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There is a tiny window where the workers have more power than usual. I wouldn't be surprised if fast food automation becomes the #1 growth industry in a years t

There is a tiny window where the workers have more power than usual. I wouldn't be surprised if fast food automation becomes the #1 growth industry in a years time. I applaud anyone with the nerve to fight for better conditions at their workplace, but they need to consider carefully when the best time will be to take their wins before automation is used to crush them.

ravenstine 5y ago
It wouldn't surprise me in the least that the big fast food companies haven't had plans in the works for a really long time. I think they must know to some extent that human workers will become, perhaps already are, much less economical than robotics. At the same time, automation at that scale and complexity hasn't been battle tested, and public perception may be tainted by replacing people with robots, hence if they are smart then they should be taking their time implementing and deploying automation. In fact it's already happening at a very small scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTcIutsoTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTcIutsoTg I find it hard to imagine that more advanced systems haven't already been in the works for a very long time. If all fast food workers around the world rebelled, I imagine we wouldn't even see Flippy the Robot at first; we'd see all the McDonald's buildings gutted and replaced with complete automation systems that work off of conveyor belts.
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
If automation were possible, it would have happened already. Our technology is really far from the point where you can get a machine to reliably construct and sell burgers with no human supervision. Way easier to pay people 25% more than rebuild restaurants from the ground up, and then take the risk your robots don't work as well as you think they do.
dan-robertson 5y ago
It’s not obvious to me that the window is tiny. The pandemic shook up the job distribution a lot with some people going into retirement and others changing industry. The dynamics of the labour market will surely be quite different if America approaches full employment (roughly, people are unemployed because they are between jobs in the short term and not because there are no jobs to be had). Likely some businesses will have to raise pay or benefits to compete for workers and those companies that cannot will go out of business. Probably that will be good for employees, particularly low-wage low-skill workers and possibly bad for consumers who will not be able to get so many things as cheaply as they used to, though perhaps producers will just become more productive somehow, or increase quality to match increased prices.

ravenstine 5y ago

It wouldn't surprise me in the least that the big fast food companies haven't had plans in the works for a really long time. I think they must know to some extent that human workers will become, perhaps already are, much less economical than robotics. At the same time, automation at that scale and complexity hasn't been battle tested, and public perception may be tainted by replacing people with robots, hence if they are smart then they should be taking their time implementing and deploying automation. In fact it's already happening at a very small scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTcIutsoTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTcIutsoTg I find it hard to imagine that more advanced systems haven't already been in the works for a very long time. If all fast food workers around the world rebelled, I imagine we wouldn't even see Flippy the Robot at first; we'd see all the McDonald's buildings gutted and replaced with complete automation systems that work off of conveyor belts.

ProjectArcturis 5y ago

If automation were possible, it would have happened already. Our technology is really far from the point where you can get a machine to reliably construct and sell burgers with no human supervision. Way easier to pay people 25% more than rebuild restaurants from the ground up, and then take the risk your robots don't work as well as you think they do.

dan-robertson 5y ago

It’s not obvious to me that the window is tiny. The pandemic shook up the job distribution a lot with some people going into retirement and others changing industry. The dynamics of the labour market will surely be quite different if America approaches full employment (roughly, people are unemployed because they are between jobs in the short term and not because there are no jobs to be had). Likely some businesses will have to raise pay or benefits to compete for workers and those companies that cannot will go out of business. Probably that will be good for employees, particularly low-wage low-skill workers and possibly bad for consumers who will not be able to get so many things as cheaply as they used to, though perhaps producers will just become more productive somehow, or increase quality to match increased prices.