In this age of widespread automation and the indiscriminate use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in people’s day to day lives, and in all segments of human endeavors, a jobless society may soon become an inevitable living reality. When the ‘writing is all over the wall’, can the present-day trade union formations, their style of work and organizational strategies sustain their relevance? Without demur, the unions and their leadership will be compelled to change and adopt a new vision.
In Scandinavian countries, the unions have not only played an active role in trade union struggles, but they have also been in the forefront to organize common citizens and to secure for them pensions, health and unemployment insurance.
A jobless society will strip the working-class of its collective power and turn former workers into powerless entities in the eyes of the employers and the callous governments who will treat them as liabilities due to increased welfare costs. Governments today are pressured by corporations to keep under check and cut taxes levied on them.
In the absence of a robust organized working class, governments will run riot and readily reduce the meagre welfare budgets thus widening the huge existing inequalities in society. Understandably, the role of the unions is crucial. They have been legitimate representatives of the working class voicing their aspirations and material interests over the years. They have organised, mobilised and supported people to secure for themselves essential services as well as emotional and material security. Without the institutional protection of unions, many jobless citizens will suffer poverty and ill health. However in the context of automation and proliferation of AI, the unions ought to decisively consider shifting their focus from representing employees by rote, to participate in a broad swathe of social movements that champion people’s causes, their essential needs and aspirations, not excluding the vital issues of safety, health and environment (SHE), unemployment and poverty.
As cities grow, we face a set of challenges known as “urbanization”. One big challenge is dealing with the increasing number of vehicles on the roads causing problems like traffic congestion, longer commute times, and pressure on existing infrastructure. Aren’t we facing these problems today? Traffic congestion doesn’t just make our commutes longer; it also has significant effect on the economy and the environment.
On the economic side, congestion leads to increased costs for businesses and individuals. Time spent stuck in traffic means delays in supply and sale: impacting work efficiency, productivity causing pollution and affecting health. AI offers numerous advantages in transportation: enhanced efficiency, safety, and cost savings. AIK-driven systems can optimize travel schedules, reduce fuel consumption and minimize traffic congestion. Additionally, AI improves vehicle maintenance by predicting issues before they become critical. Thanks to AI, travellers no longer need to visit travel agencies to book flights or search accommodation and hire vehicles. The journey towards smarter cities powered by AI has just begun, and the possibilities for positive change are boundless.
This is just the tip of the huge AI ice-berg, and its scope and consequences for mankind.
The digital age has arrived faster than expected and is only accelerating. The inevitable result will be the mass replacement of human labor by automation. Is artificial intelligence destroying trade union membership and influence? In the current development (fourth Industrial Revolution), the gig economy, aided by AI, has become a major source of erosion of trade union membership and their influence.
As a result of increased redundancy of engaging human labor with the use of AI, the distribution of power within the workplace is rapidly changing. Automation and AI are penetrating into almost all domains that were earlier considered sacred and immune. Unions should therefore expand their outreach. So far, labour unions were the sole institutions representing employees. However, the rising possibility of human substitution by very intelligent machines stands as a stiff, unavoidable challenge to the relevance of labor unions’ and their very existence. This development undermines their traditional power which depended on the en-masse membership of paid workers and on their ability to determine and if necessary, collectively cripple production.
Several challenges confront unions in capitalist countries. Scholarly literature on labor-relations has embraced the assumption that the digital revolution will eventually bring new and better jobs. The evidence on the streets is contrary. A digital revolution ruthlessly engenders mass replacement of human workers resulting in mass unemployment. Such a view is will goad us to hit the reality button and prepare us to design a robust public discourse and State policy. We suggest that union’s now have two crucial roles. The first is to safeguard workers’ rights and interests during this period of transition from an economy based on paid labor, to an economy based on automated, autonomous and programmed production, and second, they should transform their primary calling from representing employees to representing the social rights of all citizens as well as the material and aspirational interests of lay people.
It is heartening to record here that the 14 National Trade Unions in India with all their myriad political and organizational compulsions, have come together under the “Platform of Trade Unions and Mass Organizations” and were largely instrumental in collectively fighting-back against the four black labor laws promulgated by the UPA government. Trade Unions also stood up and gave their unconditional solidarity to the yearlong successful struggle of Farmers who were opposing the anti-farmers and pro-capitalist three farm laws brazenly passed by the UPA government.
Slowly, but surely, the wheels of change are moving and the Trade Unions are realising that they need to structurally change their present system of organizing and leading their campaigns and struggles.
Taking a broad view of the multiple measures that the governments, the unions and the people at large have undertaken to cope during the COVID-19 pandemic; four clear observations can be made. The first, the digital technology enables more tasks to be done with less human labour. The second, digital platforms may offer people the opportunity to work and earn money, but does not provide them with security and satisfaction that many traditional jobs gave them. The third, massive structural, technological unemployment is of a dystopian vision, but a reasonable and natural outcome. The fourth, the governments should be compelled to guaranteeing the material security to all citizens, which means that we cannot blindly rely on market-driven logic but ought to reinforce people’s lives with a social and humane rationale.
History stands testimony to the fact that since the industrial revolution, the application of automation and the prolific use of AI have all resulted in the concentration of wealth in a few hands and has further accentuated the divide between the super rich and the marginalized. Thus, at the threshold and dawn of automation and AI revolution, unions have now a new calling. They should stop trying to put-out fires and, instead, embrace a creative and a strategic approach. In the new economy, humans will be mandated to play crucial roles and create new ideas and solutions which AI cannot answer in the realm of moral and spiritual aspects of life. This is a clarion call: Open the trade unions and its membership not merely to employees and the self-employed, but also to those who are left out of the organized labour market: the marginalized masses and the common citizens.
(The writer is a social scientist and a Sr. practicing
criminal lawyer).