still, few doubt that, in time, unemployment will soar as a result of robotics unless workers’ purchasing power is dramatically increased or other steps are taken, such as cutting the workweek.
A displacement of workers is inevitable, although nobody wants to guess how many will be put out of work as the amazing machines move into more factories, offices, mines, hospitals and even homes.
True, building robots requires human labor, which will mean some more jobs. But robots can be used to build more of their kind, so that source of work will be limited.
Unlike automated machinery that simply repeats a single process, robots are multifunctional--that is, they can perform a variety of tasks and are controlled by reprogrammable computers. They take us a quantum leap ahead in automation.
The fact that there were some rotten early guesses about the future of robotics doesn’t mean that we can ignore the real prospect of massive unemployment as the robots come marching in. As much thought needs to be given to the impact of robots on human workers as is devoted to the spread of robotics.
One of the most off-target predictions came from the late Richard Bellman, the world-famous mathematician, who said in 1963 that 2% of the population using robots and other marvelous devices would be capable of producing all of the nation’s manufactured goods. Bellman did some more complex calculations and two years later revised his estimate: It would take only two-tenths of 1% of us to produce all U.S. manufactured products.
There also was Joseph Engleberger, generally regarded as the father of the modern industrial robot, who predicted in 1983 that by 1990, robotics would be a $3-billion-a-year U.S. business.
In fact, it reached a peak of about $500 million in 1985 and is now down to $400 million partly because General Motors, the largest U.S. buyer of robots, drastically reduced its purchases as part of a cost-cutting move.
But robots now do most of GM’s spot welding and painting, along with a few other jobs, and the firm says it is making progress in an exciting “learning laboratory,” where robots do most of the work involved in making axles.
The company made no estimate of how many people can be replaced by the robotized plant, and at this point the answer isn’t critical anyway because the cost per axle is enormous.
The GM plant, called Vanguard and located in Saginaw, Mich., is said to be one of the world’s most futuristic factories. It is costing the company a small fortune because most of the robots and other high-tech equipment are one-of-a-kind prototypes used more for research than for production.
But Vanguard seems to be proving that robots will live up to much of the potential predicted for them when production costs are dramatically reduced.
Engleberger, whose ideas for the industrial use of robotics were inspired by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, is working on what he calls a “homebot,” which will do everything from cleaning bathrooms and cooking meals to cutting grass and shoveling snow.
A homebot is being tested in a hospital in Danbury, Conn., headquarters of Engleberger’s new firm, Transition Research Corp.
Far more esoteric uses of robots are being considered by the Air Force. A special study group recently explored hundreds of possible types of robots, ranging from systems that repair unmanned missiles to ones that load aircraft weapons.
The era of robots is not yet with us, as evidenced by some badly programmed auto plant robots that have painted each other and stashed windshields on the back seat of cars on an assembly line.
Still, the goal of robot makers and the companies and individuals using them is to get rid of workers, and some unions are already considering ways to avoid the massive unemployment that could result.
Leaders of the United Auto Workers, for instance, are pressing for elimination of overtime work to spread available jobs among more workers in the auto industry.
And, like other union leaders, those in the UAW are talking seriously about a campaign to reduce the workweek, as has already been done in West Germany, where it was cut to 37 hours with no cut in pay, thereby creating up to 200,000 jobs.
But with the current relatively low jobless rate in the United States and predictions of labor shortages in low-paid service jobs, few in the government or private industry are even thinking about the fate of American workers when robot-induced unemployment starts rising, which seems almost certain.
