Technology Archives - Centre for Future Work

Your Job is at Risk from Artificial Intelligence… but not for the Reasons You Think

Jim Stanford — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:02:39 +0000

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.

You Won’t be Replaced by an Algorithm, but you Could be Disemployed by a Financial Collapse

By Jim Stanford

Many people worry that artificial intelligence (AI) threatens their future job security. But this concern is largely misplaced. Most AI applications have dubious productive merit. Few algorithms can do tasks actually performed by humans. Many AI users are students cheating on their homework, or bored commuters creating silly videos.

And like previous technologies, AI facilitates new functions and capacities that will likely offset whatever jobs are eliminated by the technology. Without doubt, right now AI is currently creating more jobs than it is destroying.

However, there’s another way AI may indeed threaten your job – and it’s got nothing to do with an algorithm replacing you. Since ChatGPT launched three years ago, an unprecedented financial bubble has inflated in AI-related investments, concentrated in the U.S.

Fueled by speculative hype, the share prices of AI-adjacent companies have soared to valuations unprecedented in the history of the stock market. The top seven alone (the so-called Magnificent Seven) are worth over $20 trillion (U.S.), accounting for 35 percent of the combined value of the S&P 500.

This bubble magically creates trillions in paper wealth, in turn fostering all kinds of risky gambits. Financial investors take on debt to buy AI-related assets, pushing share prices even higher. Tech companies spend enormous sums on data centres, computers to put in them, software to operate the computers, and carbon-belching power plants to run it all. Incestuous transactions and financial engineering within and between the big AI firms artificially inflate revenues even further, pouring gasoline on an already-blazing market.

Meanwhile, consumer spending by rich Americans (who think they are even richer thanks to soaring portfolios) is the biggest source of new demand in the U.S. economy. Inflated by sky-high AI stocks, stock market equity now accounts for one-third of all U.S. household assets (most held by the richest tenth of the population).

This mania is reminiscent of the dot-com bubble that popped in 2001 – causing a short recession in the U.S., and laying waste to much of Canada’s then-promising tech sector (anyone remember Nortel Networks??). As usual, the stock market’s hyperactive search for the next big thing creates a bandwagon effect that vastly outstrips any realistic cost-benefit analysis.

No major AI services are currently profitable, and tech executives now publicly doubt the trillions they are investing will ever generate an acceptable return. Indeed, every query submitted to ChatGPT or other AI apps generates a further loss, since the costs (including soaring U.S. electricity prices) exceed the revenue.

These ethereal valuations also badly distort Canada-U.S. economic comparisons, even more than usual. Conservative commentators habitually post memes showing bemoaning that Canadian capital investment lags the U.S. But the AI frenzy now accounts for most of that apparent U.S. advantage. Genuine manufacturing investment and employment in the U.S. is falling, not growing. Canadians will soon be grateful we didn’t buy into this speculative mania as much as our southern neighbours.

If I could predict exactly when the AI bubble will burst, I’d short the stock market and make billions (which I would promptly donate to the activists fighting to protect privacy against creeping AI surveillance). I can’t do that. But I am completely certain that the financial exuberance on full display in America right now has no real economic foundation, and will eventually come crashing down.

When the AI bubble pops, it will cause a recession and major job losses in the U.S. Overheated capital spending on data centres and power plants, and excessive luxury consumption by those who’ve been made rich (on paper) by the speculative flight of the market, will quickly shift into reverse. That downturn will spill over into Canada – although not as fully as in past downturns, since our exposure to the U.S. market has been moderated (a silver lining to Donald Trump’s trade war).

This is the real reason workers should fear AI – or, more precisely, fear the misdemeanours of the tech bro’s and financial wizards whose profit-seeking is exposing us to massive, needless risks. The AI algorithms cannot perform most of the useful work we do every day. But in a world dominated by greed and speculation, they could nevertheless put millions of us on the soup line.

