The Impact of Automation on Work

Introduction

In 1990 I was driving through what had once been small towns on Canada's west coast, when I suddenly became aware of something radically different.

All the familiar Mom-and-Pop restaurants and grocery stores were now gone, replaced by the same franchise outlets that I was used to in the big city.

The recognition came as an epiphany. I asked myself what had happened to alter the business landscape so much. The inquiry led to eight years of studying the impact of automation which, by 1990, was well underway.

I became alarmed at what that impact on the work world seemed to be. But, though a few authors were writing on it and though I contacted labour leaders, government leaders, and anyone else of influence, no one seemed willing to listen. My own personal belief was that everyone was in love with the computer at that particular time and no one wanted to hear bad news about it. (More on this.)

Much later, around 2002, when I offered my collection of primary materials on automation to any archive or library that would take it, as representative documents collected at a key time in the history of the automation of industry, again no one showed any interest.

Meanwhile, my wife, then a travel agent, was "bridged" and her job gutted by online travel systems. She went to work in a hospital, with automation closing in fast behind her, like the Lawnmower Man, lowering her wages, taking away her benefits, and threatening to swallow her job.

I now enclose some of those writings from that era. Time has moved on. We are now busy outsourcing all the work that automation left us, which global automation now allows us to export to India and China. Watch for China particularly to exercise a baneful influence over us later on. But more to the point, I'm not sure what gainful employment will be left to our workers here. Are we racing towards the bottom? Will we turn ourselves into Third-World nations?

Shall we allow our precious Canadian universal medicare program to be shredded by what amount to predatory capitalists? Shall we watch an age of home ownership pass? How will we all afford old age in this heartless era of lowering what has come to be known as "the burden rate" (i.e., our wages)?

When will we blow the whistle and shout: "Stop!"

If This is Your Job, Watch Out! (1998)

Automation Captures Corporate Travel (1998)

A Train Headed for Disaster

Automation and the Social Contract

Some Principles of Large-Scale Employment Development