Türk Makine Sanayiinde Teknolojik Gelişmelerin İstihdama Etkileri

Abstract

Bu çalışmanın amacı, yeni otomasyon teknolojilerinin istihdama niceliksel ve niteliksel etkilerini, bu teknolojilerin yaygın olarak kullanıldığı Türk makine sanayiinde incelemektir. Çalışmanın yöntemi ise, yeni teknolojilerin istihdama etkisini farklı ekonomik birim düzeylerinde, (firma, endüstri, ulusal ekonomi ) bu düzeylerin birbirleriyle olan ilişkilerini de göz önünde tutarak incelemeye dayanmaktadır. İktisat teorisinde teknolojik gelişmelerin istihdam ile olan ilişkisi oldukça karmaşık olarak gözükmektedir. Bunun en önemli nedeni ise, istihdam düzeyinin belirlenmesinde teknoloji faktörünün yanısıra, diğer birçok etkenin de rol oynamasıdır. İktisat literatüründe, mikroelektronik temelli yeni teknolojilerin makine düzeyinde istihdamı azalttığı, ancak bu azalmayı telafi edecek mekanizmaların varlığı yüzünden; firma, endüstri ve ulusal ekonomi gibi düzeylerde teknolojik işsizlik probleminin yaşanmayabileceği belirtilmektedir. Nitelik açısından ise genel olarak yeni teknolojilerin vasıflı işgücüne olan talebi arttırdığını, ancak bu noktada organizasyon yapısının da etkili olduğu vurgulanmaktadır. Bu çalışmada yukarıdaki varsayımların ışığı altında, alan araştırması kapsamındaki Türk makine sanayii firmalarında yeni teknolojilerin adaptasyonunun istihdamı azaltmadığı gözlenmiştir. Bu ise büyük ölçüde yeni teknolojilerin yarattığı üretim artışlarının istihdam azalışlarım telafi etmesine ve reel ücretlerin yükselme trendine girmemiş olmasına bağlıdır. Mikro düzeyde görülen bu olumlu trend ise, daha makro düzeylerde, Türk makine ve imalat sanayiinde gözlenmemiştir. Bu düzeylerde yeni teknolojilerin adaptasyonunun istihdamı azalttığı yönünde bulgulara rastlanılmıştır. Nitelik açısından ise, yeni otomasyon teknolojilerinin Türk imalat ve makine sanayiinde yaygınlaşmasıyla birlikte, yüksek vasıflı işgücüne olan talebin arttığı, ancak diğer yandan programlama bilgisi ve üretim süreci üzerinde takdir yetkisi olmayan operatörlerin vasıf düzeylerinin azaldığı gözlenmiştir.

