Historical Background of EMPL The Fourth Industrial revolution: Doom or boon scenario? While bringing many benefits, ongoing automation and digital transformations are estimated to cause the transformation of up to 45% of the European workplaces in future decades. What measures should be taken to ensure that current and future workers acquire and retain the skills to remain relevant in a rapidly changing economy? How best should labour conditions be adapted to this new scenario? On October 1779, a group of English textile workers rebelled against the introduction of machinery which threatened their skilled craft and proceeded to their destruction. This was the first of many Luddite riots to take place. The rioters were not against the concept of progress and industrialisation as such, but instead the idea that mechanisation would threaten their livelihood and the skills they had spent years acquiring, and opposed what they believed to be a deceitful method of circumventing the labour practices of the day. Outbreaks of violence would proceed through the following decades in various forms, not always related to factory work but in retalia-
tion for the industrialisation process affecting many established traditions and practices. The Luddites were the pioneers in this struggle against machinery replacing the work of men - and their claims are as actual as ever. Like in the last two industrial revolutions, shake ups in the economy, labour re-organisation and the massive explosion of digital technology have brought deep-seated change to the labour market. It remains to be seen whether digital technology serves as an avenue for job creation or a pathway to destruction.