Lester Holt and the employment problems

[Dean Hoffman]

Funny you mention that. JD is on strike.

[Ralph Mowery]

Many of the jobs that are being forced to raise the wages are ones that require someone on the job such as the fast food industry. Seems there are not enough truck drivers to move items.

I would think that the workers would find a job paying more and then quit the one they have. It is like I told my son to keep his head in the job market and if he is offered more money in a field he likes, go for it. I found out the companies do not care for the workers any more and if they can do anything to cut the cost they will. Around here in the 60's and 70's it was a worker could leave one place and to another that paid about the same. The jobs got hard to get so the companies could treat the workers like dirt. Now it seems the workers are back in the drivers seat now.

[gfretwell]

Uncanny. It's almost like I watched the news.

[gfretwell]

That won't last long. I am sure there are people in board rooms planning a strategy to deal with this as we speak. I already see one restaurant here in town has a robot server. It is a fine line in a lot of businesses where machines can replace workers for less money and when you cross that line Robby the Robot* steps in.

*(Forbidden Planet reference for you old folks)

[Ralph Mowery]

Better make the Robby the Robot reference for the young folks. That movie came out in the 1950's.

Some things can be replaced by robots, but someone has to be in the area to maintain the robots and feed them the raw materials.

[gfretwell]

The number of employees is pretty low and the number of skilled employees is even lower. Cheap offshore manufacturing has made "maintenance" just cutting open the box and plugging in large FRUs (sub assemblies). Thirty years ago or more, actually fixing things became a lost art.

[rbowman]

Compared to modern R/C toys it was primitive but I thought it was a pretty slick toy at the time.

In later years when installing an automated molding system for watt-hour meters at GE Somersworth I'd wander down to the diecast area to watch the Unimates.

I saw the future, but the 1973 oil embargo put paid to that. Manufacturers lost interest in robots when they could ship the jobs to third world countries where human robots were cheaper than capital investment. I took another career path as the US machine tool industry collapsed.