Trump job hopes doomed to defeat by automation
After wrecking machinery and burning down mills across Lancashire, the rampaging mobs were only finally brought to heel after fighting pitched battles with the army.
In the crackdown that followed, many Luddites were shot dead, more than 20 were hanged, dozens were shipped to Australia — and parliament made the smashing of industrial machinery a capital offence.
That was more than 200 years ago. But the backlash against automation and its impact on manufacturing jobs remains a powerful force — and not just in the mill towns of northern England.
On the campaign trail last year Donald Trump blamed the destruction of US manufacturing jobs on shoddy trade deals and low-cost competition from Mexico and China.
In truth, it was the relentless march of automation and industrial robots produced by the likes of Kuka, the German company, that played a bigger role in up-ending America’s blue-collar jobs market.
The United States did lose more than five million manufacturing jobs during the decade ending 2010. But according to a study by the Centre for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, 85 per cent of those jobs fell victim to technological change and robots rather than international trade.
American factories have been cutting their staff and replacing them with cheaper and more efficient machines — and it is those that have failed to do so which have been most quickly sidelined by low-cost competition overseas.
An American welder costs about $US25 an hour to employ, including benefits. The equivalent hourly operating cost of a robot welder is about $US8, according to Boston Consulting Group.
So, if Mr Trump thinks he can repatriate millions of manufacturing jobs he is probably wrong.
With no let-up in this headlong dash towards automation, it will be tricky to reshore jobs that are no longer needed.
It took 50 years for the world to install the first million industrial robots. The next million will take only eight, according to Macquarie, the investment bank.
Meanwhile, China is installing more industrial robots than any other country — about 90,000 of them last year compared with 38,000 in the whole of North America.
The €4.5 billion acquisition of Kuka by China’s Midea, which was completed this month, is a clear declaration of intent. By 2019, the country is expected to account for 40 per cent of the global industrial robot market.
So while the blue-collar Trump believers pin their hopes on a return of the oily-hands manufacturing jobs of the 1960s and 1970s, they are in for a shock. And the figures suggest that Chinese workers may be under as much threat from robots as they are.
That’s why Trump’s promise to bring back US manufacturing jobs to Rust Belt towns in the Midwest is such a hollow one.
So far his campaign seems to have had a few successes with Ford, Toyota, Sprint and Amazon making a flurry of reactive announcements. But instead of focusing on equipping American workers with the skills of the future, he seems to be largely focused on saving jobs that will one day be automated.
There is an irony too in the promise of companies such as Amazon to create jobs in America.
No company in the world has been as relentless in its pursuit of automation as Jeff Bezos’s creation, with its ambition to deliver parcels by drone from giant warehouses staffed by armies of robots.
One wonders if in future Amazon delivery drivers will rise up like the Luddites before them to swat the machines which have robbed them of their livelihoods.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...n/news-story/19c644c43df972c257977bc49a4de08d
KUKA Robotics
https://www.kuka.com/en-au/about-kuka/corporate-structure/kuka-robotics
Raider
