Robot sales boom as labour costs rise

[red team]

Worldwide sales of industrial robots has surged to record levels in the first half of 2004 after equipment prices fell while labour costs grew, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

In its annual survey of world robotics, the UNECE said the number of robots in operation in industry exceeded the 800,000 mark for the first time at the end of 2003.

Robot sales boom (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1224293.htm)

[Janus]

I think this will not only cause more unemployment leading to greater anger at "the system" but it will also benefit the people in a communist society as it will eliminate the need to perform certain menial tasks that many people are not very interested in.

[Severian]

From the article:

In its annual survey of world robotics, the UNECE said the number of robots in operation in industry exceeded the 800,000 mark for the first time at the end of 2003.
Which is not large.


In 2003, the world market for robots grew by 19 per cent to 81,800 units fuelled by broad-based demand, the survey showed.

It's easy to have a high rate of growth from a low level. And I would suggest this is a temporary peak due to a temporary economic situation.


South Korea was the second major user with 138 robots in operation per 10,000 people employed, compared to 322 in Japan, but the UNECE noted that EU countries were catching up.

German (148) and Italian industry (116) remained the second and fourth largest users of robots in the world and their demand grew by more than the European average.

Again, not large. During the current period of declining profit rates, most capitalists are reluctant to make large investments in fixed productive capital.

New technology and computerization often aims more at controlling workers more closely and squeezing more effort out of us, rather than making that effort more productive.

The only solution for the capitalist presently is to continue their offensive against working people's standard of living and everything we've won in struggle previously. Robotization is unlikely to take off on a large scale unless they first succeed in that (enough to dramatically raise their profit rates.)


Meanwhile, indices for labour compensation in manufacturing industry had risen by 63 per cent, according to the survey.

The United States lagged well behind other industrial power house's, with about half the robot density in industry of Europe.

I would suggest that this is the more significant fact: the increase in the bosses' labor costs (this year). Combined with a drop in productivity.

From a financial news site: (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aK257yQ6gz8Y&refer=us)


The productivity of U.S. workers slowed last quarter and labor costs jumped, challenging the Federal Reserve's forecast that inflation will slow along with the economy.

Productivity, a measure of employee efficiency, increased at an annual rate of 1.6 percent after a 4.3 percent gain the prior three months, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Labor costs rose at a 4.9 percent pace after rising 9 percent in the first quarter, the biggest back-to-back increase since 2000.

A gain in our wages and benefits, a setback for their speedup efforts.

I'd add we wouldn't see a slowdown in productivity if they were making major investments in new productive technology. Instead, I'd argue, this past decade's gains in productivity are a result of speedup, squeezing more effort out of workers.

That will inevitably run into a limit eventually, as workers resist the toll speedup takes on our bodies.