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A new report has warned that governments need to prepare themselves for the coming automation changes to workplaces, which are likely to displace thousands of workers as jobs are replaced by robots.
In the report published by the International Transport Forum (ITF), it recommends that governments must consider ways to manage the transition to driverless trucks in order to avoid social disruption from job losses.
According to the report, self-driving trucks will help save costs, lower emissions and make roads safer, as well as address the shortage of professional drivers faced by the road transport industry.
However the rub for anyone who works in this demanding field will be alarmed by the projection that automated trucks could reduce the demand for their services by 50-70 per cent in the United States and Europe by 2030, with up to 4.4 million of the projected 6.4 million professional trucking jobs becoming redundant, according to one scenario.
And that’s not all, even if the rise of driverless trucks dissuades newcomers from trucking, over two million drivers in the US and Europe could be directly displaced, according to scenarios examined for the report.
The report makes four recommendations to help manage the transition to driverless road freight:
– Establish a transition advisory board to advise on labour issues.
– Consider a temporary permit system to manage the speed of adoption.
– Set international standards, road rules and vehicle regulations for self-driving trucks.
– Continue pilot projects with driverless trucks to test vehicles, network technology and communications protocols.
People are already being subliminally told to prepare for a driverless truck future, as even films like the recent superhero hit Logan had a scene where the characters were travelling along a desert highway, as keen observers would note that all the trucks were just freight boxcars on wheels – driving themselves.
Recently, GovNews published an editorial that suggested a way to deal with displaced workforces, because it’s not only going to affect the trucking, transport and logistics industries.
With displaced workforces in every field, it’s inevitable that governments will have hordes of now unemployed citizens to support, which would put a horrendous strain on the already stretched Department of Human Services.
Instead, governments are being pressured to investigate the viability of a universal basic income (UBI), which is agreed by many across the political spectrum that would help alleviate stress on displaced workers and welfare departments alike – the latter of which would be able to scale back its exhaustive administrative tasks that monitor unemployed clients in their income and job hunts.
