Pilar Pulgar, a 51-year-old supermarket cashier, “her legs shake” when she sees a customer at an automated checkout. Estefanía García (28 years old) feels “anxious” about the automation of the logistics warehouse where she works, after several years working in another that was hardly robotic. José Luis, a 42-year-old sales representative for a telephone company, says his company scares him about a future in which machines will replace him: “They make us realize that we feel expendable.” Other workers, who are also at risk of automating their day-to-day work, are more optimistic. “It’s hard for me to imagine how I can automate my work,” says Beatriz Espinilla (39), who is responsible for trimming car doors on an assembly line. “It requires precision work,” he explains. “There are concerns, but no concerns,” adds Diego Martín, a 36-year-old train driver.
Automation affects millions of workers around the world. The great technological development of the last few years, which will look into the future, has raised many alarms, anticipating a possible catastrophe in employment figures, which has not happened and which the experts interviewed by this newspaper do not believe will happen . . History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, including in the labor market: As with previous leaps in technology, expect a massive annihilation of tasks that make up current jobs – and that will require a boost in training workers whose functions are becoming obsolete – but no jobs.
Historically, the new professions compensated for the destruction of the old ones. “This debate already took place during the first and second industrial revolutions; The various periods of major technological change have been shown to be positive both in terms of global wealth and net impact on work. It is to be hoped that this time will not be so different,” says Miguel Sánchez, an economist in the Research Department of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and co-author of the report Social and Employment Outlook in the World: Trends. 2023
“The eschatology of the end of work sells, but it lacks foundation, as neither statistics nor history support such a conclusion. The evolution of society continues to show how, after each technological revolution, the increase in productivity (in the medium and long term) is accompanied by the creation of more and better jobs,” says Juan José Fernández, Professor at the Department of Private Law and Business at the University of León. “We’ve been having this debate for a decade now, and despite the digital leap caused by the pandemic, the destruction of jobs through automation hasn’t happened,” stresses Arturo Lahera, an expert on the topic and professor in the Department of Applied Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid .
Estefanía García, 28, works in a logistics company. left nacho
It is a similar analysis to Federica Saliola, Head of Social Security and Labor at the World Bank: “In Germany, Singapore and South Korea, where the use of robots is high, you can generally see that employment is still high. Automation always goes hand in hand with innovation, and innovation creates new jobs.” “Many jobs will change, but we are not heading for a reduction in the number of workers,” stresses Stefano Scarpetta, Director of OECD Employment and Social Affairs. In their 2019 report on the subject, this panel estimated that 14% of current trades will be fully automated and around 32% partially automated in 10 years. And that this process will not lead to a decrease in the number of workers in the world, which has been growing every year without interruption for the past few decades (except for the pandemic phase).
Another report on the future of work, released in 2020 by the World Economic Forum, points to the occupations where demand for labor will fall the most: data clerk, administrative clerk, accountant or assembly line worker. These are occupations with similar nuances to those that declined the most in the United States between 2007 and 2018, according to the same report: computer operators, administrative workers, or typists. According to these estimates, 85 million obsolete jobs will be destroyed worldwide between 2020 and 2025 and 97 million will be created through new occupations. The World Economic Forum estimates that around a third of the tasks will be completed by machines in 2020 and around half in 2025. This growth “is due in large part to increases in digital connectivity and the adoption of technology that is driving jobs such as data analysts, scientists, artificial intelligence specialists or digital marketing,” explains Sam Grayling, researcher at Business Forum World. “The total number is maintained and even increasing, showing that there are numerous deposits of new professions capable of replacing those that are disappearing,” adds Fernández.
Raquel Sebastián, senior researcher in the Department of Economic Analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid and specialist in this field, points out that automation in Spain between 1998 and 2019 has led to a polarization of jobs: “occupations at the bottom and at the top of the Wage distribution while occupations in the middle are declining. The spread of technology, driven by falling prices in the sector, has led to a routine process: the routine jobs and those at the heart of salary distribution have been replaced by machines.” This, Sebastián warns, will exacerbate the already high levels Inequality rates in Spain: “Robots will not only displace the middle class of the distribution, but also cause significant growth in economic inequality through increasing wage dispersion”. Saliola warns that this is a phenomenon occurring worldwide.
Resistance to technology entry
Regardless of how disruptive a technology is, it will eventually face resistance that will mitigate its impact. Pulgar believes that most of his customers avoid self-checkouts: “Most people don’t want to go through there. I think many are too lazy to pass on the barcode, others are older and don’t know how to do it, and still others refuse because they know it will be a problem for the workers. In the long run, if people get used to what happened at the gas stations where you fill up, maybe we’ll disappear.” José Luis, a sales representative for a phone company, believes his company is moving towards “worrying systematization”. : “We speak less and less between workers or with those in charge, everything is very impersonal. And as the technology does more and more tasks over the years, we feel more pressure and have to take fewer breaks.” Martín, another key factor in transportation.”In Japan, they already have the technology to automate their entire rail network, but popular opposition is one of the elements that mitigate this,” adds this train driver, a specialist in the automation process in his industry.” The planes practically fly alone, but it’s sch who could imagine anyone wanting to board one that doesn’t have a pilot,” he adds.
