Robots’ rise to spark jobs crisis, says Seek chief

DAMON KITNEY
July 4, 2017
The Australian 

A key player in the Australian jobs market has warned that the rate at which robots replace humans in the workplace will spark an employment crisis and has urged companies and governments to urgently confront the issue.

Seek chief executive Andrew Bassat, whose company is one of the world’s largest global online employment marketplaces, said Australian companies were shaping up to be the “losers’’ in an age when threats and opportunities from disruption were challenging every industry. 

“My view is that we have enough warning to know that we need to act with urgency to­ ­address this issue and can no longer afford to wait,” Mr Bassat told The Australian. 

“Job losses will only accelerate as machines start to be smarter than people, given our brains were seen as the last line of defence. I can’t see new jobs being created in anywhere near the volumes that will make up for the jobs lost. The same examples of new jobs keep being used, like data ­analysts and engineers etc, but I can’t see them being created with anywhere near the volume needed.’’ 

Mr Bassat also urged policymakers and the media to start a long-term discussion about what we will do if jobs disappear. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called for governments to impose a “robot tax” to slow down the pace of automation of the workplace, while Alibaba chairman Jack Ma has claimed that a robot chief executive could be on the cover of Time magazine in less than three decades.

“(Tesla founder) Elon Musk suggests a universal wage as an option,” Mr Bassat said. “Others talk about a robot tax. Other suggestions are out there. This is the debate we should be having now as it may be too late later.” 

In a recent report, consulting giant McKinsey assessed more than 800 jobs to see how robots could replace people.

It found the accommodation and food services sectors were the most ripe for automation, with machines able to perform about 75 per cent of the work in those sectors. 

In the resources sector, one of Australia’s biggest employers, it found robots could perform more than 60 per cent of the work.

In another report, PwC claimed that automated bots in the future could take 38 per cent of jobs in the US, 30 per cent in Britain, 35 per cent in Germany and 21 per cent in Japan.

The firm said the jobs most likely to be taken by robots would be in the transportation and storage sectors, as well as manufacturing and retail. But it said the productivity benefits could lead to higher salaries being paid to the remaining human workers. 

PwC global chairman Bob Moritz, who recently visited Australia, said the rise of automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace could create a “crisis’’ unless it was “managed better by the business community and the politicians’’.

“The business community does a good job in some areas in being much more disruptive and forceful in their thinking and bringing that to the education system,’’ Mr Moritz said.

“But business has to be more forceful in ensuring the teachers are teaching the right skill sets. The education system can’t do it all. How do the corporates invest in additional on-the-job training? … They need to step up. And they need to be vocal in the eyes of the politicians.’’

RBA governor Philip Lowe last month challenged workers to demand a greater share of the economy’s profits through higher wages and said they shouldn’t fear “robots or foreigners’’ taking jobs. But a range of firms, including Rio Tinto, BHP, Pratt Industries, Commonwealth Bank and the other major banks, Woodside and Vicinity Centres, are already using or trialling robots in the workplace to help reduce labour costs and improve productivity.

Mr Bassat said boards needed to start seeing it as their primary responsibility to ­ensure their companies had the “strategy, settings and people’’ to ensure they survived and thrived over the longer term.

“Not too many would be scoring highly on that dimension right now,’’ he said. “Government also has a big role to play in closing the gap between supply and demand with the new jobs. Directing people to education and training that will lead to available jobs (where in some cases there are skill shortages), not to places where jobs are fast disappearing.’’