A LONG TERM LOOK AT AUTOMATION (payt two) by Julian Atkinson
The National Heonenic Development Council has taken an interest in automation, having delivered its 4% nur 5 s 4% owth p i Singled out several areas for long ae frien, ins
g term examination It has t 2 : e as set up economic development committees for @ number of industries to investigate be factors that affect the industry's rate of &rowth, Professor Richard cs of the Department of Applied Economies at Cambridge, has constructed amatheatical model of the British economy to assist N.B.D.Ce He has concluded that if the target of an expansion of 4% per annum is continued until 1970, the nation will needa 1, 350,000 fewer unskilled workers and 1,395,000 less craftsmen than at present,
Automation is going to displace many people from their jobs and the 1970's promise to be really turbulent ones for the Dritish workers unless a socialist soillution has been found. By then, the techniques of automation and, particularly, their adaption to the special problems of each industry will have advanced considerably and the unskilled will certainly not be the only sufferers, The assumption that technicians and other qualified personnel will be in greater demand in sadly mistaken, The step from a machine that can control its ow actions to one that can locate and repair a favlt in its functioning, and even reproduce itself, is not very great. That is why any boom in the demand for technicians is likely to be a short one,
On. the other hand those jobs which are monotonous by nature — assembly jobs, many clerical operations, bus conducting, ticket collect~ ing, and even farm labouring, will begin to disappear, Shop assistants who even now face the pressure from supermarkets, will find their jobs under threat too. Computer—controlled wareh ouses, linked with mailorder systems of distribution will become the order of the day.
Coal mining is an example of the pattern to come. In 1956, mechanical methods of retrieving coal accounted for 5% of the coal mined. By 1961, the figure was 48%, and by 1962, it had risen to 60% The net result is that now takes 75 miners to retrieve the same tonnage of coal as it took 100 in 1957.
A writer in New Scicntist suggested that the idea promoted by Dr. Michael Young, namely, that there be a general increase in the importance of personal service, might provide the solution to finding jobs for those displaced. He said that the crudest solution, that of accepting a steady increase in the number of people reckoned to be "unemployable" was hardly likely to gain genoral acceptance.
This writer also posed another social effect of automation: thé disappearance of small firms. These survive by oxploiting the inefficiencies of larger firms which become manifest as they grow. However, if the large firms become fully automised this factor disappears and all the advantages of large-scale production will operate. He ended by raising the question of “how two computer—run and fully optimised organisations " could compete in business? I would pose the question more broadly: how, in view of all the social upsurge and disturbance which large-scale automation will bring, can capitalist methods of production continue as we know them? Its up to us to see they don't.