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Just my 5 cents. Running factory is damn hard job. 10 products built from 50 different parts having 70 different vendors is a small nightmare. So me people can

• thaack 1y ago
  > Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits.
  • candiddevmike 1y ago
    If they're losing employees, then they must not have that much higher pay or better benefits for it to be worth it to work there. I don't think you can easily blame it on the job being monotonous...
    • stouset 1y ago
      The job being monotonous is clearly enough of a downside that significantly higher pay and benefits are needed to attract talent. Paying higher wages might help retain employees (or not! there are jobs people just won’t keep doing no matter the pay) but doing so could easily increase costs to the point where your product is uncompetitive in the market. It also might just be worth having higher turnover in order to keep prices low.
      • snozolli 1y ago
        there are jobs people just won’t keep doing no matter the pay I do not believe this common claim.
        • carlosjobim 1y ago
          Theoretically, an utterly horrible job with great pay would attract a lot of workers who do it for some time to get a financial boost before moving on.
          • greedo 1y ago
            When I was young, it was popular to go up to Alaska for the season and either work the fishing boats or the canning factories.
        • stouset 1y ago
          Obviously there is some ludicrous threshold of pay where more people will decide to do some job. But for practical purposes the pay needs to be in line with still being able to price your products competitively in a global marketplace. Even $10,000/yr more might not be enough to move the needle all that much on a job that’s backbreaking, monotonous, and with little prospects for career growth. Especially if you have a limited pool of applicants due to your location.
          • snozolli 1y ago
            Obviously there is some ludicrous threshold of pay where more people will decide to do some job Ludicrous only from the perspective of the employer. Everyone wants something for nothing. The fact is that regular Americans (i.e. not exploited, immigrant labor, or oppressed out-groups) used to do manual labor and manufacturing in the United States. They took pride in their labor. People haven't changed, the economics have. As for your last paragraph, the oil fields have been able to meet their need for employees for the most part, and that ticks every one of your undesirable factors. So what gets workers there? Pay.
            • 1y ago
      • Pulcinella 1y ago
        We need actual data to decide how significant is "significant." Otherwise you will just have businesses complaining no one wants to work for "significantly" higher pay (a whole $0.05/hour more).
        • stouset 1y ago
          I’m sorry but this is a ridiculous take. $0.05/hr is $104 a year for a full-time job. Zero people are going to have that be the tipping point for them to take on a monotonous, often physically draining job that they’d otherwise turn down.
          • Pulcinella 1y ago
            Yes that is my point. What business owners consider "significant" and what sane people consider significant are often quite different.
            • stouset 1y ago
              I apologize, I misread this and thought you were suggesting that $0.05 was significant.
          • Spooky23 1y ago
            You underestimate the low end of the labor market. People may not jump for a nickel, but they absolutely will for $0.25-0.30.
      • lenkite 1y ago
        A lot of folks like repeatable, monotonous jobs. They can loose themselves in a trance doing the same thing for hours. The problem is that American bosses will never hire these kind of people. They can never pass the interview game.
        • ASalazarMX 1y ago
          Except you can't just zone away in a factory job. Workers need to pay attention if they don't like injuries. It the job doesn't need much skill, it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy or safe.
  • kelipso 1y ago
    Feels like there are a bunch of factories like that in the Midwest even now. There's a Honda factory near the Columbus, OH area where you have a bunch of employees doing absolute monotonous work all day like checking if a screw is the right shape or something. These jobs are slowly getting automated but it's not like no one would do them if they are available.
    • selimthegrim 1y ago
      Marysville
  • gaindustries 1y ago
    > The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. Better pay + benefits than the most rock bottom lowest possible pay + benefits is really pathetic. And based on the vagueness of your claims, we can assume full-time hours are also out of the picture, meaning no health insurance. On top of that, tyranical small business owners are usually a nightmare to work for.
    • thaack 1y ago
      It's all full time 4x10 work with the employer covering 100% of health insurance premiums.
      • gaindustries 1y ago
        There's somethhing you're not telling us or not being honest about.
        • flybrand 1y ago
          It's common. People would rather work in a Wal-Mart as it is more social and less demanding. The physical space is nicer.
