Robots in the Fields? By John Slaughter
Immigrant workers in Atlanta. Corporate agriculture is looking to electronics to replace undocumented workers. PHOTO/CONTRIBUTED TO THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE _http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2006.07/PT.2006.07.18.html_ (http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2006.07/PT.2006.07.18.html) Georgia is now boasting to the rest of the country that it has the toughest, meanest anti-immigration laws in the U.S. At the same time, this is beginning to put the corporations, particularly big agriculture, in a bind because they depend upon immigrant labor to harvest their crops. As the country debates whether it will also move to adopt the draconian measures exemplified in Georgia, corporate agriculture is looking to electronics and computer-guided automation as a replacement for the low-wage undocumented worker. Over 50 years ago the mechanical cotton picker transformed Southern agriculture, eliminating the need for manual farm labor and wiping out the sharecropping system. But then the displaced farm workers were able to move into industrial manufacturing, and the stage was set for the civil rights movement that profoundly changed the South politically. Today immigrants labor in the fields where slaves once toiled. In central Georgia, one agribusiness owner has introduced a machine to harvest Vidalia onions that costs only $1.5 million, and permanently replaces 50 workers. In Florida citrus growers are using a machine that shakes the oranges from the trees. California navel orange growers are developing an eight-armed robot to harvest their fruit. "Farmers are now looking to robotics as a hedge," says Vision Robotics Corp CEO Derek Morikawa, and many are now beginning to see it as a way to wean the country of the need for low-wage immigrant labor. No doubt there are many workers who favor tougher immigration policies because they believe that the immigrant workers are taking their jobs. But what really happens when a robot replaces 50 workers, and then perhaps thousands or millions? Does the robot then step aside to provide more jobs for "American" workers? Not at all. It just means millions more will be permanently cast aside from the productive process. Will the displaced workers be able to go into the factories, as did their counterparts of 50 years ago? Not at all. Automation and robotics are already eliminating those jobs, too. As long as the corporations rule, both in production and in politics, any measure that will increase their profits will be employed, even having robots harvest the food we eat. But if the workers are eliminated, where will they get the money to buy the food? Robots may be an advance in technology, but as long as they are employed for the private enrichment of the corporations, it is no advance for the growing new class of poor that is being created. We are compelled to reorganize society so that the benefits of the new technology are distributed cooperatively to the benefit of the whole of society. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
