(afterthoughts) ..was: Re: De-Skilling America's Labor Force


Hey, how many of y'all saw any or all of the Terminator movies?

How about "I, Robot" movie?

How about "A.I."?

How about "Colosus, the Forbin Project"?

How about "Forbiden Planet" where the Krell create this big machine that can create anything and it turns around and kills all the Krell?

Any others I left out (Failsafe and Dr. Strangelove don't count)?


===== no change to below, included for reference and context =====
On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Straydog wrote:



On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Marco wrote:

De-Skilling America's Labor Force

By DAVID MACARAY

If there were any lingering doubts about Corporate America's contempt
for working men and women, the on-going attempt to replace people with
robots should put those doubts to rest. Clearly, a company that
prefers a "mechanical man" to a functioning human being is trying to
tell us something.

My version of the above is that we live in a modern society that--unlike the hunerer/gatherer/planter times--absolutely requires money to live. However, class priviledge--invented perhaps ten thousand years ago by the rich and powerful mainly for their own benefit--is distributed according
to not necessarily demonstrated merit or even work. Biological evolution, of course, allowed the development of biological parasites which, when on a host, live and reproduce at low cost. Robber=barron mindsets really like this arrangement. Biological evolution also allowed the development of symbiosis which is not just you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours, but shows that specialization can exist in a "socialist" framework.

Replacing workers with robots should be obvious proof that the rich/powerful really are not that smart/wise/just.

A recent announcement by Big Three automakers that they plan to invest
a billion dollars over the next decade in the development of robotics
reminded me of a remark made by an HR representative of the Kimberly-
Clark Corporation, some years ago.

Old style automation, but they never explained how discretionary money is to get into the wallets of the fired/laid-off workers so they can buy the products.

Robber-barron mindset, again.

Off-handedly, he suggested that we might be surprised at what kind of
workforce would, hypothetically, "scare" a management team. For
example, it wouldn't be a lazy, belligerent or even militantly pro-
union workforce. Those types, he assured us, could be "fixed" (his
term). No, the scariest workforce would be a conspicuously talented
one.

How about the "host" becomes the "parasite"?

Why? Because talent is expensive. Talent is leverage. And while there
is obviously a profound upside to having valuable workers, there is,
paradoxically, a built-in downside: Management is now dependent upon a
variable it can't control.

Cheap labor is even cheaper. Viz. all the car factories being built in 3rd world countries. The Chinese "Chery" will be sold in the USA next year.

Typically, people with "careers" are interested in advancement,
recognition, self-realization, etc. Ambition is recognized as a virtue
and is encouraged. Conversely, people with "jobs" tend to focus on
wages and benefits. But because wages and benefits constitute
overhead, ambition among the "gravy-and-french fry crowd" (witty
management-speak) is not only discouraged, it often needs to be
"fixed."

The number of managers is always less than the number of underlings, except when you get up to the level of C?O. Then there are a lot of them, again. And, if they can generate enough BS, fast enough, then they all become "in cahoots" with each other, the BoD, and the CEO and have big posh parties in Italy (eg. Koslowski & club).

Accordingly, management has embraced a strategy called "de-skilling,"
the systematic dumbing-down of jobs into easily mastered tasks. De-
skilling is to virtuosity what Agent Orange is to foliage. While its
primary goal is to improve efficiency through standardization, it's
also a means of "neutralizing" a workforce.

My brother, who used to do computer mainframe maintenance, explained how IBM made (this was 30 years ago) replaceable subassemblies for computer mainframes. Somethign goes wrong, pull out a card, put in a new one. Only these cards were special (3 layers thick) so 3rd parties could not unsolder them to get the chips so they could repair other sub-assemblies.

Progress? or service "lock-in"? I vote for the later.

We see a glimpse of it in the fast-food industry. Employees now press
buttons with pictures of menu items. No arithmetic to mess with, no
management worries about having enough cross-trained employees to go
around. The job becomes, literally, as easy as A-B-C.

Some factories--I am told-- even have zero human beings in them.

Warehousing is a better example. Before computerization, shipping
checkers (the forklift drivers who load trucks) needed to know how to
"cube out" a load. It was an art. They had to visualize the "cube,"
calculate its volume, number of cases, and number of stacks-to fill an
18-wheeler. It isn't rocket science, but it requires logic and
finesse.

And, RFID tags mean you can cut another human being out of the loop.

Today, the size and shape of every container in the warehouse-along
with the interior dimensions of every trailer and boxcar in the yard-
are logged into a computer. Everything is bar-coded. Monitors mounted
on forklifts tell checkers where to go, what to scan, how much to
grab, where to take it, and how to stack it.

What year will it be that human beings, born in a facility, will have to get a chip inserted under their skin?


Companies tell unions not to worry.

Nah, they just bust unions. Read the books. Go to the union websites.

"Confessions of a Union Buster" by Martin Jay Levitt.

They remind them that automation
itself was once demonized, and that until workers saw the phenomenon
in action and came to appreciate the advantages of mechanization, they
feared it.

It is basically the executive mantra of "*** the employee" whenever possible.

But automation arrived long before America's manufacturing sector had
been hollowed-out and picked-over; it arrived when good jobs were
still plentiful, and workers had time to adjust to new technology.

Wait till they get tele-truck-driving. TV cameras, images satellited to India, and an Indian getting $1-2/day to watch the truck going down the highway, steering and pedalling with the foot.

De-skilling is different. It has the potential to erode what's left of
blue-collar dignity and leave in its wake a sub-class of drones. By
stripping workers of their craft-effectively washing out their value
on the open market-de-skilling has revealed itself as automation's
evil twin brother. And there's no easy "fix" in sight.

Watch too much dumb TV and you get dumbed down, too.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and writer, was president and
chief contract negotiator of the Assn. of Western Pulp and Paper
Workers, Local 672, from 1989 to 2000. He can be reached at:
dmacaray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

So, did he "sell out" or something?



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