When the Robots Punch In
Turner, Steve
Labor's Uphill Struggle BY STEVE TURNER When the Robots Punch In Almost everything the mass media have told you about the robot revolution is false: The American workplace will not soon resemble...
...If robots help this country bridge the gap between technology's potential and its reality, their major contribution will be measured in social change, not industrial productivity...
...And this argument has mollified some unionists—even where jobs have been lost...
...But robots can carry a lot of weight and do basic, brute tasks...
...What's more, adds Blue-stone, robots will eliminate more jobs than other kinds of computer-based automation...
...Real robots tend to be ugly and stupid...
...Robotic technology is specifically aimed at reducing the use of physical labor, and it really has no purpose besides that," says Barry Blue-stone, co-author of The Deindustrializa-tion of America...
...Shaiken fears that robots will displace workers even as the economy improves: "As we recover from the recession, robots and related technologies are going to be employed first...
...Most workers don't mind technology designed to make work easier or better," says David Cohen, UE field organizer for western Massachusetts...
...The temperature in there was about 120-130 degrees with a lot of fumes, and we decided to fight for changes to make it tolerable...
...There's going to be terrible job loss, but it's going to come from other sources as well as robots," says Bluestone...
...American business, however, is only partly ready for robots: Initial costs usually preclude using them in all but the largest factories, and shop floors usually have to be redesigned to accommodate the technology...
...The International Association of Machinsts (IAM) has drawn up a "rein-dustrialization" program, to be introduced in Congress soon, that proposes a "robotics tax" and other means of recapturing private windfalls for social investment...
...When that begins to happen, robotics may push large numbers of Americans out of work...
...Add the cost of eight years of maintenance, spare parts, and electricity, and the total expenditure might reach about $75,000...
...You're going to see an increasing use of both...
...At one machine tool plant in western Massachusetts, employees were complaining about conditions in a part of the shop...
...In fact, where robots improve Steve Turner, a free-lance writer in Lowell, Massachusetts, specializes in labor and economic issues...
...According to a study at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, robots today are capable of performing as many as seven million factory jobs in the United States and will be competent enough a decade from now to replace almost all manufacturing workers in major heavy industries...
...they would have access to computer information concerning employee performance and would be authorized to resolve programming breakdowns...
...Bluestone doubts there is enough investment capital available to foment a robot revolution in the near future...
...At the General Motors assembly plant in Framingham, Massachusetts, for example, management acquired a large robot collection during a recent shutdown...
...It's the first time at this level that these three unions have gotten together with the blessing of the leadership," says Emspak...
...We're at the beginning of the microcomputer revolution...
...Japan leads the world in total numbers of units, and the Soviet Union is coming up behind the United States...
...Labor looks beyond the immediate threat of robots to a better future...
...Bring them two pieces of metal, in position, and they can weld the seam...
...Asquith described the success there of a multi-union demand for joint labor-management design and control of automated technology...
...These are the new peons of production...
...Unlike the more sophisticated computer-aided equipment for design and manufacture—known as CAD/CAM, and involving such technology as design-making video display terminals or metalworking machines—robots do not amplify human abilities...
...It was a pretty small, enclosed space where [saw] blades got heated in a furnace and then shifted to an oil quench," recalls Judy Rough, president of Local 274 of the United Electrical Workers (UE...
...Control of technology involves political issues, not technological issues," says Harley Shaiken, an automation specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
...Do it.'" A similar welcome greeted the introduction of a robot at a General Electric plant in eastern Massachusetts...
...And when we start getting into the $20,000-$30,000 range, we'll have opened up sales to the single-shift [factory] market, where about 85 per cent of U.S...
...In both cases, the few employees who were displaced found new assignments in other positions...
...The corporate response to such concerns is powerful...
...And give them sensory equipment sufficient to make elementary decisions, and they'll move onto the assembly lines, where their biggest growth is projected...
...Labor's Uphill Struggle BY STEVE TURNER When the Robots Punch In Almost everything the mass media have told you about the robot revolution is false: The American workplace will not soon resemble a set from Star Wars, and U.S...
...The real choice is how this technology will be designed and developed, and who will pay the social costs of its introduction...
...Most robots bear no resemblance to the cute critters depicted in the movies...
...Who knows what differences they might have if workers' needs were part of the design criteria...
...Convened by Frank Emspak's IUE local—the largest in Massachusetts with 8,500 members—the conference drew national-level support from the IUE, UE, and IAM (although Machinist delegates were called away at the last minute to an emergency conference of their own...
...What they mind is technology that's specifically designed to replace them...
...They cannot replace highly developed skills, and therefore do not threaten, as CAD/CAM does, to polarize the work force between a technical elite and button-pushing operatives...
...Slowly and cautiously, labor is responding...
...The robot was installed in a grit-blasting area, "and the workers like it," says Frank Emspak, a machinist, automation analyst, and member of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), the other major electrical workers' union...
