[minimuffins]

The corporation can only do things like automate away the cafeteria if its employees let it. The point of a union is that workers - the people who do all the work and keep the profits rolling in - take back some control and decide things like this for themselves.

It's defeatist, and extremely unrealistic, to think we just have to roll over and let the bosses do whatever they want just because that's what we've always done up til now.

There's not some deterministic invisible power that says immiseration via automation is inevitable. It's just a matter of collective will as to whether we accept or reject power's desire to screw us over in that particular way.