Local Companies Urged To Accelerate Automation -- Johari - Bernama.com

TEXT START: Local companies of all sizes need to accelerate automation in operations and production as the future supply of foreign workers is unlikely to match current levels, said Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani.

The Dissection

The article presents automation as a practical response to a foreign-worker shortage and low local-wage incentives. Its buried question—“who creates and owns value”—is the real issue, but the article leaves it unanswered. It converts a structural power shift into a workforce-management problem.

The government is preparing companies for automation while rhetorically promising that locals will not be displaced. That promise is already unstable: machines introduced to eliminate dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs do not stop at those jobs once they become cheaper, faster, and more reliable than people.

The Core Fallacy

The central error is treating automation as a substitute for foreign workers rather than as a general mechanism for reducing the economic necessity of human labor.

Higher wages may attract some local workers into remaining roles. They do not defeat automation. If firms can replace labor with machines, the wage argument merely accelerates the investment case. The foreign worker is the first target because the political cost is lower; the local worker is not protected by the distinction.

Under the Discontinuity Thesis, this is the opening movement of P1: firms adopt automation under competitive pressure, then the logic spreads from labor scarcity to labor redundancy. The article describes the trigger while pretending it is the boundary.

Hidden Assumptions

• Automation will remain confined to 3D jobs.
• Firms will preserve local employment after machines make labor unnecessary.
• Better wages can permanently restore labor demand.
• Displaced workers will find equally necessary work elsewhere.
• Productivity gains will be broadly distributed rather than captured by owners of capital.
• The labor shortage, rather than ownership and control of automated systems, is the decisive economic problem.
• Discussing women, AI, and the digital economy is equivalent to giving people a claim on the value AI produces.

Each assumption evades the ownership question. The article gestures toward value creation while leaving value control untouched.

Social Function

Partial truth wrapped in transition management and ideological anesthetic. It prepares employers to automate, reassures local workers that automation is not aimed at them, and frames the coming conflict as a problem of wages and skills rather than control of productive capital.

The Verdict

This is a policy announcement from the early transition phase: automation is being invited through the front door as a solution to missing workers. The same systems will eventually make many workers economically unnecessary, regardless of nationality. Unless ownership of the automated productive base changes, the article’s unanswered question—who owns the value—becomes the entire story.