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>Anyone could work a factory job. The least intelligent, least motivated people could punch a clock and earn a decent living tightening the same bolt a thousand

by lsc 9y ago

>Anyone could work a factory job. The least intelligent, least motivated people could punch a clock and earn a decent living tightening the same bolt a thousand times a day, all day long. I don't have personal experience as a '50s factory worker, but I do have some experience assembling things and working on cars. I doubt this description of factory work being completely brainless. If you've ever tried to watch someone who isn't mechanically inclined assemble anything, you can see that there is a skill in fitting things together. Even if your job is to tighten that same bolt every day, you've still gotta figure out how to properly torque it; too loose and the bolt comes out, too tight and you shear the goddamn thing off. Use one of those old style torque wrenches and you're gonna be way slower than the next guy.

brandonmenc 9y ago
Low-level factory jobs really aren't that complicated. You can take a person off the street and have them pressing the "go" button on an injection molder within minutes.
- iaw 9y ago
  There seems to be a level of arrogance coming across in your descriptions of "Low-level factory jobs." Having spent time in both worlds I have to say that your assessment of the skill and devotion required to work in those positions in inaccurate at best. Insulting at worst.
  - brandonmenc 9y ago
    I have actually worked these jobs. When I was a teenager I had temp jobs where I was literally bussed into a plastics factory, given a few minutes of instruction, and put on the shop floor to press a button on an injection molder. No "skill" or "devotion" required. Just a warm body.
    - iaw 9y ago
      There is a distinction between working a temp position and people that worked in factories for a career. I'd argue that temp positions will bias away from skill and devotion by the nature of position undermining your anecdote. It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers.
      - brandonmenc 9y ago
        > It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers. Based on a quick search, in the U.S. there's something like 5-6 million restaurant workers, and nearly 4 million of them are fast food workers, so a fry cook at McDonald's can say they understand the ins and outs of the majority of restaurant workers. Which, is my point. Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because by definition fewer people are able to work them.
        lsc 9y ago
        >Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because by definition fewer people are able to work them. Ah. well, my main point was just that I think most of the 'high paying factory jobs' were jobs that took some skill and experience. You didn't just walk in and say "I've got hands!" and get a good wage for easy work. I'd guess it'd be more like working at one of those tech support script farms today, I mean, if you show up without obvious skills or credentials. "Here, read this script, we will judge you on how fast you get the customer off the phone, rather than, you know, actually solving problems." My own career came up through the really low paying jobs in tech, and I spent some time in such a tech support farm; the difference in both the number of people who could do it and what we get paid is vast between level one scripted tech support and the sort of systems administration/production engineer work that I do now. Much like how one could work one's way up from a very basic factory job to something that was comfortable and remunerative.
- lsc 9y ago
  So I am at the beginning of my mechanical and materials engineering education, but I do know enough to tell you that making your injection molding come out okay is not easier than swapping the head gasket on your motorcycle. Machines need to be operated and maintained. How do you properly load the feed stock? How clean does it need to be? Will humidity duck it up? A lot of this is lore and experience, too, because the manuals are often pretty bad(or written for the engineers, which is bad when you have someone less educated doing the operations). I mean yeah, you can be the apprentice and do all this under the supervision of someone more experienced, but usually pay scales accordingly. I am not saying it is as hard as chip layout or anything, but there is skill and experience involved.
  - brandonmenc 9y ago
    Sure, in a modern plastics factory there will be a couple of machine experts on shift who roam around the shop floor troubleshooting and fixing things. But for every one of them, there are dozens if not hundreds of workers just standing there feeding and unloading the machine, pressing buttons, cutting flash off of parts, and loading pallets. There are a ton of jobs in a factory that require little to no skill or intelligence, even today. I'm not sure why everyone is trying to make it seem like everything is high skilled labor, because it's not, even in a heavy factory. Trust me - the guy in the forge doesn't need to be even as remotely smart as a programmer.
    - lsc 9y ago
      Huh. But I would assume that pay scales with skill? I mean I did warehouse labor one summer myself for a few months, and they mostly wanted people who could show up on time, who could pay enough attention to get a list of compact disks into a shipping box, but it paid almost nothing. (And I can't really show up on time, and that level of focus on something that boring is quite difficult for me, so it didn't last long) I assume that those who have good paying factory jobs are going to have jobs that require a degree of skill. I kinda find it unlikely that this has changed over time. My point is just that I think people might be thinking of work that requires skill or training or something when they talk about high paying factory work. I don't think the 50s were so different that unskilled labor paid the same as skilled or semi skilled labor, and there is a lot of the latter to be done in a factory.

