If the West is serious about friendshoring, many more will need to carry out manual work — albeit aided by robots. And yes, that means university graduates.
Manufacturing isn’t coming back to the US. No matter how much the US Government frets about wartime capacity, the one percent LOVES the idea of the middle class disappearing and those without an education suffering. They won’t allow the middle class to come back.
If it’s cheaper to build locally with automation and minimal US based labor then it is to build overseas and ship then they will bring manufacturing back.
There’s definitely work to be done so that production of goods becomes once again an esteemed endeavour. It’s problematic that factory work is as undesirable as locally made things are desirable. It’s a cultural thing now and it’s silly.
We need to put more effort on automating factory jobs, but having them be supervised by techs 24 hours. It makes for nice monitoring and maintenance jobs, as long as they are paid according to the value their machine brings.
It’s not inherently undesirable, but often enough extremely unattractive.
Low pay, bad working condition, no sense of accomplishment, hardly any upwards mobility. Why would I do that, if I have better options?
Here in Germany, people used to take pride (and sometimes still do) in working for VW or Daimler, they had a sense of belonging, pay was good and there was at least a feeling that your company took care of you. That is pretty much gone.
I know a lot of people that work in union manufacturing jobs that have a real sense of pride and feeling of accomplishment about it. Gotta say, having time off, extra money, and voice in how the company treats you probably goes a long way, because some of those same people hated their non-unions jobs before.
Absolutely. But for some reason, capitalism hates if workers are happy, so you have to press them harder and harder.
These jobs you’re describing are becoming rarer, and not only in manufacturing. I’m a software developer office drone and I’m financially very well off and have pretty good working conditions, but my work is mostly meaningless, if I’m honest. Not that the product I’m building is useless, far from it, but there’s so much that removes me from actually feeling valuable, that I might as well just dig a hole and fill it up again.
Alienation real for sure, I have to fight that my job all the time. One for me is all of pencil pushing signature block owners I have to talk to. Like I hate to say it, but theres gotta be a better use of both our time then them being road blocks on peoples paths to production.
Low pay, bad working condition, no sense of accomplishment, hardly any upwards mobility. Why would I do that, if I have better options?
I kind of agree with the lack of career options for factory workers, but in many factory jobs there are several upsides.
For example many places allow you to listen to music/podcasts all day, while you are working. The work itself is often not mentally taxing and it doesn’t follow you home when you leave. Also there is no reason not to feel pride in being able to complete relatively complex tasks with care and speed.
Because we could produce European middle-class living standards for everyone with 70% unemployment, and that’s with the automation potential of 10-15 years ago. Think nice apartment, washing machine, dishwasher, gaming PC, healthy food, education, healthcare, probably no car but proper public transit, all included in UBI.
The reason it’s not happening is because there’s very little investment in it, not because the ROI wouldn’t be high but because it’s very long-term. In the short to mid-term it’s way cheaper to outsource jobs to a low-wage country somewhere.
And, of course, tech only became better. We now e.g. have the tech to do automatic QC, proper visual inspection no worse than the human kind, allowing a system to say “yep that’s chatter marks let’s sort that piece out, mill #32, you need new tooling, shut down until maintenance drone #21 fetched you a new endmill from storage”. In other words automated factories can now self-diagnose and self-maintain to a significant degree, at least to an “everyday problems” one.
I’d say even if the overall efficiency ends up lower with automation (not that you’re saying that or that it’s true) I’d say it’s still the right course.
If we in developed countries are saying that working in a factory is degrading and inhumane work, then it’s not much of a solution to offload it to a country with people desperate enough to do it anyway. It doesn’t solve the problem if we get our own people to do it either, by incentive or otherwise.
The aim should be that no one is stuck doing degrading, unfulfilling work. If automation fails to be as efficient than human labour, be it in the short term or long term, and whether that be in terms of profit or resources, it’s still worth it to minimise the number of people stuck in unfulfilling wage slavery.
Again, to emphasise the point, even if human hands are cheaper than automation for the next hundred years, we should still drive to automation.
That being said, this all assumes we get our shit together as a society to get UBI and other ways for people to live meaningful lives without the factory work!
Factory jobs aren’t inherently unfulfilling or degrading. There are bad jobs and good ones like any other field. Generally, factory jobs actually pay pretty well for the amount of education required.
Good point! I did mean to acknowledge this. I don’t mean to say factory work is necessarily unfulfilling by nature. We should be looking to automate all unfulfilling jobs away where we can, factory or otherwise.
I’d guess factory work is often more fulfilling than the range of white collar bullshit jobs (“B” ark type stuff 😜) where there’s no sense of really doing anything of value. I suspect though a lot of the unfulfilling white collar bullshit work does require automation replace, but we can just stop making people do pretend work just to be able to live! (I say this confident of my ticket on the “B” ark myself!)