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • culll_kuprey 1y ago
          It’s probably the hours. A lower middle class income is not worth losing my every waking hour over.
    • jordanb 1y ago
      Decent chance given that it's a plastics plant probably not unionized and probably in a red state that the air is not healthy to breathe.
  • honkostani 1y ago
    Should hire us autists and allow us to program via voice commands and augmented reality.. i would love something almost automate-able while doing something that also needs higher brain functions.
  • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
    > The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. Q: Do you ever use an online job service to advertise jobs and collect applications? Asking because my 5 sons all learned that job portals auto-trash applications w/o a job history (1st time job seekers). Other viable but never-seen applicants: Minimal or sporadic job history, the most minimal of criminal records, the wrong zip code. Seen but never hired: Fully qualified people who are awful at job interviews.
    • thaack 1y ago
      I have no involvement with the plant directly. My understanding is the best luck they had was getting in good graces with local probation officers & craigslist classifieds. Job portals were pretty useless from my understanding.
      • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        > the best luck they had was getting in good graces with local probation officers & craigslist classifieds. I appreciate the answer. And I understand that you may not have more-granular info than this. But I am wondering what how jobs were advertised prior to utilizing ProbOff/CL. Maybe the answer is this. There was no avenue to get job listings in front of the most likely eyeballs.
        • phillyboy82 1y ago
          Companies go to ManPower or other job staffing agencies when they need X number of low level employees or temps
          • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
            > Companies go to ManPower or other job staffing agencies Son #1 got employed there early but it turned out that a small group had a deal with management and got 100% of the work. New hires went out on one job immediately and then never again.
  • keiferski 1y ago
    I guess most of these jobs don’t allow for music or YouTube to be used during work? I’m just thinking that people already spend a lot of time just consuming content, so if it were possible to watch YouTube while at the factory, maybe it wouldn’t be as unpopular.
    • scns 1y ago
      Listening to music should work, no pun intended. Watching YouTube though?
      • keiferski 1y ago
        Yeah I guess it’s probably not realistic for most factory jobs. I am just thinking that “get paid $20 an hour to do a simple task and watch YouTube/listen to music” is actually kind of appealing to many people.
        • jazzyjackson 1y ago
          This is a lot of security guard and front desk jobs. if a boss doesn't like smartphones on the job, I know people who read books or knit between tasks.
        • ta1243 1y ago
          When I was 18 I got paid below minimum wage to sit in my car delivering pizzas while listening to the radio. Far better than the higher paid shop job I tried at university. Today with not just unlimited music (with no adverts), but the vast amounts of audio books you can listen to, it's even more appealing for people with limited financial obligations.
      • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        > Watching YouTube though? Yeah, I can't make that work. Only my most routine work can be done with the TV on (and providing it's my 5th rewatch).
        • 1y ago
  • pseudocomposer 1y ago
    Obviously, the “higher pay and significantly better benefits” are not actually significantly better. I’d rather we address that than just exploit some other workers overseas where they’re out of sight, out of mind. Honestly, it seems like tariffs on imported goods would be the way around this, but also, we need to be sure that money is going to the people doing the work, not just the owners. Speaking of which, I don’t really know your business, but a post starting with “my family owns a business” and ending with “we lose workers to Walmart even though we pay them more” (with no specificity as to how much more)…. This really comes off like a problem with the business itself, not the overall market.
    • phillyboy82 1y ago
      Wrong. Kids brains are fried from phones / social media so much that they struggle with repetitive labor. I see this all the time at an automotive plant. UAW wages are good, especially after the last contract, but we still get people who struggle putting a sticker on a car for an hour straight before their break or task switch.
      • denkmoon 1y ago
        Then long hours of repetitive labor are a skill which needs to be attracted for.
      • hitarpetar 1y ago
        finally a positive framing on social media addiction
        • antonvs 1y ago
          “Get addicted to this phone, son, or you’ll end up working in a factory!”
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • dangus 1y ago
  • carlosjobim 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • jltsiren 1y ago
      Some jobs are just inherently bad. People do them, if there are no better jobs available. If you increase the wage, people will do the job for a while, until they have reached sufficient financial stability. Then they can afford to switch to another job that pays less but provides a better quality of life. Or to retire early in extreme cases.