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Giving Donald Trump Some of His Own Medicine on Services Trade

Jim Stanford — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 21:50:24 +0000

The Canadian government recently abandoned its new Digital Services Tax (DST), which since January 1 2024 had collected a 3% levy on all revenue in Canada from sales of digital advertising or marketplace services. The companies which dominate this industry (like Google, Meta, Amazon, or AirBnB) typically avoid most or all normal corporate income tax, by shifting revenue and profits from countries like Canada to tax havens where taxes are low or zero. As a result they pay little toward Canada’s social and physical infrastructure (vital to their own businesses’ success), despite the harm they are doing in many areas of life (such as undermining established mass media). The government abandoned the DST after U.S. President Donald Trump broke off trade talks.

In this commentary, originally published in the Toronto Star, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford argues the DST spat pulled back the curtain on an underappreciated dimension of Canada-U.S. trade: services. Canada incurs a large annual deficit in services trade with the U.S, because of the dominance of U.S. firms in key transborder services sectors – including the giants who will now avoid paying the DST. Services trade is the fastest-growing component of international trade. As Canada gears up to fight the Trump tariffs, leveraging their huge profits in Canada should be part of the negotiating strategy – rather than laying out a welcome mat.

For more detail on the importance of services in Canada-U.S. trade, and the consequent leverage that the Canadian government could exercise in trade talks with Trump, please see our previous report, Who’s Subsidizing Whom (especially pages 16-19).

Canada’s now-abandoned digital services tax was never enough to begin with

By Jim Stanford

Days after U.S. President Donald Trump broke off trade talks with Canada, Ottawa suddenly rescinded its new 3% Digital Services Tax (DST). We all knew bargaining with Trump would be full of drama, threats, and bluster. But Canadians had their elbows up.

Abandoning the DST so quickly, weeks before the July 21 deadline for a deal, is a worrying sign. What will Trump demand next? At any rate, given Trump’s deals with other countries (which are not binding, and leave U.S. tariffs in place), it’s not clear any deal (if reached) will be worth the paper it’s printed on.

The DST fiasco highlights an important but underappreciated dimension of Canada-U.S. trade: services. Trump rages about merchandise imports – stuff that arrives via container ships, trucks, and pipelines. He blames other countries’ supposedly unfair practices for chronic U.S. trade deficits.

This narrative is economically laughable. U.S. deficits (which have persisted for 50 years) reflect ongoing capital flows to America, not mistreatment by foreigners.

Curiously, Trump seldom talks about services trade. But it’s the fastest-growing segment of trade – growing 60% over the last decade (more than twice as fast as merchandise trade), and now making up one-quarter of all trade.

America’s home to the biggest banks, consultants, and tech firms. Their CEOs sat in the front row at Trump’s inauguration. Their global reach and power generates large U.S. trade surpluses in services. That’s why Trump doesn’t talk much about services: his arguments about poor, mistreated America have no relevance.

The DST spat, however, pulls back the curtain on the importance of services in Canada-U.S. trade. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Canada is the second-largest export market for U.S. services. American firms sold us $90 billion (U.S.) worth last year (and that doesn’t count many digital services which official statistics miss).

Sales of Canadian services to the U.S. are much smaller: $57 billion in 2024. That produced a $33 billion surplus for America.

If the tables were turned, a deficit that big would elicit foaming outrage from Washington. For example, consider Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, announced April 2. They were imposed on merchandise from over 180 countries – and even some uninhabited islands!

Trump claimed these tariffs would offset tariffs and other unfair practices by U.S. trading partners. But the formula for calculating them horrified economists. Trump’s team took the bilateral U.S. deficit with each country, divided by the total volume of imports from that country. They applied two odd additional factors – which magically multiplied to equal one, thus having no impact on the final result. The resulting ratio was then divided by two, for no apparent reason (Trump said because the U.S. is “nice”).

The whole charade is nonsensical – and under pressure from financial markets, Trump quickly postponed them for 90 days (until July 9). But what if his theory applied to Canada-U.S. services trade?

America’s surplus equals 37% of total Canadian services imports from the U.S. Because Canadians (unlike Trump) are genuinely “nice,” we’ll also divide that by two. That implies an 18.5% tariff on all services purchased from the U.S. The DST’s 3% levy (imposed on tech companies which usually evade normal income tax) looks positively easy-going, in comparison.

