The elephant in the truck
貨車里的大象
The emerging system of lifelong learning will do little to reduce inequality
終生學習理念的興起并不會減少不平等
IMAGINE YOU ARE a 45-year-old long-distance lorry driver. You never enjoyed school and left as soon as you could, with a smattering of qualifications and no great love of learning. The job is tiring and solitary, but it does at least seem to offer decent job security: driver shortages are a perennial complaint in the industry, and the average age of the workforce is high (48 in Britain), so the shortfalls are likely to get worse. America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) says there were 1.8m truckers in 2014 and expects a 5% rise in their number by 2024. “As the economy grows, the demand for goods will increase and more truck drivers will be needed to keep supply chains moving,” predicts the BLS website, chirpily.
假設你是一個 45 歲的長途貨車司機。你一直都不喜歡學校然后很早便輟學，沒有什么學歷也并不愛學習。這份工作讓人厭倦也讓人感到孤獨，但是至少可以給你帶來不錯的安全感：在行業領域總有缺少司機的抱怨存在，這份職業的平均年紀都很大（在英國是 48 歲），所以司機的缺口會變得越來越大。美國勞動統計局（BLS）指出在 2014 年有大約 180 萬的貨車司機，到 2024年這個數字會增加 5 % 左右。BLS 的網站樂觀的預計到：”隨著經濟的增長，人們對商品的需求也會隨之增加，為了保證供應鏈的順利運轉就需要更多的貨車司機?！?/code>
But the future might unfold very differently. For all the excitement over self-driving passenger cars, the freight industry is likely to adopt autonomous vehicles even faster. And according to a report in 2014 by Morgan Stanley, a bank, full automation might reduce the pool of American truck drivers by two-thirds. Those projections came hedged with caveats, and rightly so. The pace of adoption may be slowed by regulation. Drivers may still be needed to deal with unforeseen problems; if such jobs require more technical knowledge, they may even pay better. Employment in other sectors may grow as freight costs come down. But there is a chance that in the not too distant future a very large number of truckers will find themselves redundant. The implications are immense.
但是未來可能會以不同的方式展現。隨著自動駕駛技術在載人領域的發展，貨運產業可能會更快的接受無人貨運。根據 2014 年 Morgan Stanley 銀行的報告，完全自動駕駛可能將使得美國貨車司機的數量減少三分之二。這些預測同樣有帶來了注意事項作為對沖，也理應如此。無人駕駛替換的進程可能因為制度的原因而減緩。面對未知問題時可能仍然需要司機去解決，如果這些進行工作需要更多的技術知識，薪水或許可以因此增加。運輸行業成本的下降可能帶來其他領域就業率的增加。但是在不遠的將來很大一部分火車司機會被裁員。此種后果影響巨大。
Knowing when to jump is one problem. For people with decades of working life still ahead of them, it is too early to quit but it is also risky to assume that nothing will change. Matthew Robb of Parthenon-EY, a consultancy, thinks that governments should be talking to industry bodies about the potential for mass redundancies and identifying trigger points, such as the installation of sensors on motorways, that might prompt retraining. “This is a boiling-frog problem,” he says. “It is not thought about.”
何時選擇轉行就是一個問題。對于仍然還有幾十年工作年限的人而言，現在轉行太早但是認為什么都不會改變又太冒險。咨詢機構 Parthenon-EY 咨詢機構的 Matthew Robb 認為政府應當和工業體交流關于潛在的巨大裁員風險以及找出痛點在哪，比如在告訴公路上安裝傳感器就可以進行再培訓。他說：“這就是溫水煮青蛙的問題，并不是假設問題?！?/code>
For lower-skilled workers of this sort the world of MOOCs, General Assembly and LinkedIn is a million miles away. Around 80% of Coursera’s learners have university degrees. The costs of reskilling, in terms of time and money, are easiest to bear for people who have savings, can control their working hours or work for companies that are committed to upgrading their workforce. And motivation is an issue: the tremendous learning opportunities offered by the internet simply do not appeal to everyone.
對于低技能工人而言類似慕課、General Assembly 以及領英這些事物十分遙遠。Coursera 的用戶中大約 80% 擁有大學學位。重新學習技能的成本，考慮到時間和金錢，對于那些有存款可以控制自己的工作時間或者工作單位支持提高他們員工的工作技能的人而言是最容易承擔的。同時動機也是一個問題：互聯網上所提供的無數學習機會就是不能夠吸引所有人的目光。
