Robots and the union label in Korea
So my last post in tymshft was about robots, I guess.
And I haven’t written about guaranteed income in a while.
And I don’t know that I’ve ever written about Korea.
Put those together, add trade unions, and you get this:
As far as job security is concerned, Hyundai Motor is touted as the best place for workers as the automaker’s militant trade union safeguards them against any attempts by management to cut payrolls.
However, they seem not to be content with the status quo as the union is asking the company to guarantee that their jobs will be safe even after the full-fledged introduction of robotic production, possibly controlled by artificial intelligence (AI).
In a sense, this is not about technology at all. Change “robots” to “Chinese immigrants” (or, in the case of my own country…Chinese immigrants) and the issues are the same. An established labor order is upset by the introduction of low-cost workers who require less salary and benefits. Of course, in the case of robots, “salary and benefits” becomes maintenance and upkeep.
There are two prevailing thoughts in all of these situations. One is that the high-salary jobs that are taken by these low-cost workers (carbon-based or otherwise) are not coming back, and that we’ll need some type of “guaranteed income” mechanism to keep society from falling apart. The other is that the old high-salary jobs will be replaced by high-salary jobs in new industries, and the economy will adjust like it always has when horse-and-buggy dealers, tobacco farmers, and coal miners saw job losses.
But what happens in a country like Korea? I plead ignorance about Korean society and customs, but what happens in such a country where people no longer work in traditional jobs – or perhaps no longer work at all?
Or am I kidding myself when I believe that the go-getter U.S. society can adjust to this more quickly than so-called traditional societies? After all, even though we haven’t been around for all that long, we have our own traditions…
tymshft 