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Your Job is at Risk from Artificial Intelligence… but not for the Reasons You Think
It’s three years since the public launch of ChatGPT, and the rapid roll-out of artificial intelligence apps since then has amplified fears that AI will lead to massive job loss as human workers are replaced by algorithms. For many concrete reasons, this is unlikely. However, the exaggerated financial hype associated with AI investments poses a more imminent threat to employment. In this commentary, originally published in the Toronto Star, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford explains how the stock market’s mania for AI assets is inflating a financial bubble that will inevitably pop, with major consequences for the real economy.
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Webinar on Employment Transitions for Fossil Fuel Workers
The Centre for Future Work recently released a major report, as part of its PowerShare research project, on the role of collective voice and representation in facilitating more effective and fair employment transitions as most production and use of fossil fuels is phased out in line with reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
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Transition Away from Fossil Fuel Jobs is Already Occurring: Here’s How to Manage it Better
A report from the Centre for Future Work presents new research on the ongoing decline of fossil fuel employment in Canada, and strategies for managing that decline more effectively and fairly. The report, Worker Voice and Effective Transitions for Fossil Fuel Workers in Canada (by Jim Stanford and Kathy Bennett), also asks fossil fuel workers what sorts of supports they want as this decline continues, and lays out best practices to avoid unemployment during the transition.
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The Future of Working from Home
The historic expansion of remote and home work during the first stages of the COVID pandemic was both extraordinary and vitally important in helping families, and the economy, through the challenges of that crisis. Some two-thirds of employed Canadians worked totally or mostly from home at some point during the pandemic. Remote work was essential to preserving incomes, maintaining economic activity, and providing essential services at a time when face-to-face encounters were potentially deadly.
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Ontario’s ‘Right-to-Disconnect’ is no Such Thing
The Ford government in Ontario, portraying itself as being on “the side of workers,” recently passed legislation setting out certain requirements for some businesses in the province regarding expectations of workers’ availability outside of normal working hours. This legislation has been widely, but very inaccurately, reported as a “right to disconnect.” Some coverage has even fawned that Ontario is now the first jurisdiction in North America to protect this right. This claim is transparently false – and individuals who (wrongly) believe that such a right exists might take actions (such as refusing instructions from their employer) that could jeopardize their employment. The Ontario law simply requires that firms with over…
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Canadian Workers Need More Technology, Not Less
There is little evidence that robots and other advanced technologies are displacing workers and causing technological unemployment in Canada. To the contrary, Canada’s adoption of new technology has surprisingly slowed down in recent years. That is the conclusion of a major new report on innovation and automation in Canada’s economy, from the Centre for Future Work. The report, titled Where are the Robots?, reviews nine empirical indicators of Canadian innovation, technology adoption, and robotization. They paint a worrisome picture that Canadian businesses have dramatically reduced their innovation effort since the turn of the century, and are lagging well behind other industrial countries in putting new technology to work in the…
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Changing Work, for Good, After COVID
As Canada enters the fifth wave of COVID contagion and restrictions, with new infections reaching the highest levels yet, we need to consider again how the pandemic must change our approach to valuing work, and protecting workers, on a permanent basis. In this keynote speech to the recent annual conference of the Parkland Institute in Alberta, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discusses the labour policy lessons learned during the first waves of the pandemic – and why it’s vital to make permanent changes to crucial aspects of our labour market (including sick pay, protections for workers in precarious jobs, and genuine improvements in workplace health and safety). The…
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Busting Myths about Technology and the Future of Work
We are constantly told that ‘technology’ is driving profound changes in work, workplaces and society. We might be concerned about the impacts of some of those changes, but since they are the result of ‘technology,’ and everyone since the Luddites knows you can’t stop technology, there is no point trying to resist or ameliorate those changes. But what is ‘technology’, anyway? We don’t live in the world of Terminator, where machines control society (not yet, anyway!). Technology is just a shorthand way of referring to the composite of human knowledge about how we work, what we produce, and the tools we use to produce it. Human beings, not some irresistible exogenous…
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Centre for Future Work Submission to Ontario Future of Work Consultation
All provinces in Canada are still grappling with the economic and employment effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession. Ontario’s labour market was among the worst-impacted in Canada by the pandemic. And these immediate challenges are layered on top of longer-run issues related to the future of work: including technology, demographic changes, new business models, and others. In this context, the Ontario government recently launched a hastily-organized public consultation on the Future of Work, overseen by a 7-person ‘Workforce Recovery Advisory Committee’. The consultation is unusual for several reasons, including the non-representative composition of the committee itself (there are no committee members representing union, worker, or equality-seeking organisations), the…
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Our Times Feature Article on PowerShare Voice Report
The Spring 2021 edition of the Canadian labour magazine Our Times features a cover article on workers’ voice: how Canadian workers can express their concerns, and win meaningful change, in their workplaces. The article is based on the recent Centre for Future Work report, Speaking Out, Being Heard, Making Change: The Theory and Practice of Workers’ Voice in Canada, by Jim Stanford and Daniel Poon. That report was published earlier this year as part of our PowerShare project. With the kind permission of Our Times, we are reposting the feature article here. Please see the 5-page article, which is a useful resource for union educationals, train-the-trainer sessions, and other uses:…