[075] — How automation (not immigration) is stealing your jobs

This is just a small example — in an organisation of some 300 full time staff, a middle manager stood proudly in front of his audience and described savings realised by automating the scanning and indexing process off over a million incoming documents per year.

The number of staff was reduced by 10 people and he was expecting to be able to bring that number down further. He seemed to have a little stutter in his voice when he said, “this will allow these staff to work in different areas of the organisation”. I wonder how many of the audience believed him.

From automated scanning to self driving vehicles to 3d printed construction of buildings, the need to have hands on eyes on tasks are diminishing. There is a reason why Uber is right up there in the driverless car business — drivers are their biggest overhead.

I just did an Injury Management course where they spoke about the ‘health benefits of being at work’. I do believe they exist and the structure and discipline is important, for most people. How do we ensure that people still have meaningful work and wealth is distributed in a fair way?