Work so hard you cripple yourself

[Croolis]

This article reminds me of the old phrase 'beatings will continue until morale improves'

How long until warehouse work is fully automated though? I gather 'dark warehouses' are springing up all over Europe.

I think this might be a good time to open a discussion about a basic universal wage given to every adult over 18 . Sooner or later, there's more automated jobs than people. The argument that more jobs of just a different type will get created and simply replace the lost jobs I think holds no water at all. My job, for example, will likely be toast before I get to retirement age and I'll end up just like those old boys that I laid off. Can't wait. Should have been a plumber, a spark, some kind of tradesman delivering services to the domestic sector. Those sort of jobs can't be replaced by robots easily, AI and robotics won't be that good for an extremely long time. But how many jobs like that can one society contain?

But things will become problematic sooner than that. We'll all need free money. I wonder if capitalist ideals of constant economic growth will last more than 5 minutes as soon as folks begin to realise that, for the vast bulk of the population, there's nowhere to go with their aspiration.

The rich folks will likely have us all gassed and used as fertiliser for their vinyards before you can say Ayn Rand.

 

[Tris]

Personally I think a universal wage, tied to activity providing a social good or ongoing training/education, and tapered according to earnings would be a great idea.
How to fund it is a whole other argument though

 

[deema]

I'd respectfully suggest you are confusing things and in doing so undoing your own argument as age is a protected characteristic.

Well, I can’t remember if your a legal beaver, but the advise was provided by Eversheds and specifically their HR team. I had to use Eversheds as the company was listed in the New York Stock-exchange and we had to be seen to be using one of the top five legal firms. I’m going back 8 years now, and one thing I know is that the legal HR rules just get more convoluted as we have every ruling and never gets back to what is common sense.

Age is a protected characteristic that works both ways. You cannot ask a younger person to do a job that’s hard physical work and discriminate against them by allowing the oldies to do the lighter work. We already did job rotation to ease the burden but we were no longer able to utilise the custom and practice of giving the ‘old man’ jobs to those who served us well for decades.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Well, I can’t remember if your a legal beaver, but the advise was provided by Eversheds and specifically their HR team. I had to use Eversheds as the company was listed in the New York Stock-exchange and we had to be seen to be using one of the top five legal firms. I’m going back 8 years now, and one thing I know is that the legal HR rules just get more convoluted as we have every ruling and never gets back to what is common sense.

Age is a protected characteristic that works both ways. You cannot ask a younger person to do a job that’s hard physical work and discriminate against them by allowing the oldies to do the lighter work. We already did job rotation to ease the burden but we were no longer able to utilise the custom and practice of giving the ‘old man’ jobs to those who served us well for decades.

Perhaps you have forgotten some of the detail of their advice if it was 8 years ago. Fundamentally though the "customer and practice" that you describe in the last sentence is discriminatory even if your intentions as an employer were altruistic.

Another way to look at it is that the Equality Act removed the ability of an employer to force people to retire at a certain age but the employer retains the right to still expect a full contribution from them. Arguably therefore it balances the position of the employer and employee.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

This was titled as "Government supporting the economy", but seems to fit in the thread

The next one is a fine example of where employment is headed for "everyone else"...

(Both videos taken from ) which is a Telegram account, and therefore vewy, vewy dangerous).