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The rise of robots in the German labour market

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Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#21

Post by maxxxxx »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #8
agumonkey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. For those who know Germany, it's often said that even if the economic numbers are high, there's a lot of poor workers that need two jobs to live. Is it true ? true but only a small % ? normal according to you ?

I can only report from a viewpoint inside my own filter bubble obviously, but this "two or three jobs to earn a living" is something that is still associated with the US here and practically unheard of in Germany.

What I hear is that things are going downhill in Germany too with Euro jobs and eternal internships. but i think there is generally still an assumption to you should be able to live from a full time job

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#22

Post by znpy »

wiz21c wrote: post #10
sarabande wrote: post #2

It's admirable to me that unions protect low-skilled workers from losing their job, not by preventing them from getting fired at current wages, but by accepting wage decreases for their workers while getting them re-trained into jobs of higher cognitive skill. That seems like the fair and humane thing to do for workers, while at the same time not screwing over capital owners or stifling automation.

It is not admirable at all. It basically means that you're putting a competition between machines and humans. If machines do become smarter, then humans will be moved out of the equation (except for the 0.001% who can create and maintain the machines). This kind of fight may be good on the short term, but it legitimates the fact than man are inferior to machine. For example, it may soon legitimates that, contrary to…

Oh the things I could say...

There are probably things you don't even immagine to pay for, that are now done by machines, and that used to be performed by humans.

Think of circuit-switching telphony, when you used to say "operator, connect me with number xyz-xxx" and someone on the other side would phisically create a connection between you and someone else to talk.

Consider mail delivery. There used to be a milkman. Mail was only paper.

A lot of stuff.

On the same planet, self driving cars are about to be easily available, no more drivers or cab drivers, amazon has robots doing most of the heavy lifting (quite literally) but we enjoy these other things, and do not complain about anything because they're cool, i guess.

I cannot wait for this thread to be featured on n-gate.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#23

Post by jojoo »

kensai wrote: post #5
sarabande wrote: post #2

It's admirable to me that unions protect low-skilled workers from losing their job, not by preventing them from getting fired at current wages, but by accepting wage decreases for their workers while getting them re-trained into jobs of higher cognitive skill. That seems like the fair and humane thing to do for workers, while at the same time not screwing over capital owners or stifling automation.

This. Germany is one of the few places that Unions are working (mostly) as intended. When Germany was under pressure in the Schröder era, it was the Unions that helped dealing with convincing the workers to accept shorter shifts and salaries, instead of pushing companies to relocation or, worse, bankruptcy.

As a member of the German Education and Science Union i have to strongly disagree.

Germany is becoming a low income country for a lot of jobs and the unions are doing nothing against it.

Year after year all German workers have collective bargaining agreements close to inflation, while the economy booms.

The union-reps are in bed with the companys and workers eat it up.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#24

Post by fnordian_slip »

agumonkey wrote: post #7
kensai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Germany is one of the few places that Unions are working (mostly) as intended. When Germany was under pressure in the Schröder era, it was the Unions that helped dealing with convincing the workers to accept shorter shifts and salaries, instead of pushing companies to relocation or, worse, bankruptcy.

Interesting. For those who know Germany, it's often said that even if the economic numbers are high, there's a lot of poor workers that need two jobs to live. Is it true ? true but only a small % ? normal according to you ?

In addition to what ManuelKiessling already said, I can also report that in my bubble this is not the case, but it is hard to accurately judge our bubbles.

According to this bar chart on wealth distribution in the EU [1] there is a huge difference between the average and median wages in Germany, so I would expect the group of poor workers to be much larger than we think it is.

Of course, being poor in Germany might mean something different than in the US, since we still have better access to healthcare (at least in my opinion, I don't know enough about the US system to be 100% sure).

[1]: http://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/wirtschaft/831437975/1...

\EDIT: I should have cited the source accurately, the chart comes from the FAZ, a huge and respected German newspaper.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#25

Post by varjag »

Animats wrote: post #20

Note how small the ratio of robots to workers still is. 2 robots per thousand workers in the US, 8 per thousand in Germany. Those are still below 1% yet having an effect on wages. What happens at 10%? 20%? 50%? Few people thought in 1980 that there would be more computers than people in their lifetime.

