WEST GERMANY.
Experience shows that no work previously done by hand is outside the range of the robots.
Audi-Neckarsulm, robots already put in the ceiling under the car roots. At Mercedes-Mettingen, "works" as an inspector of the final pro-
Invasion of the robots threatens labor duct, checking the seams that its fellow robots have welded (it shows up deviations as small as a tenth of a millimeter).
It would be entirely wrong to lament this replacement of human labor as such.
For a half century, the auto industry has been the testing ground for large- scale application of the most modern technology in the capitalist production process.
In the US automobile industry, this began in the 1920s with the intro.
duction of the assembly line.
The production line that was set up in
Wolfsburg after the second world war for VW beetles set the European record for division and intensity of labor.
Once again, at the end of 1983 and the beginning of 1984, the "Halle
4" of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg has set a world record for automation with the robotized and computerized production of the new
Golfs ("'Golf II").
What was true before is even more so
These exceptionally highly automated factories that stand out now, in a few years will become the model for the entire industry.
Therefore, it is useful, and not just for those working in this industry, to take a closer look at this laboratory to get an the conditions all the workers
"If you look at all the individual technological innovations in one individual
VW factory, and imagine a factory in which they are applied, you get a factory empty of people.
This perspective is confirmed by the examples given by workers from VW.
Kassel and the complementary examples given by other workers from Opel, Ford and Daimler-Benz at the Second Automobile Workers Meeting organized by the
Falken Review in early December 1983.
The future belongs to factories empty of
"Factories empty of people"
In 1969, when the first robots were introduced on production lines at General
Motors in Detroit, it all still seemed to be harmless, yet another labor saving device.
Then, in the 1970s, the Japanese auto companies introduced industrial robots into their factories on a large scale. In this case, however, two-digit growth rates for the Japanese economy as a whole covered up the fact that living labor was being squeezed out of the production pro-
In particular,
"automated manual-operations machines"
were still completely inadequate as a general substitute for human labor.
robots carried out a few preprogrammed movements. They moved mostly around one axis, were awkward and "insensitive."
This generation of robots replaced on the average 1.4 to 1.6 workers. The new
"second generation of intelligent robots,"
however, in the opinion of those out a study for the Commerzbank, represents "social and political
These robots are equipped with visual and tactile sensors (in video cameras). They will soon be able to
• "feel" (that is, distinguish warm from cold and soft from hard) and dismove around more than one axis, in most
But most importantly, they are fully reprogrammable.
"Computer Aided Manufacturing" has two big advantages over the sort of fixed production lines previously in general
- Production can be shaped much more flexibly. Breakdowns at specific points can be adjusted for without stopping the process as a whole.
can be changed without scrap the old equipment, was generally the case before. The industrial robots can be reprogrammed in accordance with the tasks involved in producing the new model.
This second generation of robots covers ranges of jobs that remained out of the reach of previous forms of automation. One of the most important of these is assembly, the putting together of the drive mechanism, the axles, the chassis, the installation of the headlights, the attachment of the wheels and the exhaust pipes, unwinding and flex-
Soldering, which the first generation of robots did to some extent, is now aldone by the industrial robots (except for some spot welding and seams). The same goes for painting.
A few jobs have been saved even after the introduction of robots in the production of the Golf II. For example, human workers are still needed to install the cooling systems and electric wiring. the second case, however, this is only an intermediate solution.
entire electrical system used in cars has scarcely changed since the 1920s. It will not last much longer. going to be replaced by electronic and electric circuits built into the body.
In fact, through the changes in the factory routine of the 1980s, the possibility is appearing for a humanization of labor. Humanity and the mass of workers can do without this kind of work the robots are starting to do.
Most of the jobs taken over by robots - welding, lifting heavy weights, painting and so forth - are harmful to the health of human beings because of noise, poisonous gases, glare and physical strain. The least that can be said about them is that they are monotonous, uncreative activity. No workers who have spent long in the belly Moloch come out unscathed. Potential for liberation or destruction?
This indicates the potentially liberating perspective the new technology offers. Ignoring this is quite fashionable on the left today, but such an attitude leads politically into a hopeless blind alley.
It is only on the basis of understanding the new technology's liberating potential that the effects of its introduction under capitalist conditions can be properly assessed and fought. In fact, the destruction this technology can cause, if it is introduced into the capitalist labor is as great as is its protential for the first result is massive unemployment instead of a shorter workweek for all.
The capacities of the second generation of robots are such that since the middle of 1983 hundreds of them have been being installed. Every robot now replaces four to ten workers. cess has been fully underway in the West German car factories since the spring of
It was already foreshadowed by the massive investment programs that were postponed in 1979, at the beginning of the last recession in the industry.
Retooling for the new models has been combined with revolutionizing the production lines. In BMW's main factory in Munich, the No. 3 Plant has been robot-
In the Sindelfingen and Bremen Daimler plants, the "little Mercedes" is being produced by robots (by the end of 1983, 300 robots had been installed).
the Opel plant in Bochum, robots have been installed to make the new "Kadett." At the Ford plant in Cologne, 150 robots have been installed to assemble the new "Scorpio."
