RoboNomics

Chapter 11 - 2016

Miriam and I face each other across our shared work space in the United Workers Protest Group headquarters. For the last couple months, the two of us have shown up at the Group's office during the few hours we can spare.

When I'm not working with the robot, I text Miriam. She drops her grueling job search and meets me here.

If Chris isn't around, we take out our FlexPhones. The other members of the group do the same. Many of them place larger FlexScreens on the crumbling desks.

We all forget about the analog machines in the corners of the room. Our leader's insistence on avoiding anything digital makes any work cumbersome and lengthy, so while he's away we work as efficiently as we are able.

Maybe Joe was right and I needed to give the group another chance. But mainly, I just want to get out of the house. When I told Austin that the robot technician job at the school was not full time, he wasn't exactly happy.

"Okay, well, maybe we can find you another job?"

"You mean I can find another job?"

He was determined to help despite my grumpiness about the situation. And I couldn't blame him.

It wasn't that he thought I couldn't do it on my own. It was just that he was panicking and he didn't know what to do.

When I had a good salary and a steady, permanent job, we worked well. I paid for my bills and helped with the mortgage, the vacations, the trips to restaurants and other disposable spending.

But now Austin had to take on most of my expenses. He wasn't comfortable with the new arrangement.

He told me about an employment center I could go to, but I resented his help. Instead of looking for another job, I come here.

I want to teach again, more than anything, and this protest group will give me a better chance of that than an employment center ever could.

But the work of the Group is often ad hoc. Amit gives Miriam and I some menial task to complete.

Amit is the portly man with the dark, bushy beard who greeted me abruptly that day in September when I first walked into the loft. Sometimes Alexa, a former nurse who is now in charge of logistics, gives us something to do.

Other days there is no work for us and we study our FlexPhones. We follow the rise of automated labor in Toronto carefully.

We pick up Chris' habit of calling the bots and automated machines that take jobs from humans "the scourge". We read in the papers about the plight of many unionized and some private employees; manual workers and knowledge workers alike.

There's always lots of articles online about the local administrative and support staff union or the nursing union who battle with their former employers. Or the articles describe private sector workers bringing class action lawsuits against increasingly centralized, massive corporations.

But today, something different pops up on my screen.

"Miriam, you have to come see this."

"What is it?"

She raises her eyes from her phone. She's just sat down at her desk and I've been dying to tell her about my discovery.

"It's our teachers' union," I say.

The legs of her chair scrape across the glossy concrete and she is at my side before I can begin reading the article to her:

Teachers threaten strike, boards threaten lockout

"Oh my gosh," she says. "What --"

"The unions say that they're in a legal position to strike. They're going to close the school to employees if the strike goes forward."

"What do you mean, close the schools to employees?"

"Well it's not like they can close it to principals. They're in a different union and they -"

"Yeah, no," Miriam interrupts me. "That's not what I mean. Wouldn't they just close the school to everyone - even students - like they have before?"

I can't respond.

"Andrea?"

"Oh my god," I finally manage.

"What? What is it?"

She squints over my shoulder at the screen.

"A spokesperson for the Toronto School District," I read, "says that the partnership with RoboNomics, a pilot project in which Interactive Instructional Units have been placed in one classroom in each school, has been so successful they are threatening to replace striking teacher with further rush-order units."

Miriam straightens up. I look up at her.

She crosses her arms and hugs herself. Her eyes are wide and fixated on the screen.

"Can they do that?" Her gaze lands on my face.

"Well, I can't see..." I return to the article.

"It says they're going to fight it, anyway," I say as I skim.

"They can't. The unions, they have to stop this. It can't happen. How are we going to get our jobs back if everyone with higher seniority is out of a job too?"

Her eyes are glassy. She rubs her forehead back and forth, back and forth with the palm of her hand.

"Nothing's happened yet," I say to calm her. "And I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I mean, they can't just order up some robots and just fire everyone. I'm pretty sure that's not legal."

"Really?" She looks at me with gritted teeth. "Because that sounds exactly like what the unions said when our schools got rid of us."

"Miriam," I usher her back to her seat with a hand on her shoulder. "It's all right. It'll be all right."

I notice that Alexa and Bill, at the next desk over, have stopped tapping the projected keyboards on their desks or gesturing in the air above their paper-thin FlexScreens.

"We don't have our jobs back yet, but we'll be okay. The union is working on it, remember? And when we get back in the classroom we'll have a whole bunch of back pay. Just think of that."

#

But in the weeks that follow, the elementary school teachers' union drags the school district before the labor relations board. The high school teachers' union sues RoboNomics for damages.

The Ministry of Education brings the unions to the labor relations board for inciting an illegal strike. And then the Ministry is deferred to the Supreme Court. Miriam and I watch and read about and argue about the protracted affair.

"Have they started? Are they on strike yet?"

Miriam bustles into the loft one particularly chilly November afternoon.

(Continued in Chapter 12...)

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