When ‘Labour isn’t working’ Will AI shame labourers and give value to an old British slogan?

In 1978 when the British Conservative party, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, ran an advertising campaign titled ‘Labour isn’t working’ it was punning on the word labour. The campaign was against the ruling Labour Party over the rising unemployment rate. Posters were put up with the slogan along with the image of a long line of people waiting to collect the dole that was offered to the unemployed. 
On the one hand the slogan connoted that the ruling Labour party government was not working while on the other hand it was also putting forward evidence for government inefficiency – the unemployment rate among the labour force. This effective advertising campaign designed by reputed advertising company Saatchi & Saatchi was later copied by parties in both the UK and the US. In 2012 the Republican Party in the US used a copy of the poster to attack President Barack Obama with a slogan ‘Obama isn’t working’. The British conservative party has later regularly used the ‘Labour isn’t working’ slogan to attack the Labour party governments. Interestingly in the 1990s Satchi & Satchi was hired for election campaign here in Sri Lanka as well.
The world is observing a yet another May Day honouring the progress and gains made in the labour movement for nearly one and half centuries. Though the labour movement is a general term loosely used for entire human work force, traditionally May Day’s specific focus is largely on the sector of manual labour.
Labour, in whatever terms, is expected to work. Up until recently one could not think of a world where ‘labour’ as in the ‘labour force’, stops working. A world where labour force is not working was an incongruity and therefore out of the question. 
However with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence which has jeopardised the human job market, a panic stricken world is wondering whether there’s a chance of the labour force too being scrapped in a big way owing to AI enabled software. On the surface the AI operated robots doing most of the manual work appears to be quite a possibility.
Fortunately repeated studies have proven that the manual labour market will remain somewhat unscathed for some time as opposed sectors like administration and also data-intensive segments like finance and banking. In short it’s those who are in the higher or middle level of the work force who engaged in cognitive tasks that are more likely to be replaced based on the time-saving and accuracy rationale. 
The news surely is a respite for the labour force. 
Unlike Thatcher’s slogan, labour it seems is going to work for some time, or at least that’s how things stand for the time being.