Automation and the dumbing down of the work force

[darrenj]

Wow..lots of interesting opinions here..

Peter..Well said post #22..i am going through labor problems now..i have an employee who constantly complains about being broke..I ask him.."do you want to work late tonight.."I cant do that the wife will kill me.."..OK then how about this week end.."No i have a trip planned with a buddy.." The next 2 days the guy doesn't show for work because he is sick..Then a SNAFU happens and i have to send him home a couple of hours early and he *****es at me because he "Needs the hours"???? What is with people today...The same guy hasn't shown up for 9 working days now..Obviously he doesn't work for me anymore...whats that going to do for his "Hours!?"

Genius...Thanks for defending the PLC thread..And shame on you Peter..you have to admit..you did read it right??Did you not crack a smile every now and again?? Hell we even have Terry as the CEO..and he swore up and down he comes here on his time..Its a kind of stress releif..Gotta have some fum somewhere


Whoever replied to Alaric's comment about not needing to fix the machine often..That is true but when you do fix it you can charge more..Simple math..unskilled laborer $10.00 an hour..person to fix robot..about $100.00 an hour..so in reality you only have to work 1/10th of the time to make the same wage..

cntrlfrk..you hit the nail on the head with the union thing..I watched a drunk screw up more product because he was totally drunk while working..he was warned for 5 years that if it happened again he would be fired..the company fired him about 2 years ago..It took a year but he is now back doing the same job..Got back pay for the year he sat at home and destroyed his liver..and has caused me numerous call ins at 2.00am..sure i get to bill the time but realy..i don't need it..i need my sleep..or another guy who beat the hell out of security guard because the guard caught him doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing..The union actually tried to get this guy his job back..What kind of message does that send to everyone else?

The automation that i work with hasn't "dumbed" down the work force..it just made there life easier...Now they get upset when something happens and actually have to get of there ***..

I think it has already been said here but i will say it agin..Life changes..keep up with it"

D

 

[darrenj]

And, I wish I could find the source again, but I read a little while ago that the average wage of an engineer was much, much more than the factory workers in 1900. Today, it is almost expected that the hourly employees will make more than the salaried engineers. So, the gap has been more than closed in many instances. The whole thing is much more complex than just worrying about who's getting richer at any given moment. The bottom line is that we are all better off than ever before, and I have no reason to think that is going to change.

A hourly worker can earn a damn site more than a salired worker if they work hard..

We keep demanding more pay but ***** about higher cost..they go with each other..You earn more the company has to charge more for you..its that simple..

 

[harryting]

I keep hearing this. What evidence is there that the middle class doesn't exist anymore? It sounds like cheap talking points, designed to rev up the grey-haired pony tail segment of the population. In reality, there are tens of millions of wage earners in the 30k to 90k bracket, and most of them would be considered middle class.

Cause that's how someone *feels*. The same tallking point is recycled every 10 years or so. Middle Class gone, job moving off-shore, young people are lazy, the Chinese (or the Japanese in the 80s) are going to kick your butt in everything. You almost never see any solid evidences to accompany these dire predictions either. It's just all *feelings*. I thought we be a bit better than the average internet forum since we all have scientific training and all that... right.

I look around and I see grown children doing better than their parents, on the average; earning more and having more *stuff*. Greed, yes, are everywhere. No wonder the middle class is running scared. Most *middle* class got the same lifestyle as the *upper* class 20 years ago.

My only prediction is that 20 years from now someone will be predicting the same doom and gloom. Nothing seems to discourage these pessimists, despite their less than stellar track record in predicting the future. Of course, you won’t be consider an intellectual if you ain’t a pessimist…

 

[darrenj]

I re read this thread and i just had to laugh about the word "Greed"

What wrong with that?? If you earned say $20.00 an hou and the boss came to you and said "If you work with crew X you will earn $20.00 if you work with group Y doing the same thing you will earn $30.00"..Guess witch one you would choose..I choose Y..am i greedy..Yep..if can make more money i will take it..

 

[geniusintraining]

Alaric, WOW what a thread

So in short, if you read what the ‘majority’ of everyone is saying, this is part of progression, if we don’t progress we will be abolished, but there is also a fine line. The human race is truly fragile and we need to respect it as such. If you compare us to others we are truly blessed.

There is still no answer as what we can do to insure a place in tomorrows world

I still don’t see feed back from the other side of the pond, is it as evident there as well? Or is North America worrying entirely way too much?
Is Automation dumbing down of the work force? no we are getting smarter

 

[rsdoran]

For educated people you have some strange ideas.

When it comes to taxes you can not "pass on" your income tax to the consumer/customer. In general you may control what you pay but that part is not passed on to anyone, the rest may be incoporated into overhead that causes higher pricing etc which in turn may inhibit or lower sales, for some it becomes an endless cycle.

Why do you think the IRS is autonomous, the US government wants that money and it be collected without interference.

