Japan's Robots Join Ranks Of Unemployed

Japan's Robots Join Ranks Of Unemployed

Robots are the most efficient workers in the world. Moreover, they do not complain about hours worked, ask for raises, or seek collective bargaining agreements.

Nonetheless, In Japan, Machines for Work and Play Are Idle .


Japan’s legions of robots, the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets.

At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.

They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.

“We’ve taken a huge hammering,” said Koji Toshima, president of Yaskawa, Japan’s largest maker of industrial robots.

More at source:
globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com...

Robots eat old people, according to Sam Waterston. :-)

What a sad day when machinery gets laid off.

reply to post by silent thunder


Poor robots...

I hope Japan is at least giving them unemployment benefits and food stamps. It's the least they could do, after all the hard work they do.