...At the shop floor, workers have generally been wary, but they have not taken to smashing machines in a Luddite response...
...Failure to automate, says Phillippe Villers, president of Automatix Corporation, a robot manufacturer, may result in reduced or lost wages for just as many workers because world markets will be lost to modernized foreign competitors...
...But in addition, some unions are stressing the need to use robot-created wealth to offset robot-created unemployment...
...Robots could bring us higher unemployment, or they could afford the opportunity to eliminate demeaning labor, reduce work loads, and produce more resources for broad social purposes...
...Moreover, "prices are going to go down," according to George Munson, marketing vice president of Connecticut's Unimation Corporation, a pioneering robot maker recently acquired by Westing-house...
...European unions, especially in the Scandinavian countries, have won victories in these areas...
...Traditional proposals are being considered, such as shortening the work week at present wage levels—a course which could provide jobs...
...We're not happy with robots," says Charles McDivitt, president of the plant's United Auto Workers (UAW) local, "but people know they've got to have them to compete...
...I don't think the choice is between using and not using robots...
...Robots improve productivity and profitability because they replace an average of two to three humans per unit...
...The pressure from international competition is real, says Shaiken, but it is only half the story...
...Follow the corporations' desired route, and "our society might end up with a bunch of large, automated, highly competitive firms in a sea of unemployment," he warns...
...One encouraging sign of a fresh response to robots was a conference in June on labor and computer automation...
...What's compelling about the situation isn't how many workers are going to be displaced, it's how many of those already unemployed aren't ever going to get back to work...
...two workers employed for the same period would cost at least $250,000...
...Sweden has the highest ratio of robots to industrial workers...
...The real choice is how this technology will be designed and developed and who will pay the social costs of its introduction9 three million people to look for jobs...
...And the people said, 'Great...
...It's shitty work, and they don't have to do it now...
...Like previous innovations, robots have arrived well in advance of the political changes necessary to make their introduction beneficial to all...
...bring them a bare surface and they can paint or sand it...
...As on other issues, activist locals are leading the way, pressing for on-the-job worker retraining and the transfer of responsibility for programming computers to the shop floor...
...The alternative to remaining competitive is either high unemployment or eventually becoming the source of low-cost labor for countries whose productivity is rising more rapidly than ours," he says...
...The promise of technology, however, has been touted since the clacking of the first loom— and working people still experience pain and drudgery...
...It is possible that by the year 2000 robots could replace 15 per cent of the manufacturing work force, forcing some 1 don't think the choice is between using and not using robots/ says Harley Shaiken, MIT's automation expert...
...Labor activists are also looking for ways to share in the fruits of robot power and the improved productivity it brings...
...In an expanding economy of the sort experienced in the 1960s, such displacement could be absorbed...
...Other international unions are coming around to the IAM's approach...
...Our friends the Japanese will see to that if nothing else does...
...The machines are accurate, inexhaustible, dependable, obedient—and generally cost an employer much less than a living worker...
...They typically look like a cross between an oil well pump and a saguaro cactus, and the brightest models for years to come will have less effective intelligence and sensory capacities than an average insect...
...The need to compete in world markets is the basic selling point for robots...
...On a large scale, though, that is exactly the idea behind robots...
...Data shop stewards" have been proposed...
...Says Emspak, "Machines are being designed now to maximize profits for companies without regard to social cost...
...labor can do more than just watch the show...
...Corporate executives, he says, are likely to rely on capital mobility—the transfer of production to lower-cost, non-union locations—to improve productivity...
...The issues are power and control over one's life, and those are political questions...
...As Shaiken points out, robots and related technologies sever the traditional "link between improved corporate performance and increasing employment...
...Members of other unions also participated, including Philip Asquith, representing the Combined Shop Stewards Council at Lucas Aerospace Industries in England...
...Not today...
...The opportunity to install robots occurs most often when a plant is relocated, remodeled, or shut down...
...manufacturing is done...
...working conditions, the reaction has been positive...
...There are only about 6,500 robots at work today in the United States, and some 100,000 may be in operation by 1990— replacing perhaps 1 per cent of the manufacturing work force...
...We could design robots to work cooperatively with people rather than having people serve them," adds Shaiken...
...If wrong decisions are made now, workers are going to pay a very heavy cost...
...The issue of robot design is a political one...
...My feeling is that both techniques of disciplining and eliminating the need for labor—capital mobility and robots—go hand in hand...
...So the management threatened to put in a robot if we kept pushing...
...The robots are coming, to be sure, but the pace at which they are introduced and their ultimate effect on society have by no means been preprogrammed...
...Also offered at the conference was contract language from the Norwegian trade union federation, which accomplished some of the same goals...
...A fully equipped robot that costs, say, $50,000 will run for two or even three shifts a day until it wears out or becomes obsolete (eight years is the rated depreciation period), performing at 95 per cent efficiency...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
