纽约时报 亚马逊将斥资7亿美元 对员工进行再培训 (1)

Amazon’s Price To Retool¹ Staff Is $700 Million.

亚马逊将斥资7亿美元 对员工进行再培训

By Ben Casselman and Adam Satariano

文/本·卡塞曼和亚当·萨塔里亚诺

As automation technology has leapt ahead,

随着自动化技术飞跃发展，

workers increasingly worry about losing their jobs to robots and algorithms.

工人们越来越担心自己的饭碗会被机器人和算法抢走。

Economists³ dismiss those concerns, by and large,

经济学家对这些担忧大多不屑一顾，

arguing that workers can grab higher-skilled jobs with better wages.

认为工人们能够找到技术含量更高，薪酬也会更高的工作。

Amazon may soon find out who is right.

究竟谁对谁错，也许，亚马逊很快就会找到答案。

The e-commerce giant said Thursday that it planned to spend $700 million

这家电商巨头周四表示，他们计划斥资7亿美元，

to retrain about a third of its American workers to do more high-tech⁴ tasks,

对亚马逊大约三分之一的美国员工进行再培训，让他们能够在未来从事技术含量更高的工作，

an acknowledgment that advances in technology are remaking jobs in nearly every industry —

这一举措无异于承认技术进步正在改变各行各业的工作岗位——

and that workers will need to adapt or risk being left behind.

进而就等于承认工人们必须适应这种变化，否则就可能被淘汰。

Amazon said the program amounted to one of the world’s largest employee-retraining efforts.

亚马逊表示，该项目是全球规模最大的员工再培训项目之一。

It will apply across the company, from corporate⁵ employees to warehouse⁶ workers, retraining about 100,000 by 2025.

该项目计划到2025年，整个公司，从企业员工到仓库工人，再培训员工的数目要达到10万人。

Amazon has about 300,000 employees in the United States.

而亚马逊在美国的员工总数在30万左右。

The investment is a large-scale experiment

亚马逊的此次投资堪称针对公司能否通过重组现有劳动力

in whether companies can remake their existing work forces to fit a fast-changing technological⁷ world.

适应技术快速变革的当今世界这一问题所作的一项大规模试验。

While government programs have tried to turn factory workers and coal miners into computer coders and data scientists,

此前政府也推出过类似项目，意图把工厂工人和煤矿工人变成程序员和数据科学家，

few of those efforts have succeeded.

但鲜有成功者。

Corporate attempts have been limited.

企业界在这方面的尝试也十分有限。

But with unemployment low and workers scarce,

但由于失业率低，加上工人稀缺，

companies like Amazon feel pressure to look internally to fill their labor⁸ needs.

企业如亚马逊之流已经感觉到，要满足自己的劳动力需求，就要将目光转向企业内部。

Their efforts could help answer a more fundamental question:

他们的这一尝试或许能够帮助我们回答一个更基本的问题：

Will automation be a solution for the great challenges of the 21st-century economy —

自动化是会解决低工资、贫富差距日益扩大和整体增长乏力等

low wages, rising inequality and anemic overall growth — or make those problems worse?

21世纪经济面临的巨大挑战，还是会让这些问题进一步恶化？

Susan Lund, an economist² at the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, said

麦肯锡咨询公司的研究部门——麦肯锡全球研究所的经济学家苏珊·隆德评论道：

"The scale and pace of the changes in the work force are unprecedented⁹.

“劳动力市场的变化，无论是规模还是速度，都是前所未有的.

“And they can’t hire off the street everyone they need. They have no choice but to retrain their own workers."

他们没有办法在街头雇来所有他们需要的员工，没办法，他们只能对自己的员工进行再培训。”

Amazon already faces fierce criticism from politicians on the right and left,

亚马逊已经陷入了左右两派政客，包括特朗普总统

including President Trump¹⁰ and Democratic presidential candidates like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

和马萨诸塞州参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦等民主党总统候选人的激烈批评声中。

They have held up the company as a symbol of tech industry excess,

在他们眼中，亚马逊就是科技行业过剩的象征，

saying Amazon avoids paying taxes, devalues workers and squashes smaller businesses.

声称亚马逊存在逃税，贬低员工，打压小企业多种问题。

1 retool   

v.改组，重新装备

参考例句：

• Each time the product changes,the machines have to be retooled.每次更换产品，就得重新装备机器。
• In the computer industry,engineers have to retool frequently.在电脑业中，工程师必须经常以新知识充实装备自己。

2 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

3 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

5 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

6 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

7 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

8 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

9 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

10 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。