Incidentally, even on merchandise trade, Trump’s formula would imply a tariff of just 8% on Canadian exports – much smaller than what Trump has already imposed on our steel, aluminum, and cars (and threatened on virtually everything else).

Even by Trump’s perverted logic, we should be taxing U.S. tech giants (and other service providers) far more than the baby-step DST. Canadian negotiators must start to wield the bargaining power that comes with our status as a huge and profitable market for U.S. services firms. Being ready to curtail their access to that market is how we’ll get some leverage, not by rolling out a welcome mat.

There’s no economic rhyme or reason to Trump’s demands. Trump’s whole trade war is not actually about trade (the DST, after all, applied to companies of any nationality, even Canadian). It’s about projecting imperial power, and further enriching the most profitable corporations (and the wealthiest individuals) in the world. It is daunting to confront that threat. But Mark Carney won a mandate from Canadians to do precisely that.

The post Giving Donald Trump Some of His Own Medicine on Services Trade appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

High-Tech Price-Fixing

Jim Stanford — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 20:16:10 +0000

One worrisome feature of recent bursts of inflation has been the role of automated price-fixing technologies in pushing up prices across entire industries. Companies use special programs to search out the prices being charged by competitors, and detect changes in demand. These algorithms can then adjust prices quickly, at the level judged to be the highest the market will bear.

This process leads to faster transmission of price shocks (such as those resulting from supply chain disruptions, energy price changes, or major crises like the COVID pandemic). And with companies across a sector relying on similar technologies, it can amount to a form of automated price-fixing.

Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford explored this threat to competitive pricing practices in a recent commentary, originally published in the Toronto Star:

How algorithms are driving high-tech price-fixing

by Jim Stanford

It was certainly bad timing for me to arrange a business trip to Toronto on November 15, just as Taylor Swift kicks off her six-show run at the Rogers Centre.

My usual mid-range hotel room tripled in price (to $900 per night). Worse yet, prices for virtually every comparable hotel within 25 km of downtown also tripled, to around $900.

I’m not surprised hotels would exploit a spike in demand to soak customers and pad their profits. After all, that’s capitalism.

But the uniformity and universality of this price-gouging is something new. It’s almost as if all hoteliers in town got together and agreed to triple their rates while Taylor’s in town.

That would be illegal, of course. But in effect, that’s exactly what happened – thanks to new high-tech algorithms that instantly adjust prices in response to fluctuations in demand, supply, or information.

Hotels were early adopters of new strategies variously called algorithmic pricing, dynamic pricing, or surge pricing. They use big data – on everything from economic trends, special events, competitors’ prices, weather, and even individuals’ buying habits – to automatically fix prices at the highest level (in the algorithm’s judgment) that consumers can bear.

If all market participants apply algorithms that scrape the same data and apply the same AI logic, then this amounts to high-tech price-fixing. There are no secret memos or off-the-record conversations between corporate executives. As we know, such explicit evidence of collusion is hard to find (Canada’s infamous bread price scandal being a rare exception).

Now businesses leave all the dirty work up to machines. Where price-fixing is concerned, there’s an app for that. Canada’s lax competition laws, already sadly inadequate to prevent price-fixing and cartels, don’t stand a chance against ubiquitous and instantaneous algorithms.

Algorithmic pricing was pioneered in travel and airlines, where firms constantly strive to match available capacity to consumer demand, at the highest possible price. It is now commonplace in many other industries, from rental apartments to e-commerce to food manufacturing and supermarkets.

This technology can even set individualized prices, based on personal data (from past purchases, demographic characteristics, social media posts, and more) that reveals each consumer’s willingness to pay.

Platform businesses like Uber apply this strategy in two directions at once. They use algorithms to customize pay for each driver (based on the degree of desperation they revealed by accepting previous jobs), rather than using a standard formula based on time and distance travelled. And they apply mirror-image strategies to maximize the price paid by each customer (based on fluctuating supply and demand conditions, past consumer behaviour, and other data).

Drivers can’t predict what they’ll earn; consumers don’t know what they’ll pay. But Uber is sure to pocket the biggest possible slice of each transaction. Indeed, Uber’s margin on total revenues has grown substantially since it began applying algorithmic pricing.

