Levi's: goodbye workers, in their place arrive the laser-robots

According to a report presented in 2016 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, by 2020 the robots will replace 5 million jobs. The "technological unemployment" (ie the discovery of new means to save on the use of labor) theorized in the thirties by the economist John Maynard Keynes continues to strike.

Years pass, sometimes the centuries, but certain issues remain unchanged. The work of the hands is important, but the speed much more.

As reported by Financial Times, the jeans giant Levi's is testing it in its facilities (it is carrying out tests in Mexico at Apparel International, its fabric supplier), the workers with the robot-lasers. For now, testing is limited to treatments such as fraying, holes and fading of denim, but could expand to complete automation in 2020.

The reason? Obviously the savings on time and costs. The company has, in fact, calculated that achieving certain special effects applied to jeans wear through the manual procedure takes seven or eight minutes, against the 90 seconds of the laser. It all seems very advantageous, but one question remains: what will the workers do? The managing director Chip Bergh replies that they will be moved to other processes, stating that Levi's does not provide for staff cuts, which will be possible thanks to the increase in sales that he hopes to have thanks to this new measure.