Aug. 11, 2017 "Is lifelong training the future of work?": Today I found this article by Noah Smith in the Globe and Mail:
As workers become more affected by trade and technology, there should be increased focus on education to help people adapt
In his 2006 science-fiction novel, Rainbows End, author Vernor Vinge conjured up a future in which education was a truly lifelong process. The high schools of the future were packed with a combination of precocious young children and middle-aged laid-off workers looking to retrain.
As technology changed faster and in more unpredictable ways, Mr. Vinge predicted, society’s notion of education would evolve as well, becoming an institution dedicated not to preparing legions of young people for a single job, but to helping workers constantly adapt.
As technology changed faster and in more unpredictable ways, Mr. Vinge predicted, society’s notion of education would evolve as well, becoming an institution dedicated not to preparing legions of young people for a single job, but to helping workers constantly adapt.
A recent story in The New York Times shows how we’re inching toward that future. As automation and globalization make jobs obsolete at a more rapid pace, non-profit job-training organizations such as Opportunity@Work and Skillful are helping laid-off workers retrain.
Their main focus is on middle-skill jobs – tasks such as operating machinery or doing basic programming, which require more than just a strong back but less than a college degree.
Middle-skill jobs are often routine jobs that make up a shrinking, but still substantial part of the labour market.
Their main focus is on middle-skill jobs – tasks such as operating machinery or doing basic programming, which require more than just a strong back but less than a college degree.
Middle-skill jobs are often routine jobs that make up a shrinking, but still substantial part of the labour market.
It’s these jobs that suffered most in the 2000s, when China’s entry into the global trading system shocked the U.S. manufacturing industry, and it’s these jobs that are most at risk from automation.
Lots of commentators, and some economists, believe these middle-skill jobs are doomed. There’s a common perception that the work of the future will be sharply divided into dull, low paid service tasks and exciting but difficult high-paying knowledge jobs for college graduates.
Some even believe that humans without high-skill tech or management jobs will become mostly unemployable, depending on government support to survive.
Some even believe that humans without high-skill tech or management jobs will become mostly unemployable, depending on government support to survive.
But this pessimism is premature. Although middle-skill jobs have shrunk a bit over all, the decrease is modest. Lots of middle-skill occupations are destroyed, but lots more are created.
While it’s worth thinking about scenarios in which routine work disappears, that’s a concern for the future – for now, it’s more important to help middle-class workers displaced by trade and technology find new jobs at similar skill levels.
While it’s worth thinking about scenarios in which routine work disappears, that’s a concern for the future – for now, it’s more important to help middle-class workers displaced by trade and technology find new jobs at similar skill levels.
The United States is pretty bad at this. The Department of Labour does have a program called Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which is supposed to help workers find new jobs when foreign competition eliminates their old ones. It’s just not very effective. Research in the 1980s found that TAA did nothing to boost displaced workers’ incomes. More recent studies have found a small positive effect, but nothing very impressive.
One reason may just be that the program is underfunded and too narrowly targeted. Developed countries in Europe and East Asia tend to spend a lot more on adjustment programs.
Some other research shows that there are ways to do TAA better than the United States now does it. Making the program more localized, and providing assessment and counselling for workers, can have a positive effect.
Whether a lack of funding, a fragmented system or bad execution is at fault, the United States ought to try harder to help displaced workers. The notion of a fluid labour market, in which workers quickly and easily acquire new skills and switch between occupations for their entire careers, is a fiction that exists only in outdated academic models.
The reality is that government help is needed for the middle and working class to realize their potential in the face of a fast-changing world.
The reality is that government help is needed for the middle and working class to realize their potential in the face of a fast-changing world.
In the past, this sort of proposal would be mainly championed by Democrats, with free-market Republicans disdaining the idea that workers need government help. Now, however, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have stolen a march on the left.
In June, he issued an executive order expanding both the funding and the scope of new federal apprenticeship programs. The amount of funding isn’t huge – it won’t come close to matching the amounts other countries spend. But it’s a good start, and it represents a small bit of follow-through on Mr. Trump’s promises to help the beleaguered U.S. working class.
In June, he issued an executive order expanding both the funding and the scope of new federal apprenticeship programs. The amount of funding isn’t huge – it won’t come close to matching the amounts other countries spend. But it’s a good start, and it represents a small bit of follow-through on Mr. Trump’s promises to help the beleaguered U.S. working class.
The left needs to respond in kind. Programs to provide direct government assistance to U.S. citizens – health-care subsidies, child-care benefits, universal basic income – are good, but they’re not enough.
They focus on people’s value as human beings, but do little to stress their value as productive workers.