I do not think the workforce is being dumbed down, I think our children are. Look at the national statistics on children that graduate High School, the reading level is less than 8th grade...the rquirement is just 8th grade.

Look at teacher salaries, the national average is in the 30K range. These are people that we send our children to everyday and expect them to educate them. The facilities and equipment they have may be 20 years old. Security is a joke. Noone wants to talk about peer pressures, drugs, alcohol, and violence.

In the past grade schools provided more hands on type training or trade type training which assisted many in obtaining good jobs. Not all people (all of our children) are or will be capable of being graphic artists, computer whiz etc but are they given an opportunity to learn fields they might have a chance to excel in?

I will say it again, its about ATTITUDE. We have decided that certain types of work are beneath us and our children. Is it good to want more...YES but are we making sure that MORE is offered?

Look around you too, in the past people could get jobs and if they were good they had a chance to move up. It is hard enough to find entry jobs today. Read the paper, every day jobs are being eliminated.

Y'all make fun of it every day but for some they may never have the opportunity to say "Would you like fries with that". I have 3 step sons with learning disabilities (IQ's below 100) that are capable of learning but do not have much of a chance because our society is geared to a higher level of accomplishment...in other words we do not need to worry about the "dumb" people if we need trained labor we can always find smart ones from other countries.

Where do educated people find those turtle shells?

Take a look at things outside your world.

I do not have a solution because it takes people that are willing to take time and make an effort, as long as people just look at their world and are comfortable they assume everyone is.

 

[colerick]

Just an observation...and someone may have already pointed this out, long thread.

Automation vs. jobs. In many cases, automation provides manufacturers the ability to compete with low wage producers. Failure to automate may mean the whole plant is gone.

Watched this in the textile industry around NAFTA. Textile industry was always labor intensive, and little was done to automate garment manufacture. End result, very few domestic (US) garment plants, and many comparatively well paying factory jobs gone forever.

I have never felt bad about automating anything, and never will.

My two cents.

Andy

 

[katratzi]

hello DarrenJ
I was the one who commented about not fixing the machine more often. Actually, I would consider it a miserable failure to
produce a machine that failed more than twice in ten years, so at that rate, no one could afford my new revised hourly charge. My
point in next post was that most of the worker(s) you replace are not going
to have the inclination or ability to repair the equipment they
are being replaced with. Should that stop us? No, but I will
acknowledge that people can and are being replaced.

As to the greed thing-

There is nothing wrong with an individual wanting more money,
i. e., going from the x group at 20/hour to the y group making
30. But like S7 I don't care what anyone makes as long as they are not trying to take or lower my share. The greed I was referring to was companies that renege on retirement plans,
raid pension funds, claim financial difficulties but
apply the cost cutting measures to only one class of employees.
I have been doing this type and similar work for about 12 years,
and there seems to be a trend in the plants I work at to
compensate production employees less and less (two tier pay
systems and the like) while managers, etc. maintain the status
quo. I agree that problem employees need to be dealt with. If
you wont do your job safely/correctly, you should be let go.

- charles

 

[burnerman]

I still don’t see feed back from the other side of the pond, is it as evident there as well? Or is North America worrying entirely way too much?

IMHO, automation where applied properly has improved the lot of the production worker.

I am (just) old enough to remember the sort of guys on the shop floor who used to turn up to work every day and sit all day by their lathe, milling machine or whatever. Whilst probably highly skilled at what they did, I'm not sure what they got out of it apart from their weekly wage packet. They certainly weren't respected by the bosses for their skills and didn't normally take home much more pay than a general labourer.

I'm sure there are still plenty of folk who just want to turn up for work every day and collect their wages at the end of the week without having to think - maybe this is the type of worker who's jobs are becoming more scarce due to automation.

Nowadays, from what I've seen in successful companies, production workers can, if they want to, have a greater impact upon the whole of the manufacturing process. What they no longer use in the way of manual skills are more than made up for in other activities, e.g. improving production methods, involvement in machine/process design, etc. - smartening up rather than dumbing down if you ask me.

In my view the two main killers for manufacturing industry in the UK are cheap labour in the third world and developing countries and the ever increasing beurocracy needed to comply with new legislation (mainly coming from the EU).

 

[Ken M]

In the UK we also have the problem that initially it looks as though there is no problem. The UK economy is one of the strongest in Europe and has been for the past 8-10 years. Inflation is very low (~2 - 2.5%), unemployment is low, exchange rates are healthy and the pound has more than held its own against the dollar and euro over this period. I'm old enough to remember when we had double-digit inflation, several million unemployed, and almost constant government intervention in exchange rates. So everything's rosy, yes?

Well, not quite. Unfortunately much of the current economic strength is based on the fact that we are becoming a service economy rather than a manufacturing economy. Money, insurance, retail, banking etc are all the big success stories in the UK. I actually saw some figures recently to say that last year (2005) the PLC market in the UK declined for the first time after several years of plateau. Now OK a declining market may be due to lots of things (lower volume; same volume but lower prices, etc) but I don't think it's healthy whichever way you look at it.

