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low-end jobs
More recently, I've interacted with automation that is designed to specifically replace humans rather than broadening service. The automated check-out at grocery stores is the big example here. Instead of one cashier per line, stores now need one employee per 4 or so lines. This isn't making things more convenient for customers; unlike ATMs, the scanners are only available when the store is open anyway.
There are practical reasons I tend to avoid the automated checkouts, mostly related to speed. The line for the human has to be about three times as long as the line for the machine before the machine looks like a time-saver. People may get more proficient at scanning and packing over time, of course.
But I find that even absent that consideration, I'm reluctant to use the machine. Doing so helps to eliminate a low-end job that might be the only job the job-holder is capable of doing. Most of the cashiers I see at the grocery store aren't college-age kids looking for spending money; they're middle-aged and sometimes visibly handicapped.
This is not wholly a compassion-based argument; it's also one of expedience. I think we as a society are better off if almost everyone has a productive job. And some people are only capable of the lower-end jobs that are most in danger of being automated away. (Aside: for this reason, requirements for high minimum wages are also a bad idea -- don't make it cost-ineffective to hire people at prices they're willing to work for!)
We cannot avoid automation, of course, and in many cases it's a good thing. I'm no Luddite (she says, typing on her computer :-) ). But I kind of wish that we could focus it a little differently sometimes.
And yes, sometimes the humans are annoying to deal with. Last night I lost close to ten minutes to an inept cashier, and there is one (mentally challenged) bagger who I will never again allow to touch my groceries because he seems utterly bewildered by ideas like "the bread goes on top" (multiple failures). People who aren't capable of doing the job shouldn't hold the job anyway just out of pity. (Giant Eagle was right to fire the guy who was partially eating food and then putting the package back on the shelf, and I don't care that he didn't understand that this was wrong.) But y'know, the machines aren't painless either -- just try to get a scanning error fixed. And for the most part, the people holding these jobs are quite capable and willing to work, and I find I'm rooting for the people over the machines.
continued
3) I didn't get to discuss it further with the people involved (I confess, I was too stunned and lost the initiative -- there are a lot of details I wish I'd been more on the ball to seek out), but I will observe that there was (and is) the surrounding economic condition: This city has massively sky-rocketting rents. Things were bad all over, but much worse in the region where this restaurant was. (I don't know how to estimate tip-worker's income, so I use non-tip guidelines. Right now the Federal minimum wage for non-tip workers is $5.15/hr. That's $206/wk before taxes. I pay below market for my one-room apartment: $825/mo. Do the math.) People in waitering jobs in that region were being priced out of their apartments. They had a decision:
(1) Move to where they could afford the rent and commute in.
(2) Move to where they could afford the rent and get a new waitering job there.
(3) Don't move, and try to get more wages to afford to remain in neighborhood.
Overwhelmingly, it seems #2 won. Apparently when people in low-paying service positions moved out because they couldn't afford to live here any more, they didn't stick around, commuting to their old jobs; they got new low-paying service positions out where they live. The people taking their old apartments were "young professionals" -- white-color workers who certainly don't wait on tables.
A lot of restaurants folded. A lot of restaurants are trying to get by on a few vastly over-worked waiters.
And a lot of restaurants raised their prices, and are doing fine.
Survival of the fittest, I'm sure, but that's cold comfort to the food vendors who lost market, commercial landlords who lost restaurant tenants, cooks who lost jobs, etc. A business' success is good for many more people than the business itself.
Overall, though, in the last couple decades I'm not sure they've been a net gain for workers.
Very true. I think of unions as "supply-side corporations" -- they are corporate vendors on the labor market. What we call corporations are "demand-side corporations" because they're the ones with demand for labor, they're labor-buyers. (Really, an incorporated company is a union of employers, engaged in collective bargaining over the price of all the jobs at a facility.)
As such, unions are just as heir to the sorts of counterproductive stupidity I've discussed above, as their demand-side brethren are. They are just as likely to become corrupt, or taking over by stupid people.
This is sort of the fundamental problem of corporatism.
Re: continued
Apparently when people in low-paying service positions moved out because they couldn't afford to live here any more, they didn't stick around, commuting to their old jobs; they got new low-paying service positions out where they live.
That's what I would have expected. Employers treat the people in those jobs as interchangable, but the people in those jobs also (largely) treat employers as interchangable. Why commute in to the old job if you can get the same type of job more conveniently?