After being dogged by pregnancy discrimination and sexual harassment allegations, XPO Logistics recently announced that it would shutter its southeast Memphis warehouse in June.

The company — which chiefly packaged and shipped Verizon products — closed the warehouse in response to industry demands, and not as a retaliation against the workers’ allegations.

But as XPO says it will employ the 400 workers displaced by the plant's closing at other sites, the newest facility it plans to open in Memphis will create only 80 jobs.

Logistics companies operating with fewer workers will become a pattern for area companies. With the evolution of artificial intelligence and the growth of robots, shipping-and-packaging jobs will start disappearing.

That’s a reality that Memphis policymakers should begin reckoning with now.

Memphis and Shelby County employ more than 60,000 people in distribution, warehouse and freight jobs, with FedEx as the largest employer. FedEx, which is currently struggling with a shortage of truck drivers, has debuted its SameDay Bot, which can deliver packages on the last leg of a route.

While that development isn’t expected to replace humans, down the line others could.

In a 2014 Pew Research survey of 1,896 technology experts, half of them said they believe robots and technology will displace huge numbers of blue- and white-collar workers, and that such a development could spark mass income inequality by rendering many people unemployable.

Memphians who are employed in logistics are especially vulnerable to such an outcome.

In a report titled, “The Robots Are Ready! Are We? Automation, Race and The Workforce,” Daphene R. McFerren, executive director of the University of Memphis' Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, and Elena Delavega, a U of M associate professor of social work, write that, “unlike other cities with more diversified economies, the workforce in Memphis may face more imminent disruption due to automation.”

Preparing the workforce of tomorrow

So, what to do to head off such a dismal future?

Southwest Tennessee Community College already has designs on dealing with that trend.

Robin Cole Jr., the school's dean of business and technologies, said its programs are focused on training students for the disruption that robots are poised to cause. Courses such as electronics and electronic components, for example, are being offered.

“Years ago, I had a night job at Walmart that required me to stack boxes,” Cole said. “Now you can get a robot to do that …

“But you still need someone to program that robot, and to tell it what to do … we’re preparing students for jobs that don’t exist today.”

Anita Brackin, Southwest associate vice president of economic and workforce development, said the school has secured more than $3 million in grants to not only train current students for those future jobs, but to also retrain current workers.

“We hire instructors who have worked in these industries, and who are anxious to share what they’ve learned,” said Brackin, who also said that many of their courses focus on training students in trouble-shooting and higher-level thinking.

Cole and Brackin believe that automation will create opportunities — and likely better-paying opportunities — for people who take advantage of the programs that Southwest and other technical schools offer.

But what that also means is that Shelby County’s schools must step up their game in revising education to prepare students for such jobs. Among other things, that means bolstering vocational and technical training.

State Sen. Katrina Robinson, D-Memphis, is helping. She’s introduced a bill that would introduce middle-school students to careers in machine technology, coding, welding, food science and health care.

On top of that, there’s the Tennessee Promise program, which allows high school graduates to enroll in community and technical colleges tuition-free for two years; and the Tennessee Reconnect program, which allows adults to do the same.

Are today's high school graduates ready?

Still, a problem exists.

Too many high school graduates — more than half in Shelby County, in fact — need remedial courses to get through college. Depending on how far behind they are, many can become frustrated and drop out, regardless of the free tuition.

Southwest spokeswoman Daphne Thomas said it has the infrastructure to support struggling students, including tutoring and various forms of online help. As a result, many can grasp the technical programs, she said.

Nonetheless, the school system and policymakers must make it a priority to prepare workers for future jobs, especially since there may be no falling back on jobs that require humans to pack and stack boxes.

Wrote McFerren and Delavega: “While many of these questions (on future jobs) can only be answered definitely over time and with research on the impact of automation on the workforce, Memphis can start planning now for this technological revolution so that it can lead the nation in developing the best practices to sustain and grow a diverse workforce this century and beyond.”

Tonyaa Weathersbee is a local columnist who occasionally writes about the future of work. She can be reached at tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter at @tonyaajw.

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