The future of mining: less workers, more robots

Mining Man: The future of mining: robotics and automation

Click the title to see the full story.

This is why the Wisconsin Republicans holding out "700 jobs" in exchange for permanent damage to the Penokee Hills with an iron ore mine is nothing but a cruel hoax.  They're not planning to provide 700 jobs, you can bet on it. After you read this article, you'll see why.

Thanks Barbara for the link and suggestion.

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by Jamie Ross

Last night I saw a vision of the future of mining - there were unmanned trucks communicating with each other and helping each other decide which haul road to take; there were automated drill rigs sending drilling rate data directly to the mine database and then out to the 3D models used by robotic shovels for grade control.
The best thing about this vision was that all of this is already happening, and the goal of a fully automated mine is close to being realised.
This vision was shown to me at a fascinating presentation I attended last night on the future of autonomous mining and the use of "robots" in the mining industry.
The presentation was by Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, one of the world's leading researchers into large field robots, and also the director of the Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation.
Professor Durrant-Whyte gave us an overview of why Australia is such a prime location for research into large outdoor robots and automation, and why the mining industry is so well suited to be at the cutting edge in these fields.
He said mining has both the need and the money to drive automation research forward, and that the work being done by Rio Tinto at the moment (read more about it here) is at the forefront of technology worldwide.  And is in fact even more advanced than the work being done for the US defence forces.

Automate the Whole System, not just the Machines

The most interesting part of the presentation (besides the robotic helicopters which can fly hundreds of kilometres identifying and target spraying weeds on farms) was his overall concept for why automation is important.
He said it is not at all about removing people from the mines, although there are obviously some health and safety benefits in moving people off drills into air-conditioned pods for example.  He believes we need to think not so much about how to automate individual trucks or drills, but to automate the entire mine.  And to change the way our business models and information systems work to achieve that.
So he doesn't think we need to necessarily automate every single thing, and indeed we can't (maintenance is the first thing that springs to my mind).  But we do need to think about how all our mining processes and systems can work automatically together.
An example of this would be drill rigs automatically drilling out shot patterns, and at the same time recording metres/hour drill rates.  This drill rate data is then sent in real time back to the mine geological database, where it is converted into rock hardness models, and then used to drive mining plans and grade control.  This is already happening in the Rio Tinto mines.
He also says the advantages you get from having automated trucks controlled directly by humans is one thing, but the real advantages come when these trucks are part of an overall automated mine planning system.  When this happens, you don't just know where the tucks are right now, you know where they will be in one hours time, or two days time.  Everything becomes so much more predictable.

Effects on Manning

Professor Durrant-Whyte says there will be a slight shift in the skills required by operators and tradesmen at these new mines, and mines will need to employ more people with specialised skills such as electronics and robotics.  But he says reducing manning overall is really neither the primary aim, nor the outcome in real life.  The aim is not to get people out of the loop, but to create better systems for them to work in.

What about Underground Mining?

Most of the work to date has focussed on surface mining, with the main research area currently being Rio Tinto's surface iron ore mines in Western Australia.  I asked Professor Durrant-Whyte about the future of automation in underground mining.
He says that to date work in underground situations has focussed on automating machine X or process Y (i.e. automated haul trucks or drill rigs), and that the real key is to forget about individual equipment and look at how to automate entire mines or mining systems.  He says it is as much about automating the flows of information between parts of the mining process (i.e. drilling to grade plans; surveys to truck routes) as it is about automating machines.
In fact, his view is that automating a particular machine is easy, and the technology is already there.  It's getting that machine the right information in real time which is the challenge.

Summary

Professor Durrant-Whyte certainly paints an exciting picture for the future of mining.  I believe his focus on creating new business models and better systems is a great way to look at the challenges and benefits of automation, rather than looking purely at which machine to automate to take someone out of the mine.
Whole of mine automation is on the way, but it's still going to need a lot of people to run it!!