Most mid-1980s technology books expected majority of production jobs taken over by robots any moment soon (and the rest going to ninja-like Japanese workers).

Of course what happened is the jobs went to China.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#26

Post by saosebastiao »

Animats wrote: post #20

Note how small the ratio of robots to workers still is. 2 robots per thousand workers in the US, 8 per thousand in Germany. Those are still below 1% yet having an effect on wages. What happens at 10%? 20%? 50%? Few people thought in 1980 that there would be more computers than people in their lifetime.

Counting robots is really hard compared to counting humans, because they are so varied in what they do. Does a robot that does two people’s jobs count as a robot? What if it only assists with a job? Do we count them at controller boundaries? Planner boundaries? It could be argued that an entire Kiva installation counts as a single robot, because it has centralized control.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#27

Post by Mikeb85 »

sarabande wrote: post #2

It's admirable to me that unions protect low-skilled workers from losing their job, not by preventing them from getting fired at current wages, but by accepting wage decreases for their workers while getting them re-trained into jobs of higher cognitive skill. That seems like the fair and humane thing to do for workers, while at the same time not screwing over capital owners or stifling automation.

That's not a good thing. If we want society to be more equal, funnelling money to capital holders at the expense of workers isn't the way to accomplish that goal.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#28

Post by usrusr »

jojoo wrote: post #23
kensai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Germany is one of the few places that Unions are working (mostly) as intended. When Germany was under pressure in the Schröder era, it was the Unions that helped dealing with convincing the workers to accept shorter shifts and salaries, instead of pushing companies to relocation or, worse, bankruptcy.

As a member of the German Education and Science Union i have to strongly disagree. Germany is becoming a low income country for a lot of jobs and the unions are doing nothing against it. Year after year all German workers have collective bargaining agreements close to inflation, while the economy booms. The union-reps are in bed with the companys and workers eat it up.

Oh, unions are fighting for workers, just not very successful. They can lower the impact of market forces, but they cannot negate them. Who they are notoriously not fighting for is temp workers and future temp workers who have it much worse than barely matching inflation. Darkly logical, temps are not members.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#29

Post by karllager »

jojoo wrote: post #23
kensai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Germany is one of the few places that Unions are working (mostly) as intended. When Germany was under pressure in the Schröder era, it was the Unions that helped dealing with convincing the workers to accept shorter shifts and salaries, instead of pushing companies to relocation or, worse, bankruptcy.

As a member of the German Education and Science Union i have to strongly disagree. Germany is becoming a low income country for a lot of jobs and the unions are doing nothing against it. Year after year all German workers have collective bargaining agreements close to inflation, while the economy booms. The union-reps are in bed with the companys and workers eat it up.

> Germany is becoming a low income country for a lot of jobs and the unions are doing nothing against it.

Yes, this is true. About 39% of the currently employed have so called atypical jobs [1] - some of which are actually subsidized by the state, because income is so low.

Germany is an austerity poster child - I wonder what will happen, if the export boom is over. Things might become much worse, once the debt-financed foreign purchases dry up for some reason.

[1] https://www.boeckler.de/108863_108907.htm (German only).

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#30

Post by usrusr »

agumonkey wrote: post #18
lispm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still the East/West divide. Less jobs and lower payment in the East. Then there is a larger sector with low-paid jobs and lots of people from East Germany and Central/East Europe competing. The EU rights makes it easy for EU-citizens to look for jobs in Germany. Mostly everybody with medium- or high qualifications should have no problems finding a well-paid job. Across all ages. In the western parts of Germa…

I've recently read that the east still hasn't recovered from the pre reunification lag... crazy.

Has southern Italy ever recovered from not being the north? Has the American Midwest recovered from not being one of the coasts? Economies naturally concentrate and countering that takes not only effort and dedication but also wise decisions and luck. West Germany used to be very good at this, but concentration to a few major cities has been accelerating recently. It's not only eastern Germany that is being left behind, the weaker regions of the former west are suffering from the same draw.
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