For the purposes of this particular thread, this paragraph is key.
In immediate short term, some workers lose their jobs to automation. Production costs fall, quality and consistency increase, and then revenue increases. This allows (a) better/cheaper products to be made, and (b) the company to grow and hire more employees.
And worker safety increased dramatically. We took some of the most fiddly and hazard-prone jobs and put machines in place of them. For instance, one seriously hazardous job was extracting stamped parts from a 1,000-ton press, which despite all the safety guards we had in place still resulted in two people being injured (stick your hand in a 1,000-ton press which stamps to 1/32", and your hand will explode like an overripe mango. Trust me on this one.) Replacing the manual feed/recover process with an automated feed/retract process cut 1 job per press, but completely eliminated injuries from the press. The glue machine I designed completely eliminated hot glue burns in the plant. The automated measuring machine I made not only saved about 5% on sheet steel costs, but cut down on a large number of small cuts and gouges suffered by workers.
Even as young as I was then, my Conservative philosophy was developed enough that I realized that the best thing I could do, above and beyond improving production, was reducing injuries and saving lives. I can’t claim to having saved any lives, but I know for a fact I cut down on many injuries.
Na, I’m sure employees would rather have a job, than have their hand.
Splendid work, Una. Would you have done your work any differently if you had been hired by a worker’s safety committee rather than the management? If you had been hired by a committee of workers making $20 an hour, would you have worked less creatively than if hired by a manager making $200/hr? The question is rhetorical, I have enough faith in your humanity to be pretty sure the answer is “no”.
OF course efficiency of production and safety are valid concerns. But the thinking here is truncated, it stops short. It considers what is good in the narrow context of a particular plant, or a particular industry. Twenty percent fewer workers to pay may well be a splendid boon to the bottom line, but the rest of us have to think bigger than that, we have to think about what to do with the people who are no longer useful in that narrow context.
If you apply automation and productivity to benefit the people, you will have no stauncher ally than myself. If its application is only to be focused on the promotion of profit and the Dollar Almighty, then we will have a problem. We already have the problem. Too many people, not enough jobs.
If capitalism can be rendered humane and egalitarian, excellent! No doubt, efficiency and automation will be useful for such a scheme. But efficiency and automation are just as useful for a brutal and rapacious capitalism, the kind we used to have when a strike was not an instrument of negotiation but an event involving violence and bloodshed. Let us not pretend there is some moral quality to automation and efficiency, its only value comes from the use we make of it. A tool is a good thing, it can be used to build. But the difference between a tool and a weapon is the intent of the hand that wields it.
No. In fact, even though not one person ever suggested I do such, I spent days out on the assembly line interviewing the workers to query them “what are the most common injuries you have?” and kept a log on paper (this was pre-Excel) of the typical number of strains, muscle cramps, cuts, bruises, and bumps they received, so I could try to target ways I could reduce their injuries and fatigue. The management, to be honest, thought that was a secondary consideration at best - they were concerned about serious injuries, true, but not things like cuts or bumps and bruises. Whereas I felt like a worker who received minor cuts and bruises as part of their job would be an unhappy worker who would work less efficiently.
The workers, to be honest, felt like I was invading their privacy, and often would refuse flat-out to tell me how they most got injured. Some were grateful. I was “famous” or notorious for one stunt I pulled: 3 workers told me they kept getting cut - seriously cut - on a large, sharp triangular piece of 0.25" plate steel on a conveyor. The maintenance crew refused to remove it, because even though it was entirely unnecessary, it would “void the warranty” on the conveyor. So one day I told two Big Burly Men to follow me, and had them grab and roll over an oxy-acetylene torch set, and I lighted up and cut the piece of metal off right there on the line [yes, I was trained in welding in school], while the workers stood there gawking at me and the maintenance manager stood there yelling at me (I technically didn’t outrank him, but I think he didn’t want to come near a crazy woman holding a 6,000 degree cutting torch). When I was done, I informed them that it took me all of 5 minutes to figure that the lost time and productivity due to injuries from the conveyor were costing more than the conveyor was worth in just 2 years, AND if anyone had bothered to check the paperwork, there was NO “warranty” on the conveyor to begin with, AND if there had been we had already voided it by modifying it long ago.
