Friday 1 June 2018

local 226

Over fifty-thousand Las Vegas hospitality labourers with membership in the Culinary Workers’ and Bartenders’ Unions are set to stage a strike for the first time since 1984 unless their employers—the casinos and resorts—can provide guarantees that their livelihoods will be supplemented and enhanced by automation, not replaced by it.
While some might be quick to point out that the cocktail servers, cleaning staff and receptionists by going on strike are not giving their bosses a compelling argument to retain their services since robots won’t presumably demand better working conditions, it’s also worth noting that robots presumably also don’t pay taxes or have reason to go on holiday or irrationally gamble. What do you think? In a transactional economy, I suppose such redundancy is inevitable (and even enviable, if done right) but workers should leverage their power while they have it in order to better manage their transition to collaboration.