Consumers can no longer have confidence about the “going price” for any product or service: it all depends on what the algorithms dictate on any particular day. This confusion facilitates rip-offs.

Indeed, instantaneous algorithmic coordination of prices across firms clearly amplified the inflationary pressures that arose after COVID lockdowns. Using big data and AI to quickly identify and exploit supply shortages and pent-up consumer demand, firms could hike prices faster – confident their competitors (using the same algorithms) would follow suit.

That’s why corporate profits tracked inflation so closely: profits in Canada reached their highest share of GDP ever in 2022, just as inflation peaked at 8%. Both profits and inflation have come down since.

U.S. regulators have started to respond to the challenges of algorithmic pricing. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have launched several lawsuits against companies for algorithmic price-fixing. And the U.S. Federal Reserve acknowledges that algorithmic pricing practices worsened the outbreak of inflation in 2022.

Unfortunately, neither the Competition Bureau nor the Bank of Canada have yet come to grips with the risks to price stability and basic fairness posed by these profit-maximizing algorithms. To bring down prices now, and prevent future algorithmic-driven surges in inflation (and hence interest rates), we need our regulators to rise to this new challenge, and hold corporations to account.

They should heed Taylor Swift’s advice: “Never be so polite you forget your power.”

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Shocking Economic Facts Behind the BC Ports Dispute

Jim Stanford — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 05:50:42 +0000

The work stoppage at BC ports has sparked predictable rhetoric from employer groups and pro-business commentators and politicians. They claim longshore workers are greedy and resistant to change, and must be forced back to work through legislation, in order to protect the national economy.

This argument has it exactly backwards. It is the shipping companies and terminal operators whose greed has disrupted Canada’s economy, including by contributing to the worst inflation in decades. And it is their resistance to change – in particular, opposing more stable and efficient ways to support training, skills, and stability in longshore work – that is the only barrier to a quick settlement.

In this new report, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford reviews the economic facts behind the current dispute, and documents the unprecedented profits which the global shipping industry has raked in since the COVID pandemic.

Please see the full report, Fighting For Stable and Fair Longshore Jobs, by Jim Stanford.

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Ontario’s ‘Right-to-Disconnect’ is no Such Thing

Jim Stanford — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 00:51:17 +0000

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 25 employees operating in the province must post and communicate their policy regarding “disconnection” outside of normal working hours. There are no requirements in the legislation whatsoever regarding what that policy should contain, and whether or not workers do indeed have any right to reject work (including instructions sent via email, text, or other remote devices) outside of normal hours. The reality is that workers do not generally have that right – unless they are protected by a union contract.

Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discussed with journalist Holly McKenzie-Sutter the superficial nature of the new Ontario policy, and why unionizing actually offers much better protection for workers concerned with the technology-facilitated creep of work into their unpaid time. See the full story here:

There is an enormous dichotomy in Canadian employment law between non-union workplaces (where people can be fired for any reason, with minimum notice or pay in lieu) and union workplaces (where just cause rules are enforced). It’s the clearest benefit of unionizing.

The Ford government’s symbolic and manipulative “right to disconnect” policy (which offers no such right at all) has inadvertently highlighted this dichotomy: if you want protection for ANY of your rights at work (including a right to disconnect), having a union is essential.

In the meantime, workers should be careful about learning about their labour rights from government press releases recycled uncritically as news. Someone who heard on TV that they now have a “right to disconnect” might then tell their boss to stuff it, the next time they are asked to return emails on the weekend. But under Ontario law, they could get fired anyway – unless, of course, they have a union.

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Canadian Workers Need More Technology, Not Less

Jim Stanford — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 12:54:48 +0000

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 real economy.

But the fact that automation and robotization are proceeding much slower than commonly assumed, doesn’t mean that workers’ jobs are ‘safe.’ While there is no evidence that the quantity of jobs in Canada has been undermined by new technology, there are many signs that the composition and quality of work has shifted in negative ways. Technology-intensive industries and occupations account for only a small share of new job creation. Most new work has been concentrated in human and caring services (like health care and education), and in private services – many of which (such as hospitality and retail) are characterized by insecure, poorly-paid, low-tech positions.

