A relentless onwaro march of the robots

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Demonstration! LIVERPOOL CUTS Saturday dome beres NO TO ad march to Pier Head.

… RI Martin Thomas summarises the latest Labour Research' which reports on new technology FACTORIES and offices with nothing but gleaming machines and the odd maintenance worker are still a long way in the future. But selective automation is growing very fast indeed.

A word processor can replace about 1½½ workers; so the 60,000 word processors installed in the UK at the end of 1982 replaced about 90,000 workers.

Each industrial robot is reckoned to replace about 2½ workers: that means the 1,152 robots in the UK in 1982 had captured nearly 3,000 jobs from humans. World-wide, some 60% of spot-welding in the car industry is now done by robots.

More numerous are small business computers: there were 240,000 in use by the end of 1982 replacing perhaps 500,000 workers.

'All these new technologies date from the late 1970s. In 1979 the CIS Report on New Technology gave a figure of 9,000 word processors in the UK. Today it is 60,000.

The largest user of robots in the UK is Ford. They decided to introduce them in June 1980. By December 1982 they had 220. Labour Research reckons that Ford now has nearly 400 robots.

The number of small business computers in the UK quadrupled between 1980 and 1982. The number of electronic typewriters - a more modest form of new technology, halfway between an ordinary electric typewriter and a word processor - went up from 18,000 to 120,000.

The engineering industry, according to a recent Financial Times report, plans to spend more on computers for design and manufacturing in the next two years than it has done in the past 30.

The basis for all this is the 'microchip'. Complicated circuits can be constructed on a tiny piece of silicon. The CIS Report pointed out:

A 'microprocessor" (microcomputer) costing £20 today, can now replace a computer that cost £200,000 in 1960. Where it used to occupy a whole room, require special climate controls and still be unreliable, it is now no larger than a thumbnail, is unaffected by temperature or vibration, and is many times more reliable"

This has made it possible to put computer 'brains' and memories' inside typewriters, cash registers, and assembly-line machines.

Of big UK companies (those with a turnover of more than f1 million), 86% are now using electronic typewriters, 79% word processors, and 78% microcomputers. These are the major uses of new technology:

the office, on typing, accounts, record-keeping, stock control, etc.

90% of factories employing 1,000 or more people now use computers in design or manufacturing.

Other uses include:

*Bar-coding systems in retail. A scanner linked to the cash register automatically deals with pricing and stock control. The number of supermarkets in the UK with such systems doubled between December 1982 and September 1983.

*Automatic tills in banks. December 1983 the number these will have increased by 58% since June 1982.

*New technology in print.

Parallel to, and even outstripping, the rise in use of new technology, has been the rise of producers in this field.

"Five years ago", , the Financial Times reported recently, 'there were around a dozen robot manufacturers in the West. Today, there are more than 220...

Both the Financial Times report and a recent article in the Economist conclude that 'the robot industry is heading for a shake-out" • Big firms, like General Electric, IBM, Siemens, Hitachi, but also General Motors, Volkswagen, Renault and Fiat, are moving in and taking over or pushing out the small businesses.

The Economist also reports on problems with the more modest office new technology. Although it is less sensitive to heat, humidity and dust than older computers, it does call for airconditioning - and often for expensive building work to accommodate all the cables.

But the general trend is certainly upwards. Even after the tremendous expansion of the last three or four years, UK industry is still way behind other advanced capitalist countries in new technology.

Sweden

Sweden, for example, has 15.7 robots per 100,000 population, and Japan has 11.1. The UK has only 2.1 (December One worrying fact about the new technology business is that many of the producers are non-union or anti-union firms.

IBM is well-known as an anti-union firm: and other major information technology firms in the UK which do not recognise unions include DEC, Hewlett Packard, Systime, Mitel, Newbury, Sinclair, Acorn, Dragon, Texas Instruments, Motorola, General Instrument, Hughes, NEC, Scicon, Logica, CAP and CMG.

Union organisation exists in less than half the firms - and mostly those which are part, or offshoots, of older with unionisation in operations.

This industry is also notable for its effective internationalisation of production. Large chunks of the assembly operations in the microelectronics industry have been sited in the 'free enterprise zones' of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan,: South Korea, the Philippines, etc., where they profit from starvation wages, absence of labour protection laws, and policestate anti-union regimes.

The trade union movement has so far done little to tackle the new technology producers. Many unions have, however, worked out policies in the new technology user firms.

No job loss, rest time for work on Visual Display Units, and other health and safety conditions, have been the main trade union demands. But Labour Research finds that 'the hopes and aspirations of the late "70s have not been fulfilled"

Often new technology is introduced unilaterally by employers, and Labour Research cites only one example (NALGO in the gas industry) where a union has won shorter working time as part of a new technology agreement.

Weak though the fight has been so far, it does have radical implications. Labour Research points out that "many clerical workers have had a major role in determining their working environment for the first time"

Some unions have negotiated trade union control over information flows, in the form of data protection agreements.

New technology, at present, is a means of increasing profits, cutting jobs, speeding up work, strengthening employers' control, and centralising information.

But it can be a means of improving living standards, reducing work hours, eliminating, routine drudgery, giving workers more control over their environment, an distributing information more widely.

It all depends on who controls.

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Socialist Organiser no.155 1983