      • carlosjobim 1y ago
        That's fantastic! Wouldn't it be tyranny to make people spend their whole lives doing such a job? It's good that people do it for a while for a good wage and then move on.
        • jltsiren 1y ago
          It's not enough to do the job. You also need to produce value. Many attempts at onshoring production fail, because employee attrition is too high. Costs are high, productivity remains low, and the quality of the products may also be low.
          • carlosjobim 1y ago
            What is your alternative, except slavery?
    • foobarian 1y ago
      > There's nothing wrong with "western workers" Yeah nothing other than not being willing to work 9/9/6 for $2/day
    • ASalazarMX 1y ago
      I think you're being too hard. Working at a Wal-Mart is much easier than a factory job, considering the latter is usually dangerous, and has more RSI risk. It'd have to pay at least double, and me being in a predicament, for me to gamble with my health, and only until I find a better option.
  • Tadpole9181 1y ago
    I don't mean for this to be as pointed as it probably will come off - but do you allow these workers to listen to music, take regular (not smoke) breaks, and do their job from a chair? The few factory jobs I've seen were not only monotonous, they were needlessly soul crushing. For no reason at all, you had to stand for hours on end. Your only breaks were lunch and smokes. Bathroom breaks were monitored like a crime. And you were afforded no distractions from the task, 100% focus required. Coupled with no care put into making someone feel actually appreciated and the end-products being MBA shrinkflated garbage nobody could be proud of, it's not shocking that no one in their right mind would want to work there.
    • shermantanktop 1y ago
      “MBA shrinkflated garbage” I’m definitely going to find a way to slip this into a conversation.
  • profsummergig 1y ago
    The problem is opportunity cost Of what? Of getting on disability (back pain) And getting more (from the govt.) to sit at home and cook up conspiracy theories on the Internet
  • sensanaty 1y ago
    Sorry but whenever I hear employers say "much better pay/benefits compared to the competition", the reality is in 99.9% of cases that it's a negligible difference for work that is harder and much less desirable. How much higher is the pay? Cause the first thing that crosses into my mind is oil rigs, where they get paid more than many software engineers I know do, and there's a huge number of people doing the work happily despite the gruelling conditions. I realize not every business can pay Big Oil salaries, but still, it might be worth thinking realistically about whether your pay & benefits really are better than Walmart's (who are the number 1 employer in the states AFAIR, so they must be doing something right).
    • culll_kuprey 1y ago
      I bust out loud laughing the other day when I saw two jobs listed here in rusty southern Ohio. One was for a semi-skilled manufacturing position. A little more than just assembly line, but nothing super special or niche. The other was a janitor position at the local public school system. The differential was not huge, but the janitor paid more. Probably less hours too.
  • bsder 1y ago
    > The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. I'm SUPER doubtful of this. When I last bumped into this, the local Amazon warehouse paid more than all the local manufacturing. It wasn't even close. Local manufacturing got used to being a local monopoly and being able to underpay. Now that they're not a monopoly, all they do is whine and complain.
    • kranke155 1y ago
      The issue is of course there is no market for US made goods at a good salary when other countries were selling their goods in the US market without impediment. Tariffs were supposed to fix that, but now I don’t know if they are effective at all.
      • timeon 1y ago
        Yes that is usually point of the tariffs. Not this time as they are too broad (include products like coffee) and not stable (announced one day than delayed/dismissed etc.). Point of tariffs that current regime made is to destabilize both domestic and foreign markets.
      • bsder 1y ago
        > The issue is of course there is no market for US made goods at a good salary The Smarter Every Day scrubber demonstrates that is not true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY The problem is that the US has systematically destroyed all the ecosystem required to manufacture by outsourcing everything. Maximally efficient is minimally robust.
        • kranke155 1y ago
          Both issues can be true. A single scrubber is not a good counterpoint to entire industries having left. However, yes, the US (and the West in general) were uniquely victims of elite betrayal, where the financial and business elites decided it was best for them to outsource manufacturing, while telling the urban mass and politicians that this was "everyone's best interest". The current political and now geopolitical disaster followed. The financialization of America and the UK in the 1980s was a failure in all respects. Stock buybacks made legal, factories closed, Wall Street as an engine of growth. It was all fiction.
