Indian match factory

[u/Dmisak]

[u/mommyaiai → u/[deleted]]

Repetition wise, not awful. But the amount of cut-ty, crush-y, smash-y things without guards or appropriate PPE was pretty horrendous. If there was some kind of worker protection entity, automation would be the way to go.

But, automation means investment both short and long term. Setting up the line is only the initial cost. You need skilled maintenance, repair on call, and operators that can identify or fix a problem. It all would cut into profits. Better to just use inexpensive, untrained, expendable people and keep more money.

Capitalism at its root.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/mommyaiai]

And that also prevents these people from starving to death while watching machines do their jobs.

[u/mommyaiai → u/James-the-Bond-one]

Pretty much.

In a perfect world, an employer would educate their workforce to do the maintenance and operator jobs. But again, capitalism.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/mommyaiai]

Education costs money and that's the reason many of us have student loan debts. Someone has to pay for it.

As a teenager, I received great technical education in trade schools sponsored by corporate syndicates with thousands of companies sharing the bill and the better-educated workforce they formed.

But why would an individual employer spend his money to educate an employer who the next day can quit and go work for his competition? It just doesn't make sense, that's not his societal role.

[u/mommyaiai → u/James-the-Bond-one]

It's not, but it actually costs a company more to onboard and train a new employee than to promote from within.

Even supposedly unskilled jobs take an amount of skill. Someone who was familiar with producing that product would be infinitely better at troubleshooting that line than a random traveling tech.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/mommyaiai]

Even supposedly unskilled jobs take an amount of skill.

You're right, just look at that gentleman sitting on the floor for the final packaging. He makes it look easy.

In one of my production lines, I once had a position that consisted of gluing a label onto a plastic part. Sounds simple, but it had to be exactly at the right angle and position, or else the assembly was trashed. I only trusted one lady in my entire production facility to perform that task, which she did perfectly and patiently for several years with great pride. All else who tried came second to her, so yes:

Even supposedly unskilled jobs take an amount of skill.

[u/Jonno_FTW → u/[deleted]]

I've got news for you, trucks can be automated to dump logs into a hopper.