LONDON – The rise of robots in manufacturing in Southeast Asia is likely to fuel modern-day slavery as workers who end up unemployed due to automation face abuses competing for a shrinking pool of low-paid jobs in a "race to the bottom," analysts said Thursday. Drastic job losses due to the growth of automation in the region -- a hub for many manufacturing sectors from garments to vehicles -- could produce a spike in labor abuses and slavery in global supply chains, said risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. More than half of the workers in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines -- at least 137 million people -- risk losing their jobs to automation in the next two decades, the United Nations' International Labour Organization says. The risk of slavery tainting supply chains will spiral because workers who lose their jobs due to increased robot manufacturing will be more vulnerable to workplace abuses as they jostle for fewer jobs at lower wages, said Alexandra Channer of Maplecroft. "Displaced workers without the skills to adapt or the cushion of social security will have to compete for a diminishing supply of low-paid, low-skilled work in what will likely be an increasingly exploitative environment," she said.