“Far from losing sleep over whether robots are going to take our jobs, Canadian workers should be more concerned with the slow pace of technology adoption by businesses,” says Jim Stanford, Economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work, and author of the report.

“The failure of employers to implement new technologies is causing an over-reliance on low-quality work, holding back our productivity and incomes, and squandering the potential for safer jobs and more leisure time.”

The report makes 6 policy recommendations to improve innovation and technology adoption in Canada, including reforming fiscal incentives, expanding publicly-funded R&D, nurturing industries that use more robots and machinery, and giving workers more say in how technological change is implemented in workplaces.

“Technology will be neither the hero nor the villain in the future of work – it all depends how technology is used, and how the costs and benefits are shared. But the reality is that Canada’s technological performance is flagging, fast. Revitalizing technological innovation and adoption, and ensuring that it enhances jobs not displaces workers, is vital to our future economic and social progress,” Stanford concluded.

Please see the full report, Where are the Robots? The Surprising Deceleration of Technology in Canadian Workplaces. This report was published by the Centre for Future Work’s PowerShare project, in partnership with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and with support from the Atkinson Foundation.

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Busting Myths about Technology and the Future of Work

Jim Stanford — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 22:12:22 +0000

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 force, made the decisions about what problems to solve with new technologies, how they are implemented in real-world use – and, critically, how the costs and benefits of new technologies are shared.

Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discussed these issues in a recent webinar hosted by Humanist Canada (the association of humanists across Canada). That’s the perfect audience with which to put the ‘human’ back into discussions about technological change. Video from the 1-hour webinar is posted below. For more on how to channel and regulate technology in ways that lift working conditions and living standards (rather than intensifying work and producing greater inequality), please see our recent Centre for Future Work #PowerShare report: Bargaining Tech: Strategies for Shaping Technological Change to Benefit Workers, by Jim Stanford and Kathy Bennett.

Click here to view this webinar on the Humanist Canada website.

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Media and Video Coverage of New PowerShare Report: “Bargaining Tech”

Jim Stanford — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 18:22:44 +0000

The Centre for Future Work recently released the third major paper in its PowerShare project, titled “Bargaining Tech: Strategies for Shaping Technological Change to Benefit Workers,” by Jim Stanford and Kathy Bennett.

The report was launched with a special webinar, held in conjunction with the recent (online) convention of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). The webinar featured presentations by the authors, who were joined by two Canadian union leaders who have confronted the challenges of new technology with innovative collective bargaining strategies: Jan Simpson, National President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and Bob Dhaliwal, Secretary-Treasurer of ILWU-Canada (representing longshore workers and other transportation and logistics industries). The webinar was chaired by Barbara Byers, former Secretary-treasurer of the CLC.

Here is a one-hour video with highlights from the webinar; it is a useful educational resource for unions and other groups campaigning around technology and workplace issues.

Written versions of remarks from Jan Simpson and Bob Dhaliwal are also available:

Their experiences on how to educate and mobilize union members to negotiate better protections against harmful effects of technological change, and ensure that workers share in the upside of new technology, are crucial input for other unions and other advocates working for a more equal and inclusive high-tech future. Their specific case studies are included among 300 other examples of technology-related collective agreement language negotiated by Canadian unions in the detailed Appendix tables in the full report.

The launch of the new PowerShare report was also featured in several media outlets, including:

Feature story in the National Post.
An in-depth cover story dealing with technology and workers’ voice in Our Times, Canada’s labour magazine.
Feature radio interview on The Pulse.
Radio debate and national call-in show on the Evan Solomon show.
A video panel on technology and the future of work with journalist Kevin Carmichael of the National Post.

Jim Stanford also wrote about the main themes of the paper in this commentary article in the National Post.

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Bargaining Tech: Shaping New Technologies to Improve Work, not Devalue It

Jim Stanford — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 07:01:12 +0000

The Centre for Future Work has published another major paper in its PowerShare project, dealing with the impact of new technology on the quantity and quality of work in Canada – and strategies for ensuring that new technology produces more benefits for workers.