Regards

Ken

 

[Pierre]

Hey Terry! Our newset CEO

Since I'm french canadian I will give you guys my not so humble opinion on this question.

Automation is dumbing the work force.

But its only one tool of the "Have" to control the "Have not". (where did I get that naming, ho ya I remember ) Its origine is greed. But what exactly is greed?

GREED:
- immoderately desirous of acquiring
- one who takes more than his share

The sign of the dumbing or the work force is not seen when tradesmanship dissolves into oblivion with the addition of bots and automated process, it is so obviously present in the book they read, the TV shows they whatch and the people they elect.

"Two things only the people anxiously desire: bread and the Circus games." -- Juvenal (Roman poet and satirist, est. 60-140) ...

When such shows as the Osborne get skye high ratings there is no way to defend from the fact that we, as a group are getting dumber by the minute.

The addition alone of better systems will not in any way make us dumb but our willingness to be given what to think, what is good and what is bad removes our sense of judgement, our sense of critique. With them big corporations, the constant messages thrown at us, telling us what we need, what will make us happy, what we must have to reach happyness is perfectly match with the industrial automation to produce dumb and dumber people.

When a worker does not need to think for 8 hours, he goes home and watches Surviver "wo-cares-where", how long will it takes for him to become a perfect little soldier/idiot/lamb?

So my view is that YES the workforce is dumbed by Automation but automation is only one of the tools.

My solution, simply let more women in charge. They are a lot less greedy than us men.(M. Tatcher was a man)

For those who have not yet hunderstood what greed is, let me help:

- A freak'n Hummer IS GREED!
- Outsourcing to India IS GREED!
- Outsourcing US port security to a Dubai based corp. IS GREED!
- Today's Wall Street IS GREED!

Would I change for another system? No! Why? Because in this one I still can have a chat with you guys and get my views accross.

 

[geniusintraining]

Thanks Ken M and burrnerman for the other side input... It does looks as you (on the other side of the pond) have some if not all of the same issues, but you are in a point in your economy that we were in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Some here believe that a economy can’t not survive being a service sector based economy for long and it does look like we are heading that way.

But what can we do?,

My solution,

simply let more women in charge. They are a lot less greedy than us men

hmmmm,My wife is in charge in my house and it runs great



But I think that rsdoran is correct, education in one fashion or another, is the only true answer our children must be smarter then us.

 

[Rube]

I was going to design some automation to respond to this thread. But then Pierre threw that "let more women in charge" turd on the table and I decided it would probably be better to Respond the old falshioned way. That's all I would need, automation doing something emotional and ME paying for it. (By the way, I noticed all the "greed" examples were United States in nature...Hummm).


I think it's a cop-out to say the work-force is dumber. I know, KNOW, that I'm smarter now than I was 10, 20 years ago. I dare say some of you feel the same. I hope Ron and others do since they decided to go back to school (if not, stop spending your money on school because that's just DUMB).

By what gauge are we using that some say the work force is dumber? Productivity? Wages? IQ? All or some of these?

If the work force was dumber than in the eighties for example, no one would be able to use Excel spreadsheets or Access Databases. Scratch out the orderpads on McDonalds cash registers--we're not smart enough. Take away online bill paying--too complicated. Pump my gas for me--I'm an idiot. Video games--nah, I'm too friggin stupid. Etc., etc.

We're not dumber, we just don't CARE for our fellow man as much as we used to and that's dumb. Hopefully, a whole lot of someones will be smart enough to figure that out.

 

[Pierre]

By the way, I noticed all the "greed" examples were United States in nature...Hummm

No Rube, I can only speak of what I have an interrest in. Since I live north of the border I cannot give good examples 'bout Norvegians, I just don't know them enough.

Besides, greed is one hell of a well distributed weakness of the human soul.

 

[S7Guy]

When it comes to taxes you can not "pass on" your income tax to the consumer/customer. In general you may control what you pay but that part is not passed on to anyone, the rest may be incoporated into overhead that causes higher pricing etc which in turn may inhibit or lower sales, for some it becomes an endless cycle.

Well, that's how many business owners look at taxes though. For instance, I know how much I want to "take home". I figure in a new laptop every year, health insurance, accounting costs, and a hundred other things. Among those things are various taxes. I lump it all together as overhead and bill appropriately to maintain my desired bottom line. So in effect, yes, my taxes are paid by my customers.

If the tax rate for everyone suddenly became much lower, what would happen? Do you think we would all get to keep the windfall? No, after a year or so competion would bring the rates down again to compensate, and the customer would end up paying less.

I wish people would analyze the price of a new car, and figure out exactly how much of it consists of taxes being paid by various entities that helped build the car. No matter how the number crunchers fudge the stats, the guy buying the car ultimately pays the whole bill.

That's exactly why I will never, ever be an employee again. I just need to have control of my own situation.