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Job killer robots?
In January 2017, the opinion research institute Kantar Emnid conducted a representative survey on behalf of the BMBF on the topic of "Creating knowledge - thinking and working in the world of tomorrow". Robotics is viewed quite critically.
One of the 20 questions in the Emnid study was: How will digitalization and robots affect the number of jobs? 58% of the more than 1,000 participants believe that digitalization and robots will result in more jobs being lost than created.
Against this backdrop, it may seem understandable at first glance that more and more people are calling for robots to be taxed in the future - including Bill Gates. The European Union Parliament also discussed the issue intensively, but ultimately came out clearly against it in mid-February. A decision that brought relief to the VDMA, among others: "European companies need modern technologies in order to be able to compete internationally. That is why their use must not be made more difficult. It is a nonsensical idea that employees should be protected from robots by politicians," commented Patrick Schwarzkopf, Managing Director Robotics + Automation at VDMA, on the EU decision.
The example of BMW in Landshut shows that man and machine do not have to be in competition: human-robot collaboration has recently ensured that employees in quality assurance can work much more ergonomically than in the past. Speaking of the automotive industry: according to figures from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the enormous number of robots installed in recent years has had a positive effect on employment. In the USA, for example, around 60,000 robots were installed in the automotive industry between 2010 and 2015. In the same period, the number of employees in this sector rose by 230,000. In Germany, there were 720,000 jobs in the sector in 2010 with 77,000 robots installed, in 2015 there were 815,000 jobs and 92,000 robots - according to the VDMA, further facts that speak against the argument that robots are killing jobs!
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