While I’m 110% in favor of unions, they should concentrate on retraining. Those jobs won’t come back, and forcing companies to keep using labor will make many companies less competitive, and will kill many of them, being counter productive in the long run.
We need different strategies.
Poised? It’s already happening. It’s true that many businesses are rushing, and and many of these precipitated decisions are coming back to bite them in the ass. But it will pregressively happen.
Something similar happened when computers appeared, in the span of a few years a number of jobs almost disappeared, like typists.
Companies had floors of people, mainly women, typing out documents, accounting departments, document distribution Airplane crews (first the radio/navigators, then then engineers, 50% of flight crews) etc.
When CAD appeared, most of the draftsmen lost their jobs,
When internet appeared, many others went out the windows, like travel agencies, many retail jobs, banking, and many more.
Robotics killed millions of jobs in manufacturing, and so on.
The switch to cleaner or more efficient modes of energy production killed millions of jobs in the coal industry, mechanization in agriculture…
Disruptive technologies do that.
The large picture is generally good for society, but for individuals it’s devastating.
Not an easy problem to solve.
I think there is. Letting the actual professionals guide, instead of the money people is a big step.
Something like McDonnell, and later Boeing, basing all decisions on economic short gains, instead of engineering criteria.
Bean counters shouldn’t make decisions.