Excerpts from an article posted at ILWU Canada:
Professor Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University says almost half of all jobs in industrialised nations are at risk of redundancy over the next two decades.
Sydney dockworker and father of three, Ben Bartolo, is experiencing that first hand – he is about to lose his job at Port Botany.
“Patricks are going to bring automation into the terminal, where they are not going to need my position anymore,” the 34-year-old straddle driver said.
It has been 16 years since Mr Bartolo’s employer, Patrick Stevedores, triggered the historic waterfront dispute by slashing and restructuring its workforce.
Now Patricks is about to deploy driverless robots to take over cargo handling operations at Port Botany.
Mr Bartolo is just one of 180 who have been told their jobs must go.
Paddy Crumlin, national secretary of the Maritime Union, is furious Patricks only announced its automation plans after dockworkers had settled their latest enterprise agreement.
“Virtually the whole world changed overnight,” Mr Crumlin said.
“You know, [they said] ‘we’ve halved the workforce, we’ve got rid of human beings. Hurrah, hurrah. We are world’s best practice.’ I don’t think that’s best business practice.”
Professor Osborne and his research colleagues are increasingly concerned about the rate of automation and the job losses, and the increased social inequality it could trigger.
“This historical trend we’ve seen of being able to find new uses for human labour, create new jobs even faster than technology makes them redundant, that may not continue,” Dr Osborne said.