I would say however, how well they’re paid isn’t the whole picture thought. If there are nasty jobs that need doing, we should at least make sure they pay well, but better that all have fulfilling and well paid jobs, rather than sacrificial one for the other. Utopian/idealistic I know, but if I’m going to be dreaming might as well dream big! 😁
I don’t know my Marx, but doesn’t he have a thing about factory work being by it’s nature dehumanising due to its focus on being just one tiny part of making something, rather than the craftsman it replaced. I think there’s something to be said for that, and where we can accepting that while a production line may be strictly more efficient than craftsman, that efficiency isn’t everything all the time. (Again using factory analogy here but the same comparison can be made of various “white collar” jobs too).
Oh I should also say, that I can imagine the full automation of some jobs being bad for similar reasons, even if it might seem like a win. If there is joy to be found in, for example, the work of a making furniture by hand, then I can see it being a negative to fully automate that job away, even if we can ensure every furniture maker isn’t affected financially by the loss of the jobs. There’s something of value in the feeling of performing ones craft in the equitable service of someone else, and if we have machines making the furniture the same, then we risk robbing people of that.
No simple answers I guess! Balance in everything, everything in balance and all that.
Assuming both means more jobs at the factory which suggests more labor involvements and automation in the process of manufacturing, I would advocate against the former until we have universal healthcare and stronger safety standards and laws.
So after 8 decades of psychological warfare to get manufacturing and fabrication moved to nations that used to have lucrative slavery, we’ve decided (because of a dry, boring “national security” issue) to bring back these factories…
so… $2 an hour? Honestly, we’d rather make it $2 a day, but… yeah… maybe we can make it $2 a day, if payment of rent is included into the salery? We can’t trust China, but we sort of want to recreate the conditions.
I’m down. I have a college degree, but have never had a job that required it. My skills fit the bill. But I still have the college bill to pay! I have often thought about moving to a big city and trying my hand at a factory job but there aren’t that many of them. Until soon?
Last year I quit cooking after nearly 15 years and got a job at a semiconductor factory. I was making more money on day one and the work is soooo much better. Went from having no breaks to 1.8 hours of break time. No vacation to 5 weeks PTO. I never have to stay past my scheduled time out.
I think that more shows how crap it is to work in catering. Especially when chefs in popular Michellin star reseraunts make the same, sometimes less to work in such reseraunts.
I am a truck driver. I make $75,000 per year. Required a license that cost me 2 years of my life or $10,000 (my choice) for school (12 weeks) and roughly $1000 in admin fees to my State to aquire.
My wife is a mental health therapist. She makes roughly $55,000. To do her current job required a Master’s degree($80,000 +6 years), and 2 separate licenses with an unknown (to me) cost but required a total of 5 years on the job to acquire. Before she got that second license, she made more money working at McDonalds. And she still has continued education requirements costing upwards of $800 per course.
She loves her job (usually) and I love that she loves it, but if you’re looking for money, THE TRADES PAY! And usually a heck of a lot earlier and better than jobs that require a college degree.
It really comes down to the degree. Someone could spend significantly less to get an IT related degree and start out making more than what your wife currently makes with, probably, a much better work life balance. That person could easily double that in a few years.
Honestly, we simply do not value health care and teachers as much as we should.
Just FYI, a “factoid” is by definition not a fact but something that somebody believes to be a fact because it was printed. That definition is clearly changing over time as the English-speaking population as a whole forgets this, but it’s not there yet.
I might consider working in a factory if they payed me like 150,000 a year and offered on the job training and promotions and pay raises yearly that beat inflation.
I don’t make anywhere close to 150,000, but I’m not willing to drive to a factory, work in a place that may be bad for my health, and give up the experience I’m gaining each day in my current field of work.
Not worth it, it’s more than I’m earning now, but then you have to figure in the commute and the hour lunch break that I have to be there for but not get paid for.
Factory jobs do pay living wages. I worked at a Fortune 500 factory in rural AL and the entry level jobs (running the street sweeper inside the factory) started at $28/hr. Operators that took OT would make over $100k/yr. The operators that worked there 20+ years made more money than I did as an engineer.
I’ve worked in factories in California, Ohio, Alabama, and my peers have worked all over (different companies). Factory jobs pay very decent and often have a hard time finding employees.
Thanks for the injection of reason. I work as an engineer in a manufacturing plant. We’re short-staffed with a high turnover. However that’s because of the hours, not the pay. This thread is filled with people who think factory workers are manual-labor oppressed people with no upward mobility. It’s borderline classist. Factory jobs aren’t inherently bad or unhealthy.
Exactly. It’s the hours that suck, depending on shift. Do you forever want to live life in 3rd shift? If you have kids, you’ll rarely see them… You’ll be asleep when they’re awake and at work when they are.
Just to be clear, the hours suck because there’s a labor shortage, causing us to be short staffed, causing us to put in extra hours to make shipments in time. This is a relatively recent thing. It’s also the number one priority of the plant right now to reduce overtime. The plant is supposed to run for 8 hour shifts 5 days a week.