I got chewed out over it, but the Engineering Manager reluctantly admitted I was right. I received a nickname over the event, which I felt was neither funny nor complimentary of the fact I was doing what it took to reduce injuries.
I also set thermometers all around the plant in the summer and winter, and drew in CAD a map of the temperature profiles through the day. Well I tried to - the workers kept stealing my thermometers, even after I told them I was trying to make their lives better. My goal was to set up additional fans for better ventilation, as well as spot cooling with air conditioners and spot heating with resistance heaters. Again, my thought being that a comfortable worker is more efficient and less prone to have accidents in the first place. And because when I was younger I cared more about others; I’m old and bitter now.
I confess I did not get a lot of support for my fan ideas (until I suggested there may be environmental considerations from fumes), and my spot cooling idea was rejected save for a single spot air conditioner, which did more harm than good (people kept leaving the assembly lines to stand in front of it, while parts went crashing into each other). I was able to justify a major weatherproofing idea when my thermometers showed me that leaks on the northwest side of the building were blasting cold air on the workers, which made them wear coats and gloves on the line, which led to accidents.
I also instituted and led a serious look at the GIANT mosquitoes which came into the plant from a large storm water retention pond on the property, and recommended that it be drained (that was rejected because no one believed it would do any good…I think they were wrong). Also rejected was my back-up idea of hiring exterminators to poison the pond to kill the mosquitoes.
So lest I paint my ex-management as being 100% the champions of the workers, no, they were not.
I feel like I tried my best on several fronts. I did a fuck lot more than anyone else working there in that regard. But I was only one woman, and only the 3rd-ranking Engineer there.
Your analysis is also “truncated”. If I own a factory, and it can be automated, my choices aren’t simply “to automate or not to automate”. Do I reduce my costs, or do I keep the workers employed? It is more likely to be: Do I automate or do I go out of business because my competitors have automated and I haven’t.
Humans are excellent artist and craftsman, but we make mistakes, and we’re not the best solution to a high volume assembly line factory. Humans create lovely Rolls Royces and Bugatis, but most of us have to drive Toyotas and Fords.
So, yes, we do have a problem with the unemployed. And that’s a social problem best dealt with in the political realm. If corporations don’t keep their eyes on what you contemptuously call “profit”, there will be no jobs at all at GreedCo.
If you own a factory you have to consider the cost of automation, its maintenance and the cost of training workers to operate and over see it. Just tossing in automation is not always a smart financial move. Often workers do a function so much cheaper that mechanizing is a bad decision.
If a worker breaks down, you put in a substitute. If automation breaks down, everything stops. The cost at an auto plant can be millions of dollars an hour.
If all people work could be automated ,our corporations would not offshore for lower labor costs. They would still be doing it for avoiding the cost of regulation and environmental rules. I have read that that is a bigger consideration than labor costs in many incidences.
Safety regulation is a serious factor toward offshoring. I worked on the design and build of a engine testing machine that was bought for a Korean company. We made it according to American standards. when it got to Korea, they stripped off every bit of safety equipment we installed. Workers were cheap and considered expendable.
ATMs.
It is becoming difficult for an employee to think he has a good relationship with the employer. If we accept the owner has the right to cut jobs with automation, or to move offshore to obtain bigger profits, then what is the motivation for an employee to love his company? You work your ass off and in the background ,the bosses are trying to find a way to get rid of you. Sure gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling.
So what?
It’s a job, not a charity. You get the warm and fuzzy feeling your bank account bi-weekly.
Note that you still haven’t offered to help Cranick out with his $75 subscription, so you clearly aren’t in any way altruistic. Why on earth would you spend more to hire an employee than absolutely necessary? How often are you willing to pay more for something so that you can give employees a warm fuzzy feeling?