- Jamie Ross
Mining Man - Great Safety, Leadership and Productivity Ideas for the Mining Industry


http://www.miningman.com/Blog/August-2010/The-Future-of-Mining---Robotics-and-Automation

January 17th, 2012: Rank-and-file Assembly for this PAC, Stevens Point WI

This is a listening and action session for this Political Action Committee:

7 p.m. Tues. January 17 2012

Pineries Room, Charles White Portage County Library  1001 Main Street Stevens Point WI

Bring your issues ideas that can be acted on as campaigns in the coming year.  "Brainstorm" session.

Please consider working in one of these committees:

Media
Issues & Campaigns
     Stopping the Penokee Hills mine
Outreach
Fundraising
Transport - getting activists where they need to get to.
Steering Committee

Report on Mining Hearing in West Allis (previous action item)

Proposed Wisconsin statewide action items so far:

1.  Demilitarizing Local Law Enforcement - Reducing the incidence of military-style over-reactions by SWAT teams; decommissioning "gift" equipment foisted on law enforcement agencies by the Pentagon.

2.  Urban Ag enabling legislation -- removing municipal ordinances against greenhouses, chicken coops, and other urban agriculture infrastructure.

3.  Legalizing Eco-Villages -- County-level removal of all zoning ordinances pertaining to number of housing units on small agriculture parcels, repeal of ordinances pertaining to "unrelated people" sharing housing units, and so forth. This is a key sustainability issue going forward. Less land use for 'trophy homes;' more land use for small-scale food and other production.

4.  Re-introduce the raw milk sales bill to Wisc. legislature. Make a way for small dairy farmers to sell direct to customers, using standards of cleanliness and food safety.

5. Endorse Rick Kissell for City of Milwaukee Treasurer. Rick has been working at local, independent politics for a long time and would do right by Milwaukee's working class.





Workers' Party Political Action Committee, B. Gifford, Treas.

BAD RIVER BAND'S POSITION STATEMENT ON WISCONSIN IRON ORE MINING BILL LRB-3520

http://www.midwestadvocates.org/archive/BadRiver/Assembly%20Mining%20Bill%20Statement%20FINAL%20CLEAN%20Dec%2013%202011.pdf

Corporate PACs donating to Wisc. Assembly Democratic Campign Committee

http://www.wisdc.org/index.php?module=wisdc.websiteforms&cmd=searchadvancedpac&id=501219&name=Assembly+Democratic+Campaign+Committee&from=&to=&filter=+Search+

Click that link to reveal why so many activists insist on remaining independent of BOTH Republican and Democratic Parties. 

Resolution opposing iron ore mine in the Penokee Hills, Wisconsin

Resolution on the taconite mine in the Penokee Hills, northern Wisconsin in the Lake Superior watershed.

WHEREAS, the rights of the indigenous people of northern Wisconsin accorded in the 1854 Treaty with the Chippewa and reaffirmed in the 1983 District Court decision allowing walleye spearfishing anywhere in the ceded territories, include freedom to hunt, gather wild rice, and fish, while living without disruption in the lands granted them in the Treaty,* among others rights and

WHEREAS, there is no reason to believe the proposed taconite mine in the Penokee Hills area will do anything other than irreparably destroy the wetland and forest environment which is part of the Homeland of these Tribes, rendering this Treaty between the Tribes and the US Government (not the State of Wisconsin) null and void (to mine this ultra low-grade ore will require immense mountaintop removal processes) and

WHEREAS, the people of Wisconsin have absolutely no reason to trust the Governor, the State Legislature, nor the G-Tac corporation nor have confidence in their good intentions of protecting the health and well-being of the people nor the common wealth (resources) of the state, the whole of the Great Lakes, nor the international covenants in the Great Lakes Compact,

NOW, THEREFORE, it is RESOLVED that the Workers Party Political Action Committee make the stopping of the Penokee Hills mining projects its top priority in terms of political action work until the mine is stopped indefinitely, and until such time (if ever) as the Bands of the Lake Superior Chippewa democratically decide that such mining should proceed. (At present the Bad River Band unconditionally opposes).

IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED The State of Wisconsin will cease and desist from interference with these existing treaties and the international compact in this matter, to which the US Constitution's 10th amendment has no applicability.

Proposed adopted 12/8/2011
at founding meeting of this Workers' Party PAC
Stevens Point, WI

 

*See:  Walleye Warriors, Bresette & Whaley, pp. 12-21, Brief History of the Anishinabe.

Who is the "new dangerous class?"

The "precariat"

The Precariat – The new dangerous class

Guy Standing

24 May 2011

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For the first time in history, the mainstream left has no progressive agenda. It has forgotten a basic principle. Every progressive political movement has been built on the anger, needs and aspirations of the emerging major class. Today that class is the precariat.

So far, the precariat in Europe has been mostly engaged in EuroMayDay parades and loosely organised protests. But this is changing rapidly, as events in Spain and Greece are showing, following on the precariat-led uprisings in the middle-east. Remember that welfare states were built only when the working class mobilised through collective action to demand the relevant policies and institutions. The precariat is busy defining its demands.

The precariat has emerged from the liberalisation that underpinned globalisation. Politicians should beware. It is a new dangerous class, not yet what Karl Marx would have described as a class-for-itself, but a class-in-the-making, internally divided into angry and bitter factions.

It consists of a multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth who do not like what they see before them, millions of women abused in oppressive labour, growing numbers of criminalised tagged for life, millions being categorised as ‘disabled’ and migrants in their hundreds of millions around the world. They are denizens; they have a more restricted range of social, cultural, political and economic rights than citizens around them.

A wake-up call for social democrats

Unlike the proletariat – the industrial working class on which 20th century social democracy was built – the precariat’s relations of production are defined by partial involvement in labour combined with extensive ‘work-for-labour’, a growing array of unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings.

Growth of the precariat has been accelerated by the financial shock, with more temporary and agency labour, outsourcing and abandonment of non-wage benefits by firms. The shock ended an era of delusion, in which workers’ living standards were held up by tax credits, subsidies and cheap credit. But the Canute phase could not halt the waves of globalisation, the logic of which entailed downward adjustment of labour remuneration in ‘the west’.

So the precariat swells. Most in it do not belong to any professional or craft community; they have no social memory on which to call, and no shadow of the future hanging over their deliberations with other people, making them opportunistic. The biggest dangers are social illnesses and the risk that populist politicians will play on their fears and insecurities to lure them onto the rocks of neo-fascism, blaming ‘big government’ and ‘strangers’ for their plight. We are witnessing this drift, increasingly disguised by clever rebranding, as in the case of the True Finns, Swedish Democrats and French National Front. They have natural allies in the US Tea Party, the Japanese copycats, the English Defence League and the originals, Berlusconi’s neo-fascist supporters.

Progressive politicians must wake up and realise that sanity and recovery from the financial crisis will depend on their response to the needs, fears and aspirations of this emerging class.

This is the first systemic crisis without a progressive vision on offer. Most of the world’s social democrats have lost the plot. Their rhetoric is stuck in the 20th century, with images suited to a closed industrial society, not an open tertiary society in which a growing proportion of humanity is engaged in what are euphemistically called services.

Some have been drawn by imagery of “the squeezed middle”. While not inconsistent with the idea of the precariat, it is unfortunate. It is unclear what is a middle in the class fragmentation associated with globalisation. It suggests that it is more important that a “squeezed bottom”. It brings to mind an image of an abused toothpaste tube. And social democrats should be careful in using the term, since it was the Third Way’s combination of labour market flexibility and targeted means-tested benefits for ‘the poor’ that generated the pressures middle-income families are experiencing. Social democrats should use the “squeezed middle” term sparingly. It could come back to taunt them. Better to reach out to the precariat.

