Something seems not quite right to me about how businesses are singled out and criticised for deploying the sort of labor optimizations you describe. What I mean is, why should a business abstain from optimizations just because they happen to employ manual labour? Why is it their resonsibility to keep their processes inefficient, rather than the responsibility of other businesses to introduce inefficencies that will create more manual roles? Why don't we make Google have all their printouts for code reviews manually typed up and spell checked by a legion of low payed workers? Or something equally arbitrary that will 'create' a job?
Note that I'm not coming down on either side of the automation vs job-preservation debate as a whole, I'm just asking what justification people have for only penalising businesses which recruit people for pre-existing menial tasks.
Of course, that would be silly and wasteful. I don't think anyone would think that would be a useful solution but we need to start seriously considering Guaranteed Basic Incomes.
Note that I'm not coming down on either side of the automation vs job-preservation debate as a whole, I'm just asking what justification people have for only penalising businesses which recruit people for pre-existing menial tasks.