85 per cent of garment workers in Vietnam may lose their jobs to robots owing to Industry 4.0 revolution.
That’s what the recent report released by International Labor Organisation (ILO) said. However, Le Tien Truong, General Director, Vinatex, disagrees with the report and said that the real figure will be only 15 per cent.
And he has his own justifiable reasons as well! He said that the automation process of a T-shirt involves 8 stages whereas making of a complicated product involves 78 stages, which can never be undertaken by machines.
He added that there will definitely be challenges because of Industry 4.0 revolution, but the numbers stated in the ILO report is far too big.
Feeling optimistic about the future of Vietnam’s garment and textile industry in the 4.0 era, Truong added “Vietnam’s textile and apparel market share in the US increased from 6 per cent in 2010 to 12 per cent in 2017. And once Vietnam’s production capacity increases, the demand for workers will start increasing.”
Though the awareness for investing in latest technologies has increased in recent years in Vietnam, most of the textile and garment companies are Vietnam are small and medium firms who still require huge finances to invest in technologies.
According to an analyst, back in 2013 too, a report had predicted that US may see 47 per cent of its workers lose jobs owing to computerisation, but in reality the rate of unemployment was just 4 to 6 per cent in 2014-2018 period.