The precarity trap

The precariat has no control over its time, and no economic security. Many in it suffer from what I have called in the book, a precarity trap. This is on top of the familiar poverty trap created by the folly of ‘targeting’ on the poor via means-tested social assistance. The precariaty trap arises because it takes time for those on the margins of poverty to obtain access to benefits, which means their hardships are underestimated, while they have no incentive to take low-income temporary jobs once they are receiving benefits.

Many people outside the precariat feel they could fall into it at any time. They fear becoming bag ladies, living in the street with a couple of plastic bags. Many suffer from a precariatised mind, unable to forge an identity, flitting electronically or between time-using activities.

The worst fear of all is that a large part of the precariat, and those fearing a life in it, could be drawn to neo-fascism. This is happening. Populist politicians, led by Berlusconi and Sarkozy, have played on the fears of their domestic precariat. Their venal populism will be defeated only by a politics of paradise, a strategy for enabling the precariat to gain control of their lives, to gain social and economic security, and to have a fairer share of the vital assets of our 21st century society. What are they?

Economic insecurity

The first is economic security itself. Put bluntly, a large and growing number of people of rich societies have no security at all while the affluent luxuriate in it. Insecurity is known to foster extremism, particularly an authoritarian kind. It chips away at the human instincts of altruism, tolerance, reciprocity and social solidarity. We need to be bold and realise that in open market societies in which flexible precarious labour is common, much of the insecurity is uncertainty (‘unknown unknowns’), which is uninsurable. Neither social insurance nor means-tested social assistance will reach the precariat.

The only way to provide sufficient economic security is to do so ex ante, through providing every legal resident in society with a basic income as a right. This is what great utopians have advocated, the likes of Thomas More, Tom Paine and Bertrand Russell, and has been supported by distinguished economists and other social thinkers.

Critics have screamed that it is unaffordable, would reward idleness and slow economic growth. We may soon find that we cannot afford not to have it. The idea that every person should receive a modest monthly payment is gathering legitimacy. Perhaps unexpectedly, it is doing so fastest in middle-income market economies, such as Brazil, where there is now a law on the statute books committing its government to bring in an unconditional basic income for all. Already over 50 million Brazilians receive a monthly cash transfer under the bolsa familia scheme; the number is rising steadily. Brazil is one of the very few countries that has reduced income inequality in the 21st century, has voted for progressive politicians and has been booming since the financial crisis.

Time poor lives

A progressive strategy for the precariat must involve more equitable control over other key assets of a tertiary society – quality time, quality space, knowledge and financial capital. There is no valid reason for all the revenue from financial capital going to a tiny elite who have a particular talent to make money from money. The only way to reduce income inequality in an open market society is to ensure an equitable distribution of financial capital.

As argued in the book, quality time is a crucial asset. We need policies to equalise access to it. Again, there is no inherent reason for the rich having so much more control over their time than the precariat. But the latter has to allocate so much time to handling bureaucratic demands, to chasing one short-term insecure job after another and to learning new bags of tricks called ‘skills’ that could become obsolescent before they have a chance to use them. Similarly, there is no reason to have a society in which the affluent have access to technical advice on how to run their lives profitably while the precariat cannot do so. These are forms of inequality that are structural, not derived from merit or laziness.

Why should the elite and salariat have access to so much of the quality space while the precariat faces a steady shrinkage of ‘the commons’, as they see parks, libraries and community facilities wither in front of them? The great industrial city of Manchester has announced the closure of almost all its public toilets. We need a progressive strategy to rescue the commons.

Why should the precariat have their dwellings exposed to ruin while those of the rich are protected? In cutting public spending in towns across the US, some fire services are limiting themselves to protecting the insured, leaving the uninsured to burn. 

Why is it that the salariat can obtain much cheaper credit than those without long-term employment contracts? We know the reasons, but these are cumulative inequalities that do not stem from merit or diligence. The precariat observes with growing anger. The politicians had better respond or we will reap a harvest of discord. We can do better.

Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security, University of Bath, England, and co-president of BIEN (the Basic Income Earth Network).This article draws on his new book, The Precariat – The New Dangerous Class, published by Bloomsbury.