Lahera believes the media is largely to blame for the disastrous omens regarding the impact of new technologies on employment. “Whenever a new technology emerges, it has an impact on the implications for the job market, but the same speaker will not be given if those projections are not met.” He cites several examples: “Amazon, for example, has just announced the closure of several supermarkets with an automatic checkout service that is billed directly when you leave. Logistics delivery drones are encountering more and more problems and autonomous driving should be very widespread by the end of the last decade, but I have yet to see a truck on the road without a trucker. But the case that strikes me as the most interesting is that of the metaverse: divestitures are starting to happen, which doesn’t mean it can’t be restored, but it does mean that its realization will be more difficult than expected.”
The new technology monopolizing the public conversation is artificial intelligence. The OECD’s Scarpetta stresses that it will have a tangible impact on labor market transformation, but doesn’t anticipate job annihilation: “Unlike other technological developments, it will have a big impact on higher-skilled jobs, but I believe in those with.” less training will have the greatest impact in the long run.” The Complutense University expert points out that this technology requires a broad workforce deployment: “It requires a high level of manpower to provide the information and data that artificial intelligence will use to perform the interpreting reality.” Another fundamental obstacle is that the generalization of some of these technologies is more expensive than labor costs. “Today, in most countries, work as a production factor is cheaper than investing in new replacement technologies,” says the ILO expert.
change in skills
The fact that automation isn’t ridding the job market of cash doesn’t mean there aren’t curves for workers, especially those performing repetitive tasks like moving boxes. “There is a big difference between what we do in this warehouse compared to the other one I worked in,” says García, the worker in a highly automated logistics warehouse. “Before, we assembled the box, we sealed it, we checked that everything was ok, we locked it… Now it’s all done on our own. We also transported boxes from person to person and nothing more.” Thanks to these developments, he believes there are fewer people in his company dedicated to these tasks, “but there are more workers waiting for the machines that everything works correctly.” The big challenge is that the former, whose tasks are becoming less and less necessary, acquire the knowledge of the latter. “Since he catches me young, I see that I still have room to adapt to another sector or other capacities that I’m in now, but if I were older it would all overwhelm me a little more,” García says 28 years old. Pulgar, 51, is indeed more stressed: “If they automate all the payments in the supermarket, the task of replenishment remains, where companies are more likely to hire men because they have more power. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.”
Pilar Pulgar, 51, supermarket cashier. Alvaro garcia
Sebastián believes that retraining these workers is “essential” to “counteract the disruptive effects of automation on the Spanish labor market”. “The highly differentiated effects of automation depending on the level of education make it necessary to create specific education and training programs so that the low-skilled can acquire the new skills that the labor market demands. In the near future, for those currently performing routine and manual tasks, it will be essential to develop abstract tasks,” he adds.
This training, the experts say, should not only focus on adolescents and young people, as there are millions of adults or people approaching retirement whose knowledge is outdated. “Technology is unpredictable, but what is certain is that workers will need to be more adaptable in the future. We must accept the idea of lifelong learning as workers will have multiple careers, not just different jobs. They must also combine the needs of companies with training,” adds Saliola, who believes these measures and a “significant” investment by governments are necessary to achieve this goal. At the same time, he defends the importance of supporting workers in this transition, especially those who need new skills to find their place in the new technological ecosystem. “Governments need to support people in changing jobs, including investing in education, encouraging reskilling and upskilling, and providing adequate social safety nets,” Grayling stresses.
Lahera is committed to breaking the stereotype that people aged 45 or 50 cannot adapt to new work scenarios. “You have to design a process that doesn’t erase their knowledge, but builds on what they can do. The problem isn’t that they can’t adapt, it’s that companies can’t find these formulas. That must be changed.” He believes that this is particularly difficult in Spain due to its productive structure, made up mainly of small and medium-sized companies, “with fewer training processes than the large ones”. Overall, the Complutense expert warns of an intrinsic risk of these Ideas: “One trap is that if we never become obsolete, we can keep working and there are fewer and fewer jobs with physical costs, open the window to longer working hours and increase the retirement age.
Espinilla, the 39-year-old car factory worker, says she is “very pleased” to continue learning when necessary. “I think that my colleagues and I show that we are willing to train and develop in the direction that the company needs. What I ask is that they include us in the change, that we are part of this future. We have always given our best and will continue to do so. Let them count on us,” he concludes.
