Big Fossil doesn't want it to be true:
Research shows that auto plants grew their workforces after transitioning to electric vehicle production
Sep 2024, phys.org
Researchers at the University of Michigan have shown that plants in the ramp-up stages of transitioning to full-scale EV production saw assembly jobs increase as much as 10 times. At one plant studied, now with over a decade of EV production, the number of workers needed to make each vehicle has remained three times higher."There is a shortage of information out there about how the transition is shaping up. What we're seeing, with the data that's available, is that the loss of employment predicted for EVs is not happening."
via University of Michigan: Andrew Weng et al, Higher labor intensity in US automotive assembly plants after transitioning to electric vehicles, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52435-x
Image credit: AI Art - Team Celebrating - Dec 2024
McDonald’s touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers
Sep 2024, CNN Business
“In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts. Kiosks “have created a restaurant within a restaurant.”And in some cases, kiosks have even been a flop. Bowling ally chain Bowlero added kiosks in lanes for customers to order food and drinks, but they went unused because staff and customers weren’t fully trained on using them.A recent study from Temple University researchers found that, when a line forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when placing their orders and purchase less food. And some customers take longer to order tapping around on kiosks and paying than they do telling a cashier they’d like to order a burger and fries.Sociologist at Drew University Christopher Andrews - “The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers,” he said. “Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks* that created value.”
*Note, as experienced by certain Wells Fargo employees circa 2015, these "other tasks" included using customer account data to upsell investment instruments: Wells Fargo to Pay $500 Million for Misleading Investors About the Success of Its Largest Business Unit (between 2012 and 2016), reported 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment