LinkedIn sent me an email recently with a little reminder about the ever-evolving nature of the workplace.
My first job was at the local McDonald’s. I worked the front window and it was the beginning a rewarding career in customer and public service.
It’s been a long time since I have eaten at McDonald’s but I did have a meeting there recently and a lot has changed. Back in the early 1990’s when I was working the till, there were a half dozen windows on the front counter. During the busy times we would also have two or three people helping us put the orders together. Now there are only a couple of windows and the front staff has been cut way back. In the centre of the lobby is a bank of screens where customers can place their orders.
While waiting for an Americano at a busy downtown Vancouver Starbucks, I watched as people walked through the door and picked up their waiting order. Using their mobile app they ordered their morning coffee without having to stand in line or interact with another human being. In a conversation with a local coffeeshop owner, he said emphatically that technology in his industry has advanced to the point that increasingly automation is making people redundant.
Addressing the changing workplace
The disruption in the labour market is happening for a number of reasons. It’s important to acknowledge that just as the nature of work has changed since I was a teenager in the early 1990’s, so have the teenagers. In conversations with employers, I found out they are finding it difficult to get local people who want to work for them. However, automating certain aspects of their operation cuts their labour costs and increases their profits. The screen in the lobby at McDonald’s is incredibly reliable. The Starbucks mobile app is convenient for both the corporation and its customers.
The nature of work changed dramatically in the industrial revolution and it is rapidly changing in the technological revolution. What about all the people that technology is displacing? Certainly some of them are choosing to do something else. Although, since some local manufacturers just can’t find skilled tradespeople, they purchase a CNC machine.
As we discuss and debate labour issues going forward, it has to be in this modern context. What is the social cost of robots replacing humans in the workplace? Is there one? If humans are not doing these jobs any more, what jobs are the doing? If they are not working, how are they affording the ever-increasing cost of living? What about government revenue? Or, the increasing cost of social services?
All of these issues have the potential to cripple our society. If we are not looking forward, we will be left behind. Let me know what you think!
Similar observation on the self-checkout systems now being installed at THrifty’s and in operation some time at Home Depot Gordon Head. As a matter of principle I always go to a lane with a human being doing the job which one time at Home Depot was a woman confined to a wheel chair.
The issues is always about creating demand for goods and services. A guaranteed minimum income for all is the solution to both a healthy economy as well as supporting parents providing child care in the critical young age. A minimum income also works to support education and retraining for the new economy.