Today at the White House, he hosted a Worker Voice Summit.
Major labor groups such as the Service Employees International Union have embraced alt-labor tactics in an effort to crack union-resistant industries such as fast food. SEIU poured $23 million in 2014 alone into promoting the "Fight for $15" minimum wage movement. Obama was introduced at the event by Terrance Wise, an activist with the Fight for $15 movement.Exactly what kinds of new organizing methods were going to be pursed was not clear, as only part of the White House event was open to the press.Participants at the event included top Democrats such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, and labor leaders such as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The linked Washington Examiner article notes the general absence of anyone representing owners and managers.
It also notes that "many millenials work in industries such as high tech or for companies such as the ride-sharing service Uber that by their very nature are hard to organize." So maybe the fact that the emerging generation grew up taking a different view of the world of work from thugs like Trumka will make this event and those like it a non-starter.
I can't see it resonating with the millennial I know. I'm pretty sure they'd find it constricting.
The existing generation grew up without a clue about how great things used to be in the world of work in America. Hell, they were screwed to the financial wall with their college debt.
ReplyDeleteIf we can ever restore this country to any kind of economic health, it's going to look a lot different than previous periods of economic health. And, yes, the college-bound are ill-advised to incur those student-loan debts in most circumstances.
ReplyDeleteDude, it's looked different since your hero Ronnie Reagan took the stage. Don't you love the way the corporate world got rid of all that nasty baggage like pensions paid health insurance, nay even workers who they did their damndest to turn into 1099s? Sure the new world of work is going to look a lot different. It is going to be robots.
ReplyDeleteRead more at http://blogs.pjstar.com/mindingbiz/2015/06/18/ready-or-not-the-robots-are-coming-fast/
ReplyDeleteI suppose you think your new model for the world of work is some wonderful trickle down world, which is really same old same old. Au contraire oh great prognosticator and prophet of doom.
ReplyDeleteOne need only review Frank Tobe’s remarkable Robot Report each month or so to see that sci-fi is fast becoming sci-fact.
Tobe reprints a recent Wall Street Journal article by James Hagerty on the rise of the new bots: “The latest models entering factories and being developed in labs are a different breed. They can work alongside humans without endangering them and help assemble all sorts of objects, as large as aircraft engines and as small and delicate as smartphones. Soon, some should be easy enough to program and deploy that they no longer will need expert overseers,” noted Hagerty.
On the plus side, by reducing labor costs, robots could allow the United States and other high-wage countries to get back into some of the processes that have been ceded to China, Mexico and other countries with vast armies of lower-paid workers, stated the WSJ article.
Hagerty ticks off where robots are working these days: at JCB Laboratories in Wichita, Kan. filling syringes with medications; at Fender Musical Instruments in Corona, Calif., applying coatings to guitars and at SoftWear Automation in Atlanta, Ga., sewing garments.
Here’s a surprise: China is going for robots in a big way. According to the International Federation of Robotics, China has just 30 robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees. That’s well below South Korea (437), Japan (323), Germany (282) and the United States (152).
Think you're immune, oh freedom loving freedom lover? Look again.
ReplyDeleteaccording to Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future robot software (sans human) is currently writing magazine and web articles at the rate of about one story per 30 seconds, based only on raw data input. "It's quite sophisticated," Ford, a Silicon Valley software developer, said on a recent NPR interview. "It doesn't simply take numbers and fill in the blanks in a formulaic report. It has the ability to actually analyze the data and figure out what things are important, what things are most interesting, and then it can actually weave that into a very compelling narrative."
According to Ford, the ongoing switch from real to robot writers is the dirty little secret of many magazines, especially (at present) those focusing on finance and sports. "Forbes is one that we know about. Many of the others that use this particular service aren't eager to disclose that." Ford asserts that this silent revolution is ongoing, though and that other areas of professional writing are falling under robot authorship.
Here is the full interview, which talks about many more--in fact most--middle class jobs (including lawyers and financial analysts) being replaced by robot software, not in a remote science-fictiony future but, like, nowsville baby.
Read more at http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?82017-Are-Robots-Replacing-Writers
Oh the glory, restoring a concept such as a nation to economic health while its citizens eat, not cake, but, well, a 4 letter word for feces
ReplyDeleteSo get in your car and drive for Uber until the cars drive themselves. How smart is that, huh, driver?
ReplyDeleteHere's the problem: You are once again conflating two issues that are only tangentially related (why the economy is different than it was in the 1960s, and the increasing presence of robots and automation). It greatly diminishes the coherence, such as it is, of your argument. Unless you bring up the robots to attempt to indict the free market, as in it's just another example of greedy corporations minimizing costs at any societal expense.
ReplyDeleteBut from the examples you cite - particularly when you bring in China, which is a Communist country - I don't get that that is exactly what you are after. But that leaves me not having a clue as to what you are after.
But with regard to the fact that one sees less in the way of health insurance and pensions in compensation packages, why is that necessarily a bad idea? There's a good argument to be made that individuals are better off being in charge of such aspects of their lives themselves.
Your first paragraph brilliantly "gets it."
ReplyDelete"The 401(k) experiment has been a disaster, a disaster which threatens to doom millions to economic misery during the later years of their lives." And it's a bigger problem than just that "people do not (and often cannot) sock enough income away in their accounts." IRAs and 401(k)s give people the illusion "they have skin in the game on Wall Street." Unless you have a ton of money in your account, "you are not a player." You're a guppy in a shark tank.
Read more at http://theweek.com/articles/467908/shift-401ks-been-disaster
It's a global workplace now dude although you always seem to want to bring the troops and bombs into it. How creative!
ReplyDelete