Re-politicising the future of work: Automation anxieties, universal basic income, and the end of techno-optimism

Abstract

‘Rise of the Robots’, the ‘Second Machine Age’ and ‘This Time it's Different’ are some of the sweeping headlines that frame contemporary popular narratives of the future of work. It is often claimed that technological change is an accelerating force causing significant disruption to employment, necessitating a universal basic income (UBI) as human labour becomes increasingly redundant. This article interrogates these assumptions and considers how the techno-optimism that fuelled contemporary visions of workplace automation has declined in recent years. Empirical studies of automated workplaces, in particular the warehouse, have challenged simplistic binaries of job destruction or creation. I consider how automation and UBI are not value-neutral tools, but sites of socio-political contest that can challenge or consolidate workplace imperatives of control. In the context of ever-widening power asymmetries between workers and employers, this terrain is particularly fraught.