Work, Industry, Robotizasion

Robotics and AI algorithms are driving a new way of automatization of the economy. About 14% of the jobs in OECD are highly automatable, and around 32% of the jobs can face major transformation in the next decade.

Automation has mostly an impact in agriculture and manufacturing. Is automation the end of capital’s labor arbitrage among locations? Is robotics and AI the end of cheap labor, either of the immigrants in core capitalist countries, or of the semi-rural employees in peripheral countries?

The two presenters address the issue of job automation in agriculture in Holland and in manufacturing in the Romanian countryside. The labor done by the new peasant is discussed by putting into perspective the value of cheap labor in two dissimilar locations in Europe.

Speakers:
Oane Visser (Associate professor, International Institute of Social Studies, ISS, The Hague, The Netherlands) – Robots, migrant workers and LED-lightened tomatoes: Impacts of Technological change in Dutch agriculture for CEE Migrant workers

Norbert Petrovici (Associate professor, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania) – Industrial workers as new peasants: Outsourcing and suburbanized factories in Romania