Technology is improving, productivity and wages are not
Despite recent technological developments, the productivity of the global economy has stagnated for years. “The expected increases in labor productivity through investments in new technologies, which would have led to higher incomes and thus more leisure activities, have not materialized. And that’s because there just hasn’t been an increase in productivity. In fact, we have been in one of the lowest periods of labor productivity growth in history for a decade,” said the ILO expert. “Some believe,” Sánchez continues, “that current technologies are simply not disruptive enough to radically change the growth model. Others suggest that we are going through a period where the fruits of these technologies have not yet been realized, but will be in the future.”
A debate paralleling productivity is why these technological improvements have had no effect on improving working-class conditions. “Today we are seeing income polarization at both the firm level – with a few firms dominating entire sectors – and at the household level – significant increases in inequality in most countries -“. “This suggests,” he adds, “that only a limited group of agents will benefit from the new technologies.”
Lahera adds to this analysis: “I think there is a concentration of productivity gains from these technologies in some sectors, so the improvements only have an impact on capital and shareholders. That in this new labor market scenario they do not achieve salaries and therefore have been stagnant in Europe for a decade”. He sees the worldwide loss of power of the trade unions as a decisive factor: “In the 1970s, the difference between the salaries of managers and workers was between six and tenfold. Now it’s hundreds of times.”
threatens to become obsolete
Beatriz Espinilla, 39, works on an Emilio Fraile car assembly line
- In the car factory where do you work Beatrice Espinilla (39 years) there is a robot that transports the parts to the assembly line operators. “I’ve been here for 10 years and when I arrived it was already there. I know it used to be carried by a wheelbarrow driver. Since I’ve been here, the ones that have been the most damaging to my knowledge have been other automated positions, which have included positions that end up injuring the worker,” he explains. The possibility of being replaced by a robbery at the end doesn’t keep him awake. “We’re more worried about bottlenecks or the semiconductor crisis,” he says. He thinks it’s good that technology “helps”, but is committed to integration “with balance”. “I think that people always have to supervise. There are many processes, many more than it seems, in which we do detailed work that is very difficult for a machine to do. I can’t imagine how a robot can guard a door, which is what I’m doing now. It may happen in the very distant future, but I don’t think I’ll see it,” he adds.
- Despite the uncertainty that automation brings to your industry, the logistics, Stephanie Garcia (28 years) names some important benefits. “It’s more productive and there’s less room for error. We make fewer mistakes, we do less physical exertion… Just because we don’t gain weight and make fewer repetitive movements, this is very noticeable in the body at the end of the day.” He is particularly grateful that he now hardly bends over must, as the boxes reach a height that does not require this movement. “But of course,” he qualifies, “you can see that they need fewer people with all of this. It’s a change you don’t like. It can give you quality of life while you keep working there, but in the long run there’s a good chance they’ll get by without you. What we used to do between 10 can now be done by two people.” The integration of technology is “good” and must be implemented quickly, but at the same time requires “nobody to be left out”. “I know it’s very difficult, but for example a tax on machines when they replace workers, as is being proposed in other countries, would be phenomenal,” says the Guadalajara resident.
- pillar thumb (51 years) finds paying at the pay machine in the supermarket “very cold, I don’t like it at all”. “Also, it means no savings as a customer, so I don’t understand why I choose this option. It doesn’t get much faster than that,” says the Madrid native, who has been working in sales for 20 years. “The first thing I thought when I saw one of these automatic boxes was that we were going to disappear quickly, but we’re still here. I think that at squad level we are more or less the same as before,” says the Madrid native. He criticizes that this type of service does not involve personal attention: “I don’t know, it seems to me that it’s a sign that some companies only want benefits, that they don’t care if a machine eats people. Ultimately, companies have the benefit of knowing that people aren’t going to go to small companies because they can’t compete on price prices or an improvement in working conditions. “I’m confident that customers who get a feel for me will continue to choose me over a machine,” he concludes.
- Diego Martin (36 years) is machinist and General Secretary of the Spanish Union of Railway Mechanics. From his position, he knows first-hand what the possibilities are for the trains to end up running alone: ”It has always sounded like that, but in the railway industry it is very difficult that there is a rapid evolution.” This is due the connections between networks regulated by European regulations that change very slowly. However, there are closed networks, not connected to each other, where automation is taking hold: “In the Barcelona Metro there are lines that work automatically, and soon in Madrid too.” Overall, Martín assures that the trains are never completely alone be driven: “There must always be staff on the train. If it gets stuck between two stations, 50 kilometers apart, you need someone who knows how to get it working again.” “When high speed started in the 90s, everyone said that in 10 years everything would be high speed. And 30 years later, there are still many conventional trains and they are the ones that carry the most passengers. Like the autonomous car that seemed imminent and look at all the legal and social issues they have,” he adds.
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