Foxconn's Robot Workforce Now 20,000 Strong

itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall Foxconn's plans to staff its factories with an army of 1 million robot workers to offset rising labor costs. Well, now we have an update on those plans. Speaking at the company's shareholder meeting on Wednesday, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou said that there are 20,000 robotic machines currently at work in Foxconn factories. Ultimately, these robots will replace human assembly workers and 'our [human] workers will then become technicians and engineers,' Gou said."

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[ShanghaiBill]

'our [human] workers will then become unemployed ,' Gou said.

FTFY

Unlikely. Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past, and there is little reason to think this time will be any different. China is transitioning to a service economy much faster than western nations did, and due to the one child policy, China's labor force has already peaked, and it will be more and more difficult for companies to find enough workers.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[wienerschnizzel]

Do you also care as much about all the people that lost their work when agricultural automation became wide spread? Do you cry for the thousands of workers that might have been tilling the land manually instead of just one guy riding a tractor - when you eat your morning cereals/bread/whatever? And don't tell me you only eat stuff from your local farmer's market, because those people use automation too. How is factory automation any different?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Mashiki]

Unlikely. Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past, and there is little reason to think this time will be any different.

Really? Well it's one of those things that is really hard to figure out. Though if we take queues from the auto industry here in North America where they went from manual labor to automation, and if we say don't count those who maintained their jobs by internal shifting, and instead count them as people who would have been unemployed. It's probably around 10-14%, give or take a bit. Though, that people are moved around inside companies to fill other positions heavily off-sets this, usually it means that 1-3% from said companies only end up losing their jobs due to either a lack of jobs, attrition/buyouts, retirement and so on.