The Robot Revolution

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jobs for workers to be retrained for." That is probably an exaggeration, but Charles Cook, president of the United Auto Workers Local 7, which represents K-car workers at Chrysler's Jefferson plant, is equally suspicious. Says he: "Our workers are not worried now about robots taking their jobs, but once the company gets more of those goddam things working, we'll have problems."

Already there are a few rumblings. Says Russ Cook, U.A.W. district committeeman at GM's Buick plant in Flint: "If we don't get smarter and start combatting the machines, we will be cannibalizing ourselves and competing against one another for jobs." Adds Larry Jones, a Chrysler metal-shop worker: "They say they are only going to put robots on boring jobs. But in an auto plant, all the jobs are boring jobs."

Aside from the specific problem of lost jobs, Shaiken warns of more intangible difficulties. "The use of robots has social costs that are not being addressed by anyone in the U.S. today," he says. "By designing a production process that minimizes human participation, you freeze out the worker's control and you freeze out his initiative. We often overlook the impact of robots on the jobs that remain. Today, if a worker assembling components has a daily quota of 100 units to fill, he can, for example, work flat out and assemble 60 in the first half of a shift, leaving only 40 for a relatively unpressured second half. But when he is slotted between centrally programmed robots that dictate the pace, he becomes a mere cog in the machine. These things matter."

Leaders in the robot industry claim that the main resistance to their inventions comes not from union labor but from management. "We are thrusting ourselves into the manufacturing area, and it's a very conservative place," says Joseph Engelberger, the ebullient president of Unimation. Top executives turn for advice to their technical managers, and these are naturally cautious. "Plant supervisors get worried because they don't understand robots," says Neale Clapp, a robotics expert for the management consultant firm of Block Petrella Associates in Plainfield, N.J. "They feel their authority is undermined." G.E., for one, commissioned a psychologist to study the effect of the introduction of robots on workers, and it found the greatest anxiety among foremen. Says James Clark, operations manager of the Westinghouse Elevator Co.: "The fear is: 'What do I know about this? What will I be supervising? Will I be killed if it doesn't work?' "

To all this, the robot backers offer two answers. One uses the hard language of survival. "If we don't go to robots," says an expert at Carnegie-Mellon, "we'll just continue to lose to Japan and West Germany. Our economy won't grow, and there won't be any new jobs. New jobs have always come from new technology." The other answer is a gentler prophecy of benefits to come.

"It's my fervent belief," says Engelberger, "that any increase in productivity is always good. The problem is to decide what to do with the blessings. Do we want to have a shorter work week? That's one of the possibilities. Would we like clean air and water?

Three percent of the G.N.P. will give us a clean environment. The point is