  • trollbridge 1y ago
    My local factories are mostly union, and they rely heavily on the union to help fill empty openings. They also set up booths at local job fairs and have a poster board with current openings (typically electricians and pipe fitters, sometimes line workers or machinists). The jobs also have benefits and vacation and sick time off. Everybody I know who works there is always trying to get as many overtime shifts as they can, especially the weekend and holiday ones which are double or 2.5X time. Electricians are IBEW, pipefitters are pipefitters’ union, rest are UAW even though it has nothing to do with cars. General advice is if you’re down on your luck and need a job, you can go there and be at $25 an hour in a few months (step pay increases are mandated by the union). It’s not for everyone but it certainly has less turnover than the local McDonald’s which starts and stays around $14. Unions should do a better job of marketing to employers that they can supply a trained work force. For example the IBEW here always has a full book of apprentices. An employer can get a qualified electrician along with an apprentice basically guaranteed.
    • bluGill 1y ago
      > Unions should do a better job of marketing to employers that they can supply a trained work force. Unions need to quit their management is evil message as well. Unions can do good, but when they call all management evil and breed resentment I can't blame companies for not wanting unions around. The above is US centrist - in other countries the Unions don't do this.
      • BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        From a worker’s perspective management will usually be evil by necessity. Staying aware of that may be a necessary mechanism in the US that isn’t so necessary in other countries with different cultures and labor protections.
  • anonymousDan 1y ago
    Not trying to troll but it seems like there must be some way to make the job at least a little interesting (e.g. by rotating the tasks required, providing a little space for skill development)?
• Theodores 1y ago
  The slight problem with how AI is currently being marketed is that AI is going for the fun and creative jobs that people want to do, not the dull and repetitive jobs that nobody wants to do. If every creative job is gone to the AI beast then there will be people willing to do factory work since nothing else will be available.
  • anon291 1y ago
    Rubbish. Ai has been used for many years in factories and modern AI will be even more useful. The issue is that most people aren't going to be the target of this sort of AI advertising and also that this takes longer than making a chat bot
  • chupchap 1y ago
    What's the point of GenAI in a manufacturing pipeline? Good ol' ML based AI automation is heavily used in larger manufacturing plants to identify defects
• crote 1y ago
  > Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. In my opinion one of the biggest reasons we won't see manufacturing come back to Western countries is that we still believe this is how most factories operate. Chinese people aren't stupid, they have been spending a fortune on automating as much of their manufacturing as possible! Western labor is never going to compete with Asian labor, so it's no use even trying. If we want to have any chance of matching what China is already doing (let alone beating it), we're going to have to invest an absolute fortune in automation and streamlining: reduce the number of unique products, reduce the part count, reduce the number of vendors, reduce the distance to vendors, and automate everything you can reasonably automate. Make it capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive and we might be able to keep up.
  • petermcneeley 1y ago
    Or you could have trade borders.
    • Spooky23 1y ago
      Yeah, and you’re going to be poorer as a whole. People in backwards places like rural and urban ‘hoods live reasonably well with very low labor productivity relatively speaking. I don’t think you understand how primitive American society is compared to Asia. Basic survival for rural poor is a car. When you take away cheap clothes and cheap TVs, all made in modern Asian factories and replace them with shitty American products at 3x the price, the current populist movement will look like a party in comparison.
      • EdwardDiego 1y ago
        > I don’t think you understand how primitive American society is compared to Asia. Lol, Asia is a big and diverse place. Are you really claiming that American society is more primitive than that of farmers in the arse end of Gansu? Hint, one of those areas is more likely to have flush toilets.
• yibg 1y ago
  Using people for manufacturing fundamentally will never be cost competitive compared to cheaper markets. There are really only a few ways to resolve this in my view: 1. Give up and just outsource manufacturing and be ok with it 2. Invest heavily in automation, technology etc so we remove cost of labor from the equation. Or at least heavily minimize it 3. Put up trade barriers to artificially raise the cost of imported goods, which is what the current admin is trying to do, at least officially 1. leaves us dependent on other potentially adversarial countries, 3. increases the cost of goods sold so puts a burden on the population. So seems like 2. is the only way to go, if the country can get behind it. But it also inherently won't add a lot of jobs.