The paper is entitled Bargaining Tech: Strategies for Shaping Technological Change to Benefit Workers, co-authored by Jim Stanford and Kathy Bennett. It provides an overview of the complex, contradictory ways that technological change is affecting jobs in Canada. It also discusses how technology could be better managed and implemented to achieve better, fairer, more inclusive high-tech outcomes.

The report reviews recent debates about whether new technology will lead to mass unemployment (with workers replaced by robots and other smart machines), or will degrade the quality and autonomy of work (exemplified by hyper-intense algorithm-directed jobs in high-tech warehouses or the gig economy).

The paper also reviews efforts by trade unions in Canada to shape and regulate the introduction of new technologies in their workplaces. It compiles a database of 350 collective agreement provisions, through which workers and their unions have tried to influence how technology rolls out.

Major findings include:

- - Fears that tech change will produce mass unemployment are not consistent with statistical evidence from Canada’s recent economic history. Instead, a bigger economic risk is that investments in innovation by Canadian businesses (both in tangible machinery and intangible research) have been too weak – weaker than at any time in the postwar era.
  - While fears of mass unemployment are misplaced, implementation of new technologies can certainly cause disruption and reallocation of work. And technology can also have negative effects on the quality of jobs: including speed-up of work, fragmentation of tasks, new health & safety risks, and the expansion of insecure employment (including gigs) through digital management tools.
  - For all these reasons, whether technology leads to better jobs or worse jobs is indeterminate: depending on whose interests prevail as new tech is unrolled. For that reason, giving workers more say in negotiating how technology unfolds is vital to enhancing the benefits and reducing the costs.
  - Canadian unions have been heavily engaged in negotiating technological change in their workplaces. There is no evidence unions are trying to “stop” technology. Instead, they are trying to shape and manage it: through measures like notice, adjustment supports, access to training and redeployment, limits on surveillance and digital discipline, provisions regarding work from home (which expanded under COVID), and more.
  - The authors’ survey of union bargaining strategies has identified one important shortcoming: the issue of reducing regular working hours has largely fallen off the union bargaining agenda. The authors urge unions to seek ways of revitalizing the campaign for shorter working hours as one key strategy for sharing the productivity gains of new technology, and avoiding unemployment.

The authors conclude with several policy suggestions aimed at both governments and unions, including strengthening collective bargaining systems (especially in the private sector, where just one worker in six is covered by a collective agreement); linking government support for business innovation activity with commitment to negotiate tech change with their workers; and developing ‘early warning systems’ whereby unions can get ahead of tech change before it rolls out. Those measures would help ensure faster, fairer tech change in Canadian workplaces – and a better sharing of its costs and benefits.

Please see the full report, Bargaining Tech: Strategies for Shaping Technological Change to Benefit Workers, by Jim Stanford and Kathy Bennett.

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Video: Myth & Reality About Technology, Skills & Jobs

Jim Stanford — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 15:14:12 +0000

We are constantly told that the world of work is being turned upside down by ‘technology’: some faceless, anonymous, uncontrollable force that is somehow beyond human control. There’s no point resisting this exogenous, omnipresent force. The best thing to do is get with the program… and learn how to program! Acquiring the right skills (usually assumed to be STEM or computer skills) is the best way to protect yourself in this brave new high-tech future.

But what if technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? And what if you invest in learning the current hot coding language, only to see it replaced by something totally different as soon as you graduate?

In this 30-minute video, Centre for Future Work Economist and Director Dr. Jim Stanford takes on several myths related to technology and jobs.

He argues that technology is neither exogenous nor neutral: innovation reflects the priorities (and the power) of those who have the resources to pay for it. By some indicators, jobs are becoming less technology-intensive — and this is undermining job security and living standards. Finally, we need a more holistic and democratic approach to skills and training: one that respects the all-round interests of workers as human beings (not just ‘producers’), and accepts that skills alone are no guarantee of decent, fair jobs in the future.

Myth & Reality About Technology, Skills & Jobs | Dr Jim Stanford

(Video refers to some economic data for Australia, but the arguments are very applicable to Canada.)

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