Robotization of factories increases after each pandemic , says a recent report from the International Monetary Fund. Its authors, Tahsin Saadi Sedik and Jiae Yoo, have detected a correlation between automation in industrial plants and health crises, where the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 can be included without fear of misunderstandings; that of influenza A, in 2009; that of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), in 2012; and that of Ebola, in 2014. They warn that this process will cause greater inequality among the unskilled workers who now inhabit those spaces. They consider that the inequality of which they are victims is in their future unemployment and not in their current job.
During the Covid-19 crisis we have seen the emergence of two clearly differentiated social classes: those who have been able to stay at home and those who have not . Millions of people around the world who have not been canonized as essential workers have risked their lives packing hot dogs, filling boxes, cleaning houses and warehouses, driving trucks, sewing toys or delivering Amazon packages and food at home for less than ten euros. The time.
Some historians have compared this social division to periods of war, where some citizens go to the front and others do not. Obviously, wars also generate new automation processes. In recent years, a large number of robots have been developed to defuse explosives, explore dangerous spaces or monitor areas of tension. The IMF does not consider it a threat to the job stability of soldiers, but a positive development capable of saving lives. Can’t we do the same with the most miserable jobs and establish the framework to improve the life of the worker?
The factory without employees seems like a promise, but it is a warning that fulfills two very specific objectives. The first is to activate the FOMO syndrome – fear of missing something – of entrepreneurs to jump on the bandwagon of Industry 4.0, generally at the cost of handing over their business processes and data to the six automation giants. The pattern is known and has already been typified as platform capitalism . The second is to guarantee the docility of workers under the threat of eternal unemployment . Who thinks about your employment rights when you imagine competing with the Terminator or begging for employment through a platform optimized to dodge a union past?
In his interesting essay on automation and the future of work, Aaron Benanav argues that the numbers don’t come out. That the countries with the highest rate of robotization per worker –Germany, Japan and South Korea– actually show a higher rate of employment. He explains that if we move towards a catastrophic unemployment, it is not because of the automation of factories, but because of a global stagnation of the economy caused by scarce investment and the low rate of economic growth.
But there is another thing. The class of company that has grown the most in recent years is famous for hiring a few highly paid workers and exploiting billions around the world, through tools designed to bureaucratize informal tasks, generating something similar to employment but without assume the responsibilities that derive from it. It is also famous for consuming public money without paying taxes. It is the same industry that sells artificial intelligence to third parties under the brand new slogan of Industry 4.0. The problem is not the inexorable march of progress towards a world that does not need the labor force, but the abandonment of responsibilities by all the institutions designed to guarantee the rights of the worker .
