In the 1980s and 1990s, the fate of our children was sealed. Everyone was automating. They intended to save $10,000 a machine in manpower replaced. (1) They regarded obsolete labor as expendable. No plan was made to compensate the displaced for loss of job and in many cases career.
Gone were the “permanent” jobs we enjoyed, for our children. Contract/temporary employment only. No pension, medical benefits, regular hours, paid vacation, union representation. It was a buyer’s market for labor now.
This is the future we bequeathed to them. And, now, here it is.
The one that hit me the most out of what’s said here was: “Stop finding yourself, pal: It’s time to get back to work — if you still have a job, that is.” (2) Automation marked the end of the Growth Movement. No one had any money any longer for growth workshops.
And, so, the historian in me wants you to hear the tenor of the discussion back then as the speakers were actually automating or else supporting the automation of the worker.
This is what we were thinking of when automated our workforce and shipped our factories overseas.
Footnotes
(1) “Theoretically every time you make a $10,000 investment on technology you should have replaced one employee.” (James Miller, CEO of Royal Trustco in Macleans, Nov. 23, 1992, 44.
(2) David Olive, “The New Hard Line,” Report on Business Magazine, October, 1991, 15.
What is forcing automation and exporting factories?
Forced upon business by unprecedented global competition and financial turbulence, the change is so swift and powerful that it is churning across the business landscape with the force of an army of bulldozers. American companies have started the huge task of rebuilding themselves from the ground up, erecting a sleek new operating architecture to replace the unwieldy processes of the past. … Their aim: to produce streamlined, combative concerns that can withstand the frenetic, competitive pace of the late ’80s. (George Russell, “Rebuilding to Survive,” Time, 16 Feb. 1987, 46-7., 46.)
The only way American manufacturing can revive is by becoming capital-intensive instead of labor-intensive. That means using all kinds of advanced technology, new materials, and so on. (Gina Goldstein. 1990. “Joseph F. Coates: Engineering in the Year 2000,” Mechanical Engineering, October, 79.)
Perhaps as important is the new world of global capital markets. … Interest rate markets around the world are increasingly integrated. Investors, armed with round-the-clock computerized trading systems, can shift billions from one country to another, eliminating any persistent real interest-rate disparities. (Christopher Farrell, “The U.S. Has a New Weapon: Low-Cost Capital,” Business Week, 29 July 1991, 73.)
“What will the 1990s bring? Anderson sees it as an intensely competitive decade with ‘time to market’ as the battle cry. … ‘The ability to take continuing advances in technology and respond quickly with them in a worldwide competitive situation. This will be the big differentiator.’” (Samuel Weber, “Battle Cry of the ’90s,” Electronics, 1990, 80, at https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Electronics/90s/90/Electronics-1990-08.pdf.)
If it works, it’s obsolete. (Harvey Gellman, Chairman of Gellman Heyward & Partners, “Technology,” Inside Guide, Winter 1989, 93.)
Social Darwinism – Only the strongest survive
“Social Darwinism is respectable again.” (Olive, 1991, 15.)
In the next few years, as the airline shakeout on the Continent continues, the weaker ones will disappear and the stronger may be more willing to bargain, confident that they can survive in a more open and competitive environment. (Andrea Rothman, “U.S. to World: Airline Deals Hinge on Open Skies,” Business Week, 11 January 1993, 46.)
“Only yesterday, employees were held to be the most valued assets of a corporation. Then the recession began to do its work. Today the job market is awash with curricula vitae, and people don’t seem so valuable any more. Where are they now, the workers who were invited to conceive and embrace a company vision? Many are gone, swept up in the dehumanizing process of ‘body-count reductions.’” (Olive, 1991, 15)
“[A recent full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal … reads: ‘He who hesitates is lunch.’” (Loc. cit.)
“Stop finding yourself, pal: It’s time to get back to work — if you still have a job, that is.” (Loc. cit.)
He who hesitates is lunch. (Art Zimmerman, “These Materials are Downright Precocious,” Business Week, Sept. 16, 1991, 112; J. Olive, 1991, 15.)
Recessions are Now Featuring Jobless Recoveries
There used to be an expectation, [Angus Reid official Darrell Bricker] says, that when the economy improved jobs would be created.
“People are coming to terms with the fact that you can have a jobless recovery. This is something that’s really a recent phenomenon.” (Eric Beauchesne, “Canadians Seem Resigned to Fewer Jobs, Poll Finds,” Vancouver Sun, 5 July 1996, A9.)
Revolutions are always bloody, and the productivity revolution is no exception. As companies large and small embrace new technologies and eliminate jobs, millions of workers are finding that their old careers are becoming obsolete. In just the past year, even as the economy grew by 2.6%, more than 500,000 clerical and technical positions disappeared, probably forever. And better information systems are eliminating the need for lots of middle managers. It’s no wonder why so many Americans are distressed: They see their paychecks lagging inflation and they worry about joining their families and friends in the ranks of the unemployed. To these folks, the productivity revolution is a threat, not a boon. (Michael J. Mandell and Christopher Farrell, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs — Eventually,” Business Week, June 14, 1993, 72.)
[The] need for increased productivity on the factory floor … has led to the widespread use of robotics and other automation techniques. (Denzil J. Doyle, President, Doyletech Corporation, “Where Will Canada Stand?” Inside Guide, Winter 1989, 100.)
Nine months after the recession is supposed to have ended, stagnant sales and wrenching structural change are forcing companies across the country to downsize, freeze wages, lay off workers or go bankrupt. (Greg Ip, “Recovery on Hold,” Financial Post, December 16, 1991,1.)
“It is known as downsizing, rationalizing, streamlining and, perhaps most commonly, restructuring. With a bow to the diet culture, some prefer to call it just plain slimming down. By whatever name it goes, a compulsion is sweeping through corporate America to bring about fundamental, long-lasting changes in the way it does business.” (Russell, 1987.)
(To be concluded in Part 2, tomorrow.)