Rise of robots signals fall of workers

Trevor A. Campbell, Contributor

A number of recent articles - in both the international and the Jamaican press - illustrate how the ongoing revolution in science and technology is restructuring entire industries and, in the process, bringing about a geographical reconfiguration of the world's productive forces.

The most important of these productive forces is, of course, labour power. Here we define labour power as the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he or she exercises whenever he or she produces something of use of any description. In the context of a capitalist economy, the group of people (called the working class) who do not own the means of production (land, modern tools, etc.) have no other option but to sell the only commodity of any significance that they own (their labour power) to the owners of the land and the tools.

Who is in the working class?

Let us try to clear up some widespread misconceptions regarding the composition of the working class before proceeding with our discussion. Contrary to what many people may have heard on the street or have been taught in their social studies class in high school or sociology courses in college: it is not the size of your income, the nature of your occupation or the colour of the collar you wear that determines the social class to which you belong. It is your relationship to the means of production (tools, etc.) that are used to produce the necessities of life that determines the place you occupy in the class structure. The vast majority of the population of the United States (the most developed capitalist country in the world) belongs to the working class. That is to say, the US working class is made up of a wide cross section of occupation groups which include health-care workers, engineers, educators, factory workers, office attendants, retail clerks, dock workers, lawyers, public servants, police officers, and so on. Over the last 30 years, we have seen the accelerated proletarianisation of occupations that were once synonymous with being so-called 'middle class'. For instance: it was not that long ago that most doctors owned their private practices, as individuals or as a member of a group. The reality today is that most doctors have to sell their skills to corporately run entities, such as the Health Management Organisations (HMOs) or to the publicly owned hospitals. The prohibitively high cost of insurance and the technical advancements in medical instruments make it almost impossible for individual physicians to operate their own business in a developed capitalist economy.

This is the process through which the petty bourgeoisie (the so-called middle class) is being pushed into the ranks of the working class. In December 2008, the Los Angeles Times published a very interesting article: 'Primary-care doctors struggling to survive', which featured the experience of a Jamaica-born primary-care physician, Dr Tanyech Walford, who had to close her Beverly Hills-based practice because she could no longer stay afloat. This was attributed to the declining incomes of her patients, the rising cost of insurance, and other developments beyond her control.

Dr Walford still retained her professional title, but now she had to sell her labour power as a commodity in order to reproduce her existence as a human being. A similar process is taking place across all professions which we usually associate with the so-called middle class.

In other words, the common denominator within the ranks of the working class - in spite of the wide range of occupations, incomes, education and lifestyles - is the fact that they all have to sell their labour power in order to survive.

Capitalist production can't, and does not, stand still

The constant and unrelenting revolutionising of the means of production (the tools) in response to the competition between various capitalists on one hand, and the demand for higher wages by the workers, on the other - means that the skills of the worker are never permanent. So no job or occupation can be considered secure! This is becoming even more evident in the age of robotic production. Let us take, for example, the case of the migrant farm workers and their future within North American agricultural production, to illustrate this point.

In a recent article: 'Plant-Moving Robots Lead Investors to Harvest' (Wall St Journal, November 21, 2011), it was noted:

There's a misconception that farm workers, mostly immigrants, are getting paid very little and under the table, said Charles Grinnell, Harvest's chief executive. In fact, farmers are paying workers anywhere from US$10 to US$20 an hour, depending on the work and the region, he said. Harvest's first batch of robots will have the potential to replace about US$4.5 billion worth of annual labour in the ornamental horticulture market, he said.

Harvest Automation has raised US$7.8 million in Series B funding to launch its first product: a robot for the ornamental horticulture industry that can pick up and move plants grown in plastic containers.

Overall, there's about US$50 billion worth of agricultural products in the US that are largely produced by hand each year. Despite the size of that market, other technology and robotics companies have mostly ignored this industry, and that gives Harvest an advantage, Grinnell said. Even if other companies were to begin developing solutions to these problems, Harvest has spent a lot of time developing relationships in the industry, and the amount of time it spent in learning how the agriculture business works isn't a trivial task, he said.

Future versions of the robots will have sensors embedded in them and components that will enable them to assist with the maintenance of plants, not just moving them, Grinnell said.

In this regard, the announcement by the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) that "the Ministry of Labour and Social Security is continuing its efforts to secure more employment opportunities in North America for Jamaican workers in non-traditional areas such as trucking and heavy-duty mechanics" is indeed a timely one.

What is particularly significant about this development is that it was also revealed that "plans are afoot to establish a training school for trailer and truck drivers at the Brown's Town Community College, and this initiative is expected to be supported by employers in Canada, who will supply the requisite equipment to facilitate training and certification."

What this means is that Jamaican workers, and the locally based training centres, will become even more fully integrated into the global process of the circulation of commodities. They will, therefore, be much less socially isolated than the farm workers. You cannot have a globalised market for labour power without a generalisation of quality and standards!

European working class is also on the move

Lest anyone assume that the movement of the world's workers continues to move in one direction - from the lesser-developed regions of the capitalist economy to the more developed regions - a report from the Wall St Journal on January 14 should put that notion to rest. In the article titled 'Exodus of Workers from Continent Reverses Old Patterns', it was pointed out that:

"Economic distress is driving tens of thousands of skilled professionals from Europe, and many are being lured to thriving former European colonies in Latin America and Africa, reversing well-worn migration patterns. Asia and Australia, as well as the US and Canada, are absorbing others leaving the troubled Eurozone.

At the same time, an influx of Third World immigrants whose labour helped fuel Europe's growth over the past decade is subsiding. Hundreds of thousands of them, including some white-collar professionals, have been returning home.

The exodus is raising concern about a potential long-term cost of the economic crisis - a talent drain that could hinder the Eurozone's weakest economies as they struggle to climb out of recession."

What is also important to keep in mind is that quite a number of the globally oriented corporations are now shifting a significant portion of their research and development activities to Asia, where the cost of reproducing intellectual labour power is lower (see 'US Loses High-Tech Jobs as R&D Shifts Towards Asia', Wall St Journal, January 18, 2012). As the article noted:

"Global, US-based companies such as 3M Co, Caterpillar Inc and General Electric Co have spent billions of dollars in recent years to expand their overseas research labs. Such companies aim to tap a broader pool of scientific talent, tailor products to overseas markets and curry-favour with foreign governments by doing more research abroad."

A final note

What I have been trying to make clear here is essentially this: Individuals within the various social classes cannot have a realistic sense of the options that are available to them unless they develop more than an everyday commonsensical understanding of the nature of the world in which they live.

Trevor A. Campbell is a political economist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tcampbell@eee.org.