by lsc 9y ago

brandonmenc 9y ago

Low-level factory jobs really aren't that complicated. You can take a person off the street and have them pressing the "go" button on an injection molder within minutes.

iaw 9y ago
There seems to be a level of arrogance coming across in your descriptions of "Low-level factory jobs." Having spent time in both worlds I have to say that your assessment of the skill and devotion required to work in those positions in inaccurate at best. Insulting at worst.
- brandonmenc 9y ago
  I have actually worked these jobs. When I was a teenager I had temp jobs where I was literally bussed into a plastics factory, given a few minutes of instruction, and put on the shop floor to press a button on an injection molder. No "skill" or "devotion" required. Just a warm body.
  - iaw 9y ago
    There is a distinction between working a temp position and people that worked in factories for a career. I'd argue that temp positions will bias away from skill and devotion by the nature of position undermining your anecdote. It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers.
    - brandonmenc 9y ago
      > It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers. Based on a quick search, in the U.S. there's something like 5-6 million restaurant workers, and nearly 4 million of them are fast food workers, so a fry cook at McDonald's can say they understand the ins and outs of the majority of restaurant workers. Which, is my point. Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because by definition fewer people are able to work them.
      - lsc 9y ago
        >Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because by definition fewer people are able to work them. Ah. well, my main point was just that I think most of the 'high paying factory jobs' were jobs that took some skill and experience. You didn't just walk in and say "I've got hands!" and get a good wage for easy work. I'd guess it'd be more like working at one of those tech support script farms today, I mean, if you show up without obvious skills or credentials. "Here, read this script, we will judge you on how fast you get the customer off the phone, rather than, you know, actually solving problems." My own career came up through the really low paying jobs in tech, and I spent some time in such a tech support farm; the difference in both the number of people who could do it and what we get paid is vast between level one scripted tech support and the sort of systems administration/production engineer work that I do now. Much like how one could work one's way up from a very basic factory job to something that was comfortable and remunerative.
lsc 9y ago
So I am at the beginning of my mechanical and materials engineering education, but I do know enough to tell you that making your injection molding come out okay is not easier than swapping the head gasket on your motorcycle. Machines need to be operated and maintained. How do you properly load the feed stock? How clean does it need to be? Will humidity duck it up? A lot of this is lore and experience, too, because the manuals are often pretty bad(or written for the engineers, which is bad when you have someone less educated doing the operations). I mean yeah, you can be the apprentice and do all this under the supervision of someone more experienced, but usually pay scales accordingly. I am not saying it is as hard as chip layout or anything, but there is skill and experience involved.
- brandonmenc 9y ago
  Sure, in a modern plastics factory there will be a couple of machine experts on shift who roam around the shop floor troubleshooting and fixing things. But for every one of them, there are dozens if not hundreds of workers just standing there feeding and unloading the machine, pressing buttons, cutting flash off of parts, and loading pallets. There are a ton of jobs in a factory that require little to no skill or intelligence, even today. I'm not sure why everyone is trying to make it seem like everything is high skilled labor, because it's not, even in a heavy factory. Trust me - the guy in the forge doesn't need to be even as remotely smart as a programmer.
  - lsc 9y ago
    Huh. But I would assume that pay scales with skill? I mean I did warehouse labor one summer myself for a few months, and they mostly wanted people who could show up on time, who could pay enough attention to get a list of compact disks into a shipping box, but it paid almost nothing. (And I can't really show up on time, and that level of focus on something that boring is quite difficult for me, so it didn't last long) I assume that those who have good paying factory jobs are going to have jobs that require a degree of skill. I kinda find it unlikely that this has changed over time. My point is just that I think people might be thinking of work that requires skill or training or something when they talk about high paying factory work. I don't think the 50s were so different that unskilled labor paid the same as skilled or semi skilled labor, and there is a lot of the latter to be done in a factory.