Both as businesses and as a state. Anyone moving to modern manufacturing is feeling it, including Australia. You still pretend that it doesn't affect you.
"GUDAI-DARRI, Australia -- In this remote corner of western Australia, surrounded by clusters of low-lying scrub and red rocky outcrop, the world's second-biggest mining company has built its most technologically advanced mine.
For Rio Tinto PLC, finding the workers to run the new high-tech operation is a challenge.
Automation helped miners become more efficient and avoid disruptions triggered by the pandemic, when sudden border closures marooned workers who used to jet in from afar for their shifts. But the companies' investments are doing little to solve a broader labor crisis affecting an industry that still needs a large staff to keep their operations running smoothly.
In some ways, automation could be making things worse. Global miners that used to rely on machinery operators and laborers now need to compete for workers with specialized skills, such as in data analysis and artificial intelligence. Competition with nonmining industries for staff risks driving up wages, which would add to inflation if passed on to customers via higher commodity prices.
At Rio Tinto's Gudai-Darri mine, nearly two dozen driverless trucks haul iron ore on preplanned courses, tracked by autonomous water carts that are used to control dust. Robots are used to transfer samples in the site's laboratory, while ore departs the mine on a driverless train for export to customers in Asia. The mine shipped its first ore last month and will ramp up to full capacity next year.
To operate and maintain the machines at Gudai-Darri, Rio Tinto employs roughly 600 workers on site and more than 70 people in a control center in Perth, almost 1,000 miles away. Construction of the mine ran over budget and was delayed by months, partly because Rio Tinto wasn't able to get the labor it needed. The miner is grappling with hundreds of unfilled roles across the Pilbara, a region of Australia that supplies more than half of the world's iron ore.
Mine workers are now "much more likely to pick up a tablet than a spanner," said Simon Trott, Rio Tinto's head of iron ore.
Technology will change as many as four in every five mining jobs by 2030, according to a 2019 estimate by EY. Traditional manual labor is making way for remote operating centers and robotics. Truck drivers and drill operators are being supplanted by data scientists and systems engineers.
"Automation hasn't led to the doomsday scenario of mass layoffs," said Robert Carruthers, acting chief executive at the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia. "In fact, it's created new roles that didn't exist before automation."
Union officials disagree that the number of new roles is keeping pace with job losses. Shane Roulstone, national organizing director at the Australian Workers' Union, said roughly half of jobs that existed on mine sites remain after automation. New roles at remote operating centers can't fill the gap, he said." [1]
1. Business News: Automation Poses Hiring Woe for Mining Industry
Hoyle, Rhiannon.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 12 July 2022: B.5.
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