Do we value technology above human labour?

We are willing, as a society, to regularly adopt new, time-saving technology and devices.  We put them everywhere; in the home, in the supermarket, in the workplace.  We love them.  What we don’t seem to appreciate or want to pay for is human work.

George Calombaris underpaid his restaurant staff for the physical work they performed, others have been accused of the same. Nannies in private homes are often woefully underpaid, even though they do what some might consider the most important work of all.  It is a similar story for carers of the aged.

What happened to a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work?  Why don’t we want to pay for human labour anymore?

Human exertion must have an accepted monetary value and be paid for when it is done on our behalf.

It is not only business owners, it is consumers who overlook the value of physical work done by humans.  As we incorporate more and more technology into our lives I believe we are under-valuing the human physical exertion portion of our own personal supply chains.

Our shopping is done online.  Warehouses are full of machines and robots that select our goods and drones are delivering them to us.  Our business leaders are moving manufacturing/customer service to off-shore locations because labour costs are so much lower.  Labour costs are the number one ‘threat’ in predicting profitability for any business.

Business departments, employees and customers are continually demanding better and more integrated services in today’s tech-driven world. However, IT departments are facing the need to deliver more with less, and are struggling with legacy software that doesn’t easily allow for integration.  That kind of problem requires thinking, planning and innovation – in other words, time spent by a human.

Thinking about a human life-cycle.  Generally speaking it involves air, water, food, love, work, procreation and death.  At our basic level, humans don’t really ‘need’ technology.  We do, however, need to be physically active to maintain our health, get satisfaction from our work, derive pleasure from our interactions with others, and achieve emotional stability through our relationships.  Isolation is not a great thing if you are a human.  It has been used repeatedly throughout history as a form of punishment.

A good example of collaborative endeavour combined with physical labour is an Amish barn raising.  A barn raising is an Amish work event that combines socializing with a practical goal.  The barn raising fulfils a practical need and also serves to tie the Amish community together, reinforcing Amish society through a very visible expression of the principle of mutual aid.

A barn raising is a showcase of Amish planning, organization, and manual labour.  Amish tap into the social capital and goodwill in the community, mobilize labour and come together to erect a building which serves as a practical linchpin of their agriculturally-rooted communities.

The big take-away from the exercise is that only one family immediately benefits from the completed barn.  The work is done with genuine selflessness, with the small thought that in the future the participant may need to raise their own barn and may need help to do so.

I wonder if we have swung the technology pendulum so far that we would struggle in today’s technological world to ‘raise the barn’ as a team.

After all, our manual labour is worth so much.