And all this for what you describe as the “American lifestyle.”
Here’s a new flash for you, the “American lifestyle” is about buying the cheapest shit possible and lots of it. There was a time when the US produced lots of cheap shit domestically, that they were also able to export (Ford, GM, and Chrysler as examples). That meant lots of profit, and lots of high paying jobs. Eventually, US workers priced themselves out of the market.
So make a choice, if you go the protectionist route and bring back lots of high paying jobs without any automation, that’s going to make all that junk cost a fortune. And good-bye “American lifestyle.”
Say good bye. Unemployment and dropping wages have accomplished the destruction of the American lifestyle. You do not have to look outside America to find what causes it.
I sent Cranick 1000 dollars. So you can stop that.
If you think work is just about money, I would not hire you. I suppose Mazlow is not in your background ,but we do not just work for money.
There are social aspects to work. There is challenge. There is creativity. There is accomplishment. There is inventiveness.
China, India and other countries protect their jobs. Why shouldn’t we? They protect their inventions while they steal ours or have corporations give them to them. I am sure you must have heard of back engineering.
Say good-bye to what? What are you talking about? And what is the American lifestyle? Use your words, try writing out complete thoughts: hypothesis, premise, premise, conclusion.
Start by telling us what you think the American lifestyle is. Then tell us how it’s being destroyed. Then tell us why we should care.
Since you first used American Lifesyle, it would be incumbent upon you to define it.
So, you believe that if I used it first, I should have to define it? Which would mean that if you used it first, you should have to define it, right?
Feel free to answer my question: What is the American lifestyle? Then tell us how it’s being destroyed. Then tell us why we should care.
Face it: Una Persson has the best stories this time.
Well, sure, but I didn’t tell the story about how my cousin John Wesley caught a snapping turtle with his pecker.
LOL dude, that has been the whole intent of computer science since von Neumann bent over and plugged something in. Do you have any clue at all as to how software is written? No one younger than 65 has ever written commercial ode to the bare metal since Kennedy was President. I studied CS at a top university 30 years ago and I have never even thought about having to do that - every line of code I have ever written or managed, including on some very well known state of the art projects, which adds up to maybe millions of lines of code, has undergone extensive automation, both in testing and creation during development and deployment.
Let me be clear. Every single line of code out of millions has been automated, and increasingly so.
There is no doubt that as automation in the areas you say don’t exist actually increase, programmers can do more, with increased quality, than before. There is no doubt this is the driving force behind software trends, including the software that is used these days to create and test hardware before it ever hits a fab.
Sorry, you really made me split a gut with your apparently sincere but exceedingly bizarre claim!
[QUOTE=gonzomax;13244766 China is cranking out educated workers at their universities far faster than we are. IT, programming and other technological fields are being met in China and India. They work much cheaper.[/QUOTE]
And yet some here, maybe even you, wonder what is to be done with the underemployed people. When it is suggested they be educated to the level of the competition, or even beyond, you balk.
Weird.
I live in the bread basket of the world, California’ Central Valley, having moved here 5 years ago from the Bay Area. I am busy studying the history of just that in California, dating from the 1850s until the present time.
While I certainly have my share of illegal Mexican neighbors, I can assure you that the overall workforce in the fields is a tiny fraction of what it once was. Large crops such cotton and tomatoes are extremely automated. Others will be soon, and all crops rely on automation to some extent.
Of course, there are jobs creating, managing, and improving the automation 
But it is a serious serious mistake to think that the farming workforce is anything like it once was. Our Valley, with its year round crops, is ~ 75 miles by 400 miles in area, so it is not that there is NO need for field workers.
But when Carey McWilliams’ “Factories in the Field” was published ~ 1939, he was referring in large part to the size of the fields and the standardization of processes done by field workers. Now, when we talk about Factory Farms, there is much much less need for labor, and what labor there is is increasingly skilled to run machines and do engineering tasks.
Search engines.
Na, they displaced all those librarians, and who ever it was that printed up all those little index cards.