In hospitals, semi-autonomous service robots could reduce the overall number of people employed as orderlies, dietary clerks, and laundry workers. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Tech's effects on job quality — including wages and working conditions — should be as much of a concern for employers as its effects on the total number of jobs available. That's the conclusion of a new report released by the UC Berkeley Labor Center on how and why employers in key industries are deploying new technologies, and what effects these changes could have on workers.
Titled "Technological change in five industries: Threats to jobs, wages, and working conditions," the report synthesizes the findings from studies released by the Labor Center and Working Partnerships USA from 2018 to 2022. Those original studies examined employers' use of technology in five industries — health care, trucking, warehouses, retail, and food delivery — likely to experience technology-induced changes in the coming years.
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The report, written by Jessie HF Hammerling, co-director of the Labor Center's Green Economy Program, finds that current trends in technological adoption are on course to lead to bad outcomes for workers, including lower wages, deskilling, deteriorating job quality, loss of privacy and autonomy, and worsening market inequality for women and people of color.
Hammerling emphasizes three takeaways:
- Employers' use of new technologies is changing the content of workers' jobs but is likely to have limited effects on the overall number of jobs.
"Each team of researchers identified various new technologies that employers are using in each industry," Hammerling writes. "These ranged from relatively simple improvements in internet and communications technology and digitization of information to complex data collection and algorithmic technologies, including but not limited to autonomous machines."
For example, in hospitals, semi-autonomous service robots could reduce the overall number of people employed as orderlies, dietary clerks, and laundry workers, she notes, adding that COVID-19 "may have jump-started this trend, as hospitals have looked for ways to limit human interactions to reduce the risk of transmission."
- Employers in each industry are using new technologies in ways that may degrade workers' wages and working conditions and worsen existing labor market inequities.
In health care, these technologies include chatbots and (again) autonomous service robots, which "are starting to be used in ways that reduce staffing and decrease the complexity of workers' roles — for instance, by limiting or entirely eliminating dietary clerks' interaction with patients through the use of autonomous bots to deliver meals," Hammerling writes.
- Employer decision-making about new technologies is shaped by contextual factors.
These factors include the presence or absence of regulations and worker organizations; industrial competitiveness; market trends and broader social influences such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
"So how do we change our course? We know that new technologies can be used in ways that support workers, but how do we get there?" Hammerling asks in the report's conclusion. "The findings of our studies suggest that achieving better outcomes for workers will take a multifaceted approach, including industry-specific institutional and regulatory changes, broader policy changes, and workplace-based organizing."
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