The world is on the cusp of a Fourth Industrial Revolution as technological advances such as artificial intelligence change the way more than a billion people work in the next decade.
Just like the revolutions ushered in by steam then electrical power and computing, Industry 4.0 will be “unlike anything humankind has experienced before”, the World Economic Forum says.
The pandemic is helping to bring on the new era sooner than expected as home working and online shopping boom during lockdown.
But there will be winners and losers as machines take on more of the work now done by humans.
Unions fear moving more economic activity online could further erode workers’ rights and quality of life.
John Phillips, acting general secretary, of the GMB union, said: “Well-paid, unionised, long-term jobs have been replaced by companies using zero-hours contracts as a business model to avoid their responsibilities to the people on whose backs their profits are made.
“Now, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, bricks-and-mortar employers are cutting jobs in their thousands while online retail booms.
“But where are the stable jobs that allow the heart of communities to beat again?”
Here we investigate how employment could look in this brave new world...
