The rise of the machines can result in rising standards of living for Canadian workers – but only if companies and labour unions find common ground at the bargaining table.
Labour unions are sharpening their focus on technological change in the workplace, as they negotiate new collective agreements with businesses across the country. Companies in sectors including manufacturing, natural resources, telecommunications and retail are increasingly adopting robotics and automation.
The technological transition is expected to automate between one-third and one-half of all tasks performed by employees by 2033, according to Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union. (Disclosure: I am a member of Unifor at The Globe and Mail.)
But this trend is not necessarily something to fear, especially if businesses and unions strive for consensus on key issues such as job security, training, wages, workplace safety and workers’ rights.
Business and organized labour must take a collaborative approach because Canada’s productivity crisis is making us collectively poorer. The country is falling further behind the United States and other industrialized countries when it comes to economic output for each hour worked, according to the Bank of Canada.
Solving this problem partly hinges on boosting business investment in machinery and equipment. Human beings, though, are the main catalysts for robot-enabled workforces. That’s why companies must ensure their people and technology strategies align.
“There’s this misconception that everything has to be a fight, when it can be a conversation,” said Kaylie Tiessen, an economist in the research department at Unifor, during a panel discussion at the recent Canadian Robotics Council Symposium. “But workers really need to be brought into that conversation.”
It’s entirely doable. In Denmark, businesses and organized labour have already spent years collaborating to build a world-leading robotics cluster in the city of Odense.
“The robots are not taking jobs. They are supporting jobs,” said Søren Elmer Kristensen, chief executive officer of Odense Robotics, at the same robotics conference.
There is an emerging consensus among companies and unions here in Canada that a lack of communication with workers is a pitfall for businesses when implementing robotics and automation.
“What you don’t want to do is sort of show up on the plant floor and not talk to anybody,” said Todd Deaville, vice-president of advanced manufacturing innovation at Magna International. “For a whole bunch of reasons, it’s best to engage early.”
For its part, Unifor is preparing to put specific language in collective bargaining agreements to govern the technological transition. That includes ensuring workers are given appropriate notification of changes in technology.
The Canada Labour Code already requires companies bound by collective agreements to give workers at least 120 days’ notice of any technological change.
“That’s like the bare minimum. The conversation is really what needs to happen,” Unifor’s Ms. Tiessen said.
Technology, though, can result in job loss and other changes in work organization, workloads, surveillance, workplace health and safety and pay. Still, Unifor rejects the notion that technological progress automatically spells disaster for workers.
“Unstable and insecure work is not an inevitable result of technological change, but it is definitely a symptom of inadequate public policies and corporate norms,” a 2018 Unifor report says.
That’s why Unifor is calling for a “just transition” that extends beyond energy workers. That includes proper income support for workers who upgrade their education and skills.
There should also be financial incentives for small companies that want to automate parts of their businesses.
“That particular piece of the puzzle is something that we don’t really have a funding source for,” said AJung Moon, a roboticist and an assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal.
Instead of piecemeal initiatives, Canada needs a national strategy on robotics and automation. To increase the number of skilled jobs, it should be linked to immigration, postsecondary education, enhanced labour mobility and initiatives to strengthen the social safety net. Social supports are inextricably linked to Denmark’s success as a robotics cluster.
Although there is limited data on the effect of robots on employment, a 2020 report from Statistics Canada suggests that companies tend to use robots as tools rather than as replacements for human workers.
“The research suggests that some of the worst fears, like a robocalypse for labour, are not evident in the data,” the report says. “Firms hire more, not fewer, workers after investing in robots.
“However, they do appear to need different types of workers. The workers they hire tend to have either higher or lower skills than the ones that leave the firm. The workers are given greater decision-making authority and greater individual incentives, but their work with or alongside robots becomes less routine.”
The one exception is middle managers. It seems those workers are the most vulnerable to having robots steal their jobs.
“Managers, on the other hand, appear not to fare as well when robots arrive,” the Statscan report says. “Robot-adopting firms use fewer layers of management, more managers leave and fewer of them are hired.”
Some workers would consider that a just transition, indeed.