There is a huge amount of drive and potential in the U.S. working and middle class, which government assistance can help to unlock and put to use.
They focus on people’s value as human beings, but do little to stress their value as productive workers.
There is a huge amount of drive and potential in the U.S. working and middle class, which government assistance can help to unlock and put to use.
If the left focuses all its efforts on handouts and neglects the potential of U.S. workers, it could even send a message that the left doesn’t believe the average American has much to contribute to national prosperity.
A belief that redistribution is the only way to save the working class tacitly accepts the idea that high earners produce all the marketable value in the economy. That would make for a sorry contrast to the labour-focused left of the 20th century, which emphasized the economic value created by the workers.
A belief that redistribution is the only way to save the working class tacitly accepts the idea that high earners produce all the marketable value in the economy. That would make for a sorry contrast to the labour-focused left of the 20th century, which emphasized the economic value created by the workers.
So although government benefits are fine, there should be more emphasis on initiatives to help workers retrain, find new jobs and get back on their feet after being buffeted by the winds of trade and technology. Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the only one pushing for this sort of program.
Aug. 26, 2017 "Japanese workers learn to embrace factory automation": Today I found this article by Yuri Kageyama in the Globe and Mail:
MORIYA, JAPAN Thousands upon thousands of cans are filled with beer, capped and washed, wrapped into six-packs, and boxed at dizzying speeds — 1,500 a minute, to be exact — on humming conveyor belts that zip and wind in a sprawling factory near Tokyo.
Nary a soul is in sight in this picture-perfect image of Japanese automation.
The machines do all the heavy lifting at this plant run by Asahi Breweries, Japan’s top brewer. The human job is to make sure the machines do the work right, and to check on the quality the sensors are monitoring.
“Basically, nothing goes wrong. The lines are up and running 96 per cent,” said Shinichi Uno, a manager at the plant. “Although machines make things, human beings oversee the machines.”
The debate over machines snatching jobs from people is muted in Japan, where birthrates have been sinking for decades, raising fears of a labour shortage. It would be hard to find a culture that celebrates robots more, evident in the popularity of companion robots for consumers, sold by the internet company SoftBank and Toyota Motor Corp, among others.
Japan, which forged a big push toward robotics starting in the 1990s, leads the world in robots per 10,000 workers in the automobile sector — 1,562, compared with 1,091 in the U.S. and 1,133 in Germany, according to a White House report submitted to Congress last year. Japan was also ahead in sectors outside automobiles at 219 robots per 10,000 workers, compared with 76 for the U.S. and 147 for Germany.
One factor in Japan’s different take on automation is the “lifetime employment” system. Major Japanese companies generally retain workers, even if their abilities become outdated, and retrain them for other tasks, said Koichi Iwamoto, a senior fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.
That system is starting to fray as Japan globalizes, but it’s still largely in use, Iwamoto said.
Although data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show digitalization reduces demand for mid-level routine tasks — such as running assembly lines — while boosting demand for low- and high-skilled jobs, that trend has been less pronounced in Japan than in the U.S.
The OECD data, which studied shifts from 2002 to 2014, showed employment trends remained almost unchanged for Japan.
That means companies in Japan weren’t resorting as aggressively as those in the U.S. to robots to replace humans. Clerical workers, for instance, were keeping their jobs, although their jobs could be done better, in theory, by computers.
That kind of resistance to adopting digital technology for services also is reflected in how Japanese society has so far opted to keep taxis instead of shifting to online ride hailing and shuttle services.
Still, automation has progressed in Japan to the extent the nation has now entered what Iwamoto called a “reflective stage,” in which “human harmony with machines” is being pursued, he said.
“Some tasks may be better performed by people, after all,” said Iwamoto.
Kiyoshi Sakai, who has worked at Asahi for 29 years, recalls how, in the past, can caps had to be placed into machines by hand, a repetitive task that was hard not just on the body, but also the mind.
And so he is grateful for automation’s helping hand. Machines at the plant have become more than 50 per cent smaller over the years. They are faster and more precise than three decades ago.
And so he is grateful for automation’s helping hand. Machines at the plant have become more than 50 per cent smaller over the years. They are faster and more precise than three decades ago.
Gone are the days things used to go wrong all the time and human intervention was needed to get machines running properly again.
Glitches are so few these days there is barely any reason to work up a sweat, he added with a smile.
Like many workers in Japan, Sakai doesn’t seem worried about his job disappearing. As the need for plant workers nosedived with the advance of automation, he was promoted to the general affairs section, a common administrative department at Japanese companies.
No comments:
Post a Comment