Are robots about to make us all redundant? That’s today’s big scare story, says Sonia Sodha. But it’s a “dangerous distraction”. The real threat to the labour market is that many workplaces, far from becoming too “futuristic”, are reverting to “quasi-Victorian labour exploitation”. The recent revival of our garment industry, for example – tight turnaround times for “fast fashion” means production has to be local – has seen the creation of 20,000 jobs in the East Midlands. But the workers, mostly migrant women with limited English, have to work in “sweatshop-style factories” and are denied basic employment rights. Nor can they afford to take their unscrupulous employers to employment tribunals, since hefty tribunal fees were introduced in 2013. It’s a similar story in more high-tech sectors, such as logistics: here, technology is being used not to replace workers, but effectively to turn warehouse staff into robots: fitting them with tracking devices; delegating all their decisions to computers. It’s not the march of the machines we should fear – it’s the emergence of a “two-tier labour market” in which vulnerable workers are denied their rights and their dignity. (Sonia Sodha
The Observer  The Week, 24 June 2017)

It is to counter such-like cruel and inhuman practices that we have the dreaded “regulations”.  Businessmen snd politicians are forever complaining about rules and regulations, and it is true that some of them are onerous.  In Britain everything is blamed on the EU, but the fact is that health and safety, to name one area of regulation, is an industry employing over 30,000 Brits. Yes, 30,000!  What are they all doing? Well, in my (limited) experience they are dreaming up fresh restrictions on business and blaming the EU ( fact, in one case known to me).

In any case, while there may be regulations that do impair businesses, mostly they are rules that protect the young and the weak,  ensure safety at work and on the roads, enforce rules regarding holiday and pension entitlements, prevent maltreatment of the elderly in care homes, and a host of other things that make the country a civilised place to live in.  Unsupervised, too many unscrupulous businessmen will  take advantage of their workers, car manufacturers cheat on emissions, and trucks will run over old ladies.  Can we shut up the greedy wing of industry and its political shills and keep as much civilisation as is possible?