The way we were: Computing through the ages

A quarter of a century ago it wasn?t just the IT industry that was obsessed with the coming of the robot. Robot-fever had gripped every corner of the nation.

Trade union barons (remember them?) were expecting a 26-hour week by the millennium, while Jehovah?s Witnesses offered counsel to the despairing whose jobs were threatened by steel-collar workers.

Tory government ministers told industry to hire Robbie the Robot, or die. But the army of robot waiters and floor sweepers failed to materialise.

Instead, the trade unions and the Conservatives eventually lost their jobs, and UK working hours rose steadily through the 1980s and 1990s.

Meanwhile the white collar IT staff of 1982 were facing a skills crisis, just like they do today. But back then it was a skills glut, not a shortage.

7 January 1982

Four out of 10 dpms ? or data processing managers, as they were then called ? planned to shed staff, according to a Computing survey of 490 of their number. 37% planned to lay off operations staff, and 7% planned to shed systems analysts and programmers.

Despite inflation running at around 12%, salary increases for the year were expected to be between 5% and 9%.

11 February 1982

Terry Duffy, then leader of the Amalgamated Union of engineering workers, said the widespread take-up of robot technology could be used as a lever towards a 26-hour week by the year 2000.

Calling for unions to merge into multinational organisations to achieve this goal, Duffy described a 10% reduction in working hours every five years as ?not unreasonable?. The following month IT minister Ken Baker told UK industry to ?automate or liquidate.?

25 March 1982

The Jehovah?s Witness organ Awake! warned that thousands of robots already existed, and that ?thousands more are on the way?. Computing applauded the first theological contribution to the technology debate, and asked if robots meant the end of the Jehovah?s Witnesses as we know them.