“We shall not sit back and watch our workers lose jobs to machines. The issue cropped up during the Kenyatta regime, but was rejected. It surfaced in the Moi regime and we vehemently opposed it. Now, it has come to relieve workers of their jobs in the tea plantations, in the Kibaki regime. We are opposing it with all force, and shall go to the streets if it is implemented!”

These were the words of Francis Atwoli, Secretary General of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) in Kenya.

Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices.  The public tolerates these practices because it either believes that the unions are right, or is too confused to see just why they are wrong. 

Each generation welcomes with foreboding the advent of new technologies, attracted by their potential benefits and frightened by the immediate costs they impose. But contrary to popular conception and empirical observation, there is little evidence to support the thesis that technological development is responsible for rising levels of unemployment in the medium to long term. In spite of widespread anxiety that machines are progressively replacing people in the workforce, historically there has been a strong positive correlation between technological development and job creation.

It is certainly the case that the commercial application of each new phase of productive technologies displaces people from traditional occupations, reduces the number of workers required to carry out specific tasks, and can in the short term lead to fewer jobs in specific industries. In the process, a larger number of low –wage unskilled jobs are replaced with a smaller number of higher –wage, more skilled jobs resulting in rising levels of worker productivity and rising personal incomes. But that is only the most direct impact of improved technology. 

The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions.  Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat.

Every day each of us in his own activity is engaged in trying to reduce the effort it requires to accomplish the given results.  Each of us is trying to save labor. The employer seeks to gain his results more economically and efficiently – that is, by saving labor.  Every intelligent workman tries to cut down the effort necessary to accomplish his assigned job.  The most ambitious of us try tirelessly to increase the results we can achieve in a given number of hours.

In 1910, 140,000 persons were employed in the United States in the newly created automobile industry.  In 1920, as the product was improved and its cost reduced, the industry employed 250,000.  In 1930, as this product improvement and cost reduction continued, employment in the industry was 380,000.  In 1973 it had risen to 941,000.  Even high-end IT jobs go through the process of pruning and new growth. The Institute of International Economics notes that 7,000 computer programmers have lost their jobs since 1999. However, during that same period companies created 115,000 higher paying jobs in software engineering. 

New technology may reduce the number of existing jobs, but many studies show that it creates new demand, “either by increasing productivity and hence real incomes, or by creating new goods.” Technological change is double-edged; it both destroys jobs and creates new ones. Economists have generally argued that in the long run, new technology creates more jobs than it eliminates. However, compensation may not be automatic, painless or instantaneous.

It is a misconception to think of the function or result of machines as primarily one of creating jobs.  The real result of the machine is to increase production, to raise the standard of living and to increase economic welfare. Full employment is characteristic of precisely the nations that are most retracted industrially.  Where full employment already exists, new machines, inventions and discoveries cannot-until there has been time for an increase in population-bring more employment.

An efficient economy can offer hope even to its victims. Victimhood itself is a temporary state. Most of the unemployed find new jobs. The efficiency –seeking forces that fire a worker are the same forces that will ultimately rehire him. News accounts typically focus on how the unemployed will get along without a salary, but the cost of product also has a big impact on living standards. More buying power helps the outsourced worker weather the lean times of unemployment.

Advances in technology provide society with greater conveniences and in the process endow the society with greater creative and productive abilities. Over time, these new abilities spur the creation of new activities in many different fields distantly related to the original point of innovation. The process results in improvements in health, which raise the level of physical energy, higher standards of education, which raise the level of mental energy and culture; and higher levels of social skills and organization, which raise the energy level of the entire society, making it ever more creative and productive.

COTU’s Secretary General should not sink in the mire of political popularity and release economically unsound statements. Trade union officials should be on the forefront of making the lives of the people they serve better by supporting inventions that will help their countries develop and adding value to workers.

Job security no longer means fighting to keep the same job for 30 years, it means keeping ourselves marketable. Just as the market searches for ways to do things better, so will tomorrow’s workers-by gaining new knowledge and skills-seek to better themselves. The quest for efficiency-whether with machines or foreigners –will continue to create more than it destroys. 

If Atwoli is opposed to the new machines, he should discard the use of his car, mobile phone and e-mail account and employ somebody to run his errands of message delivery. He should employ Chuma and Susi, David Livingstone’s faithful porters, or Henry Satanley’s hundreds, to carry him on his back as he meets the workers, hence offering employment. He should allow a doctor to rip through his chest and trace the cancer with his naked eyes as use of x-ray machine would render a medical practitioner jobless.

Atwoli should neither have used a public address system nor received TV coverage to address the Uhuru Park rally but rather relay the information to people who would in turn shout themselves hoarse to the rest. Going by the Atwoli philosophy, the Kenya Army should discard its lorries and reinstate carrier corps. He should not even use an ATM card to carry out banking transactions. How would our lives be without technological improvement?

Job security no longer means fighting to keep the same job for 30 years, it means keeping ourselves marketable. Just as the market searches for ways to do things better, so will tomorrow’s workers-by gaining new knowledge and skills-seek to better themselves. The quest for efficiency-whether with machines or foreigners –will continue to create more than it destroys.