Abstracts

50 Figure 1 Share of Employment in High Demand by Skill Level 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% OECD United States South Africa Low-skilled Medium-skilled High-skilled Source: Manca et al. (2018). attention—in terms of helping their members prepare for the changing role of technology in industry—to skills challenges arising from automation. The article argues that current skills challenges and structural imbalance are not being addressed by unions because leaders “seem to be preoccupied with ‘politics from above,’ which entails using political power to advance the individual interests of union leaders, and conventional union issues” (p. 111). One member of the Development Institute for Training, Support and Education for Labour, a collaborative organization that works with unions to provide training to their members, believes unions have not planned on training or reskilling the workers yet, as it is not among their current goals (Hlatshwayo, 2017). This is not a new occurrence in South Africa; in the past, labor unions have leveraged their power to prevent the adoption of technology. The CEO of Principa, a South African data analytics company, points out, “South Africa had purposefully rejected several tech advancements from the previous industrial revolutions, wisely, because they destroy jobs. Self-service fuel pumps are a prime example. If we adapt self-service, 70,000 fuel service station employees will be jobless” (DeJager, 2019). Thus, the lack of awareness from workers along with the tunnel vision from the unions expose workers to a higher risk of displacement and create rigidity in the labor market. The substitution of AI for human clerks in the financial sector (specifically at Rand Merchant Bank and Nedbank) demonstrated AI’s ability to displace medium-skilled workers. Just as the country is facing near-term skills shortages in the medium levels, those same jobs are being taken away by robots. It appears companies are resorting to using machines to address the shortages in the labor market, and the government is not addressing the shortages fast enough to meet the demand from the market. The Future of Jobs Report 2018 (WEF, 2018) reveals that hiring new permanent staff with skills relevant to new technology is still the top priority for firms. However, without sufficient supply, they will turn to alternative strategies, looking for ways to automate the work (83% of respondents). In short, filling the shortage of medium- skill jobs in the near term and preparing to upskill its labor force to higher levels in the long