Automation has become a new battleground for the physical body. I found myself in the ethical dilemma when checking out at Walmart just the other day. Two options appeared to me in the vast rows of the checkout aisles: checkout with a living body or checkout with an automated machine. This decision between cashiers and machines has become increasingly pertinent to consumers in recent years.
By 2013, nearly 200,000 stores had implemented some form of automated checkout, and those numbers are believed to reach 468,000 by the year 2021 (Lufkin). This rise in automated telling has raised many questions about the effects of automation on consumption and labor, and the impacts these machines may have on pink-collar jobs.
Why has automation in retail risen so steadily? Some consumers claim that speed is the core reason for choosing automated machines over cashiers. However, studies show that machine automated checkouts do not actually decrease time spent in retail stores (Lufkin). Another reason could stem from the consumer and retail worker interactions. According to Harmon at the New York Times one appeal of automated retail was, “…the chance to avoid what they say are increasingly frequent frustrating, hostile or guilt-inducing interactions with service workers” (Harmon). Despite the avoidance of social interaction with workers playing a key role in the disappearance of the checkout employee, labor in retail work has shifted to the realm of invisible rather than disappearing altogether.
The loss of retail cashier work has been termed the “Retail Apocalypse”, but instead of eliminating retail work altogether, more workers are being moved less visible labor positions such as stocking or personal shopping (Rugaber). Thus, automated retail technology hints more at the disembodiment of labor than labor’s decapitation because those jobs become less visible to consumers, but could this disembodiment have impacts on working-class labor forces?
The fears surrounding disembodied labor due to technology can be seen in the science fiction film Sleep Dealer. In the film, a labor force in Mexico controls robots on American soil from hundreds of miles away. These robots allow for the labor to be conducted by minorities without allowing those groups to be seen by the American people. The film hints that this type of invisible labor could result in worsened working conditions and more demanding hours, exploiting the worker at the benefit of the naïve consumer.
Exploitation has already been a major problem in technology driven corporate companies such as Amazon who notoriously underpays and overworks employees in the US and abroad (Ghosh). I guess I wonder whether the visibility of the worker could have an impact on the way companies treat the employees who work in low wage occupations. Obviously, this problem has been seen in cases where the determined blindness of the American consumer has exploited labor in other countries. However, could the disembodiment due to automation worsen working conditions for the American Working Class as well? I think that the effects of automation and disembodied labor are still in their early stages. However, the way automation continues to depersonalize the relationship between the low wage laborer and consumer gives rise to concern of the disembodied position of the worker in the growing digital economy.
Ghosh, Shona. “Peeing in Trash Cans, Constant Surveillance, and Asthma Attacks on the Job: Amazon Workers Tell Us Their Warehouse Horror Stories.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 5 May 2018, www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-share-their-horror-stories-2018-4.
Hamacher, Adriana. “Future - The Unpopular Rise of Self-Checkouts (and How to Fix Them).” BBC News, BBC, 10 May 2017, www.bbc.com/future/story/20170509-the-unpopular-rise-of-self-checkouts-and-how-to-fix-them.
Harmon, Amy. “More Consumers Reach Out to Touch the Screen.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Nov. 2003, www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/us/more-consumers-reach-out-to-touch-the.
Rugaber, Christopher S. “Why the 'Amazon Effect' in E-Commerce Is Good News For Job Creation.” Inc.com, Inc., 30 Oct. 2017, www.inc.com/associated-press/e-commerce-automation-robots-create-more-jobs-amazon-effect.html.