Whereas in the past Opel produced 13 cars per year per employee, in four or five years it will build 45 cars per employee. Other car manufacturers have aimed for, and in part already achieved, productivity leaps of this order.
International Viewpoint 30 January 1984
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Workers are being replaced by other workers who don't need breaks-robots (DR)
Special shifts will not have to be negoti- for space reasons.
Volkswagen, which since the end the 1970s, has been the pacesetter in West Germany in the installation of robots, puts all this in the shade. In the production of the Golf II, robots and computerization will take 20% off the total worktime per car. If these cars were made the way the Golf Is were, VW would have to employ 1,000 more workers.
"The wave of automation is becoming an avalanche," warns Metall, the journal of the engineering workers union, which until a short time ago showed no inkling of what was happening. "Robots are work on the assembly line, in press work, body construction, painting. And now in parts assembly, with labor-cost savings to the company of up to 40%" (Metall, September 23, 1983.)
A few have ventured estimates for the economy as a whole. Thus, the robot producer Kuka estimates that before the end of this decade 120,000 robots will be installed throughout the world 12,000 in West Germany, 5,500 of them in the West German auto industry. This would result in the loss of 100,000 jobs overall in West Germany and 40,000 in the West German auto industry. This is quite a "soft-hearted" estimate.
The head of the Ford company in Belgium is more forthright. By the end of the decade, 50% of all jobs in the West European auto industry may be eliminated, that amounts to a million jobs, and those are just the direct job losses in the auto industry itself. Work time "reorganized"
The Commerzbank study cited above considers that in the West German auto industy, half the assembly line jobs are in danger, that is there are 600,000 workers who can be replaced by robots. The number of new jobs that might be created in robotized industry are estimated by this study at a meagre 20,000.
In Japan, the example of the three biggest electronic concerns, shows how rapidly such a process can take place. In only ten years, the workforce was cut by half, while at the same time production increased. In particular, badly paid women workers were replaced by robots.
"Adjusting labor organization to the den. inds of modern production techInter tional Viewpoint 30 January 1984 niques is a constant task for industrial society that is undergoing a process structural change." That is how the most prestigious German newspaper of big capital, the Frankfurter Allgemeine eitung (FAL), described the second negative effect of the introduction of the new production techniques under capitalism - computer-directed intensification of the labor of those who still have jobs.
This is what the "reorganization of labor at Volkswagen" represents, which the FAZ considers a pilot project for all West German industry, in particular auto.
The VW management is trying to im pose two new regulations on the workers: maintaining production during breaks and the computing of worktime on an annual basis. For computer-directed production, breaks are an "unnecessary interruption of production." Eventually this sort of production could go on without a human workforce at all.
In the immediate, what the companies want to do is program the production lines so that they continue through the breaks provided for the workers in the union contracts, without being attended by human workers, or at least only by a reduced monitoring crew. produce a new labor saving and, if the work time and level of production remain the same, it also means a loss of jobs. The pilot project for this scheme is to be started in the VW factories.
Workers at Ford in Cologne report that the management there is also making moves that point in the same direction. Food wagons are being brought in. each line, the canteens are being disman-
The crews will be able to eat their "meals" in sight, if not in reach, of their half-automated production lines.
What could prove far more important than the elimination of breaks at VW is the project to introduce "yearly work-
VW wants to force its "coworkers" to accept a contract selling labor time for a year in advance, so that the company can then use it as it chooses.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung claims this would "enable the company to use labor when it is really needed." Concretely what it means is part-time work for some and overtime for others.
ated anymore on an individual basis with workforce representatives. The company would simply impose them on the basis of electronic computations of the market and inventory situation.
The result will be a lot of involuntary time off in the winter and overtime in the summer months. Bonuses for overtime will be eliminated or "paid in a lump sum," which means that they will
The workers will be pressured into an agreement threat of "unemployment." In return for agreeing to contracts, the workers will get the assurance that they cannot be fired for that
If you add to this the practice followed in 1982-83 in cases when there was a lot of extra work (for example, durıng nodel changes) of the so-called "cotton picker contracts," that is, hiring workers for short periods limited in advance, the approaches the system used
Thus, a somewhat more job-secure core of workers, conditioned to regard themselves as a labor aristocracy, would be backed up by an army of much less secure short hires. A new instrument for
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's paean to the VW management, also reveals an important side-effect of these new yearly contracts. "On the basis of an established 40-hour workweek and only on this basis, the company will agree..."
What this means in plain German is that VW, which bargains nationally with IG Metall (the engineering union), will be able, through these yearly labor-time agreements with its various workforces, to undercut IG Metall's campaign for the proclaimed with hypocritical glee that the VW factory council is "taking a surprisingly open attitude to the management's new plans."
This article is from the December 15, 1983 issue of Was Tun, the paper of the West German section of the Fourth International. It has been slightly abridged
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BOLIVIAwage and a sliding scale, the government had decided that wage adjustments would be made every time that the price index rose by 40 per cent. In practice, the catching up was always late and in no way compensated for the loss of buying