Tech advances threaten employment

SOUTH African grocery retailers are taking their cue from global players, and as a result the retail workforce may be under threat as technology continues to rattle the sector.

About three years ago the biggest retailer in the world, US-based Walmart, embraced smaller-format stores as its superstores began falling out of favour with customers, and signalled it would employ a more rationalised workforce.

This year, the group announced a further reduction in staff as it focused more on e-commerce business. About 18 000 people lost their jobs out of a workforce of 2.3 million employees globally.

Similarly, UK-based retailer Tesco cut 1 200 staff jobs in its head office after cutting 1 100 jobs in its call centre.

Walmart competitor Amazon has only 34 400 staff, although it said in January it expected to add 100 000 people to its workforce in the next 18 months.

André Roux, head of the future studies programme at Stellenbosch University, said technology had been a significant disrupter in recent times, but several other issues were influencing the way companies were seeing the labour force.

“Robots can work for up to 40 days in a row for 24 hours a day”.

Robots would gradually labour, he said. replace human

The fastest-growing employment was self-employment, as opposed to working for one organisation for many years.

“In the future, people will probably work for 20 or more organisations during their careers – just a couple of years at a time. That has implications for how one builds up one’s pension fund. It becomes one’s own responsibility.”

But in a country such as South Africa, which was part of a developing region, there was a disjuncture between adopting first-world ways of doing business on the one hand, and dealing with issues such as an unskilled labour force on the other. “Although we are a developing country, these days you’ve got to be as good as the best.

“We have to follow new trends but at the same time be aware of our own unique challenges.”

In the current retail climate, Pick n Pay’s self-service checkout points may be the biggest threat of all to labour.

Bones Skulu, general secretary of the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union, said the union was challenging the installation of selfservice checkouts.

It would continue calling on workers to embark on industrial action in response to technology that had the potential to replace labour. — DDC