Since the economic crisis which occured in the mid-1970s, the levels of unemployment rose steadily and by the latter part of the decade were much closer to those of the 1930s than those of the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, this increase in unemployment was associated with a significant decline in productivity growth rates and a general tendency for the rate of profit to fall throughout the economies. As this downturn in global economic performance coincided with the wider diffusion of microelectronics related automation technologies, the relationship between unemployment and the diffusion of new technologies has been examined by economists. The main purpose of this study is try to analyze the quantitative and qualitative impacts of new automation technologies on employment in the case of the Turkish engineering industry. The method of the study depends on examining the impact of new technologies on employment within the framework of different economic levels (firm, industry and national economy). In literature, the relation between technical change and employment has been discussed for a long time. In the present period of high unemployment in most countries which has occurred simultaneously with the diffusion of microelectronics based automation technologies, the interest in the employment consequences of technical change has increased. However the relation between technical change and employment is a complex one. First, the employment situation in a country may be both a determinant of technical change as well as a consequence thereof. Secondly, technical change is only one of many variables which determine the level of employment. The relationship between technical change and employment has had an uneven treatment in economic theory. In general it has been the quantitative aspects of the problem which has received the most attention. More recently, especially given the radical nature of the new technology and its implications for changes in work practices, the debate has come to include the skill and qualitative dimensions of employment and technological developments. In economic theory, it is possible to distinguish five major sets of economic schools which have a bearing on the topic- the classical school, the neoclassical school, the Keynesians, the structuralists and the labor process analysis- the latter mostly concerned about qualitative aspects of the debate. Classical economists were able to describe the market mechanisms which operate in an economy as a powerful way to reabsorb the dismissed workers because of technical change. In the view of classical economists, technological unemployment is therefore considered a temporary and irregular problem. If compensation mechanisms (via new machines, via decrease in prices, via new investments, via new products, via decrease in wages) work well and assure reabsorption, then technological unemployment is impossible in the long run. For neoclassical economists, the problems of unemployment and technical change were inconsequental. Unemployment was considered to be a result of factor prices being out of line with factor productivities. And as for technical change, this was invariably treated as an exogenous factor. It was considered to be induced by relative factor prices and thus for the neoclassicists it was not only technical change which was considered to be unproblematic, but the problem of unemployment itself. The Keynesian school can probably best be distinguished from the neoclassical school by its rejection of the notion that equilibrium necessary implies full employment. Keynes' critique of Say's Law, which states that demand and supply are always in balance, was a crucial point of his view. Keynes argued that there was no automatic balance between demand and supply side of the economy. Yet despite the concentration of demand factors, Keynesians were quite clear that technological change was of unquestionable importance to the analysis of unemployment. A key point of entry by the structuralists into this debate was provided by Schumpeter. For him, technological progress was at the center of the dynamics of the economic system. For structuralists the link between this pattern of progress and unemployment is to be found in the area of long waves, in which heartland technologies swept unevenly through economic history. According to labor process analysis, in the capitalist mode of production, there is a separation between conception and execution in the sense that the people who perform the tasks are not the same people who design the tasks. Much of labor process analysis is focused on Taylorism, which is a management control strategy developed on the idea of the separation between mental and manual labor. With the diffusion of Taylorism in the last century, the knowledge and skill requirements of the workers involved are generally reduced. This process and general tendency could be characterized as the deskilling of the worker. All these theories of technical change and employment agree that the adjustment of employment to technical change is by no means an instantaneous or automatic process. Furthermore, all of them recognize that there are periods when the problem of adjustment and unemployment are particularly acute. However they differ in their evaluation of the speed and smoothness of the adjustment and compensation mechanisms. The link between employment and automation is a much more recent phenomenon stretching back only to the late 1940s when the first electronic computers were introduced. The reemergence of significant levels of unemployment in the OECD economies in the mid-1970s reawakened interest in the link between automation and unemployment. There are many studies which have made an attempt to quantify the part of technological unemployment which is related to the diffusion of microelectronic technologies. The major problem in many of these studies is that they build on inquiries at the micro level and then generalize these conclusions to the macro level. The impact of new technologies on employment could be examined at four different economic levels: machine, firm, industry and national economy. As the level of discourse rises to a more aggregate level, so the ability to point to the precise inter-relationship between microelectronics and quantum of employment falls. At the machine level, it is possible to classify microelectronic based automation technologies into four main groups: NCMT and CNCs, CAD Systems, Industrial Robots and Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). At this economic level, when we examine the impact of new technologies on employment, an increase in labor productivity and a decrease in employment can be seen. On the other hand, this observation cannot be generalized to more aggregate (macro) levels because of compensation mechanisms which lessen the labor-displacing effects. It could be seen the labor-displacing effects of new technologies at the machine level, however this result cannot be generalized to the firm level because of compensatory factors like growth in output. If we ascend the level of aggregation of analysis, at the industry level it is easier to observe the overall relationship between technological developments, output growth and employment, but much more difficult to pinpoint the contribution made by microelectronic technologies. At the national level, by allowing the analysis to take into account inter-sectoral linkages and other indirect effects, it makes possible to develop a. more coherent view of the overall nature of the employment issue. The qualitative impacts of new technologies on employment issue depends on the skill debate. From the onset of the twentieth century, the widespread introduction of Taylorism and the Fordist labor process was utilized to deskill work and withdraw control over the labor process from the production worker. As far as the new automation technology is concerned, NCMT and CNCs, industrial robots and CAD Systems do substitute for labor, with different skill levels, but they also create a need for new kinds of jobs-often of a more qualified nature. At that point the organizational structure is also important for the qualitative effects of new technologies on employment. The approach of this study is to explore the impact of new automation technologies on employment in Turkish engineering industry by examining the experiences of eight selected firms which have adopted new technologies. Since the firms' investment decisions on new technologies and employment depend upon the macroeconomic conditions, the developments in the Turkish manufacturing industry is concerned. Import substitution industrialization dominated the industrialization policies in Turkey during the 1965-1980 period. During this period, the growth in manufacturing averaged 7.5 % per annum. Moreover, the employment growth rate was even higher for the manufacturing industry with an annual average of 4.8 % in spite of the upward trend of real wages. Despite high economic growth performance, in the second half of the 1970s, a huge external debt, an accelerating inflation rate and a large deficit in foreign trade forced the import substitution industrialization model to end. After the year 1980, an export-oriented industrialization policy was introduced. In the period 1980-1988, the real wages was sharply depressed and there has been a remarkable improvement in exports. But this growth in exports does not seem to be related to the new investments but to the increased capacity utilization rates. The main industrial transformation to adopt new technologies have started in the late 1980s due to increase in real wages after 1988. Engineering industry (classified as ISIC 38) has a significant importance for an economy as it is a technology producer and a technology user sector. In this study, the impact of new technologies on employment is studied with the Turkish engineering industry because of the fact that engineering industry has been an important user of the new automation technologies. Turkish engineering industry has invested on new automation technologies especially after the end of 1980s. The stimulus for this rapid growth was mostly the increase in real wages after the year 1988. In the case of engineering industry and its subsectors, it is observed that these new technology investments caused labor displacements. As far as the qualitative impacts of new technologies are concerned, it can be stated that there is an increase in value and demand for qualified and skilled labor force to satisfy the needs for the new technologies. To examine more direct employment impacts of new automation technologies, eight case study firms were selected from Turkish engineering industry which are known to have adopted new technologies. For majority of the firms, the reasons behind the adoption of new technologies were to save time and labor, to increase the size and the variety of the parts machined, and finally to improve the quality of the products. After the introduction of new technologies, the production performances which were associated with the labor productivity have significantly improved. If we examine the quantitative impacts of new technologies on employment in our case study firms, it is observed that there is not a labor saving effect of new technologies in our five out of four firms. The reasons behind this result is mostly the compensatory effect of the output growth in case study firms. However we are of the danger of generalizing a micro-level conclusion to the macro level. In terms of the qualitative impacts of new technologies on employment in our case study firms, it can be concluded that there has been a significant reduction in the skills of the workers required to operate the new technologies. But this reduction in skills can be compensated by the training of the workers, so that they can do the programming of the machine. However it seems that, the management does not wish to lose the degree of control over the production process by providing the conditions to operators so that they can program the machines.