  • coliveira 1y ago
    # 3 is not a solution because it will only make American production more expensive and impoverish the population. It's a full disaster.
    • wrp 1y ago
      Japan used that strategy very successfully for at least a century. The high cost of imported goods encouraged consumers to buy domestic at prices that were also high, which subsidized exports at competitive prices. The Japanese public is less docile now, but this is one example where import restrictions worked well. I believe you can find other examples from the 20th century, but I'm not sure whether they would work well in the current global environment.
      • trollbridge 1y ago
        They also became experts at automation and at producing high quality goods.
      • coliveira 1y ago
        Import substitution can only work when you have a government that is investing in labor and industrial infrastructure, while keeping the local currency cheap. This is not a combination of factors you don't have in the US.
• a_bonobo 1y ago
  I used to work in such a factory in Germany and turn-over was high :) A large pool of uni students doing their summer breaks propped up the place. They could afford to work there for 1-2 months mentally because they knew they'd go back to university (me, too). The few long-timers on the factory floor were mostly functioning alcoholics.
  • gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
    This was a family owned biz? Somehow, I imagine, I'd feel better slogging for an SME than in an "externally-funded" place. I'm guessing that US needs a similar nation-wide service to connect gig-workers of all sorts to factories specifically.
    • trollbridge 1y ago
      My sister has been at a family owned small factory for 30+ years now. Eventually loyalty to family becomes a thing, especially when they’re loyal to you. They are gradually not replacing staff as they retire or the occasional person quits on the factory floor due to automation. Their biggest challenge is who will own it in the future - the son and grandson have fully taken over from the founder, but nobody else in the family is really interested.
      • gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
        I don't know if people are disagreeing with us on that loyalty is not enough these days..
• al_borland 1y ago
  I worked in a factory for a few months. They moved me around on the line. While each week looked the same, each day in the week was different. Though I was told by some of the other guys on the line that it was one of the nicer factories they ever worked in. I did some tech work in a few auto factories as well, and those had a very different vibe on the floor. While it may be boring to someone who use used to doing knowledge work, there are a lot of people who need jobs who aren’t going to be doing knowledge work. They need something. I worked fast food for a shift before I quit. I found that much more boring and hated it much more than the factory. I’d rather see people employed making stuff domestically rather than have yet another drive-thru window in town. I grew up in a small town with two fairly decent sized factories. That was a solid job prospect for a lot of people coming out or high school that didn’t know what else they could do. It gave those kids options and kept them in town where they could buy a house, raise a family, and spend money supporting other local businesses. Now they’re both closed and the city is hunting for ways to bring businesses to town. My brother-in-law is driving 100+ miles per day to drive to an area with more jobs opportunities. I’m sure if there was a local factory gig he’d probably take it and save a ton on gas, not to mention getting back 10 hours per week of his time.
  • baq 1y ago
    The thing is, minimum wage there pays for 10 people on the floor in Asia and the cost of the factory is approximately the same. There’s no economic sense to build a factory in the states… which is where all the government subsidies enter the stage, but the budget is already running a war time deficit. It’s going to be so much worse for those small used-to-be-factory cities until the printer starts for real, and then there’s no guarantee it’s going to be any better after.
    • al_borland 1y ago
      Tariffs are used all over the world for this exact reason, which is what is being attempted now. It will take time for it to pay off, more time than the current administration has, which is likely why business will drag their feet. I think economic benefit goes beyond just having the lowest price. Having good jobs for people in the country means they have money to spend. If people make next to nothing, all they can afford is Temu quality. This is bad for the citizens, bad for US businesses, and bad for the environment. The only winner is China.
• croisillon 1y ago
  i get what you're saying, and i'd probably quickly hate it too, but somehow industrial bakeries seem to still work this way
• kranke155 1y ago
  Let’s do the easy thing, even if it is a geopolitical disaster for the West?