Also, there are plenty of people who prefer 3rd shift. It has higher pay. You’re asleep while spouses and kids are at work/school. you’re awake when they’re home and working while they sleep.
I think most people still visualize these roles as we see them on TV where its a person in all white scrubs screwing in 4 things before passing it down the line for 12 hours per day.
The factories that can actually be profitable in North America need massive automation in order to function and most of the jobs are far more complex than we think. CNC operators, forklift operators, etc.
All of this article completely ignores why manufacturing left in the first place. By the 1970s Japan’s manufacturing quality revolution put financial pressures on American corporations to become more competitive. As more globalization occurred, the ability to economically compete with foreign economies became more prominent in management philosophy. Pair this with the invention that corporations exist to drive shareholder value, increasing shareholder value became the primary concern driving corporate strategies.
Companies who listen to shareholders and not markets become asset-light with high risk aversion. Few companies want to weather a storm not because the employees don’t want to work there, but because any slight can be perceived in the market as a weaken position. There has to be a fundamental disconnect from the companies and the investors. We cannot be a stable manufacturing economy if the primary driver is speculation.
With weak labor protections currently prevalent in the United States, there’s little possibility to buy the notion that employees and their product will be placed higher than speculative investors who are completely disinterested in the particulars themselves. So long as boards listen to financial gurus who prognosticate from their Excel tea leaves and market models, and less to middle management who just want the company to do well, there’s zero ways manufacturing will attract the numbers required for a complete return to domestic production. If we want the people to work, we must give the people the power to dictate that work. Anything less is sure fire means for a return to whence we came.
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Manufacturing isn’t coming back to the US. No matter how much the US Government frets about wartime capacity, the one percent LOVES the idea of the middle class disappearing and those without an education suffering. They won’t allow the middle class to come back.
It’ll come back, but with automation.
If it’s cheaper to build locally with automation and minimal US based labor then it is to build overseas and ship then they will bring manufacturing back.
There’s definitely work to be done so that production of goods becomes once again an esteemed endeavour. It’s problematic that factory work is as undesirable as locally made things are desirable. It’s a cultural thing now and it’s silly.
We need to put more effort on automating factory jobs, but having them be supervised by techs 24 hours. It makes for nice monitoring and maintenance jobs, as long as they are paid according to the value their machine brings.
It’s not inherently undesirable, but often enough extremely unattractive.
Low pay, bad working condition, no sense of accomplishment, hardly any upwards mobility. Why would I do that, if I have better options?
Here in Germany, people used to take pride (and sometimes still do) in working for VW or Daimler, they had a sense of belonging, pay was good and there was at least a feeling that your company took care of you. That is pretty much gone.
I know a lot of people that work in union manufacturing jobs that have a real sense of pride and feeling of accomplishment about it. Gotta say, having time off, extra money, and voice in how the company treats you probably goes a long way, because some of those same people hated their non-unions jobs before.
Absolutely. But for some reason, capitalism hates if workers are happy, so you have to press them harder and harder.
These jobs you’re describing are becoming rarer, and not only in manufacturing. I’m a software developer office drone and I’m financially very well off and have pretty good working conditions, but my work is mostly meaningless, if I’m honest. Not that the product I’m building is useless, far from it, but there’s so much that removes me from actually feeling valuable, that I might as well just dig a hole and fill it up again.
Alienation real for sure, I have to fight that my job all the time. One for me is all of pencil pushing signature block owners I have to talk to. Like I hate to say it, but theres gotta be a better use of both our time then them being road blocks on peoples paths to production.
I kind of agree with the lack of career options for factory workers, but in many factory jobs there are several upsides.
For example many places allow you to listen to music/podcasts all day, while you are working. The work itself is often not mentally taxing and it doesn’t follow you home when you leave. Also there is no reason not to feel pride in being able to complete relatively complex tasks with care and speed.
How about no and instead we focus on automation?
Why not both?
Because we could produce European middle-class living standards for everyone with 70% unemployment, and that’s with the automation potential of 10-15 years ago. Think nice apartment, washing machine, dishwasher, gaming PC, healthy food, education, healthcare, probably no car but proper public transit, all included in UBI.
The reason it’s not happening is because there’s very little investment in it, not because the ROI wouldn’t be high but because it’s very long-term. In the short to mid-term it’s way cheaper to outsource jobs to a low-wage country somewhere.
And, of course, tech only became better. We now e.g. have the tech to do automatic QC, proper visual inspection no worse than the human kind, allowing a system to say “yep that’s chatter marks let’s sort that piece out, mill #32, you need new tooling, shut down until maintenance drone #21 fetched you a new endmill from storage”. In other words automated factories can now self-diagnose and self-maintain to a significant degree, at least to an “everyday problems” one.
I’d say even if the overall efficiency ends up lower with automation (not that you’re saying that or that it’s true) I’d say it’s still the right course.
If we in developed countries are saying that working in a factory is degrading and inhumane work, then it’s not much of a solution to offload it to a country with people desperate enough to do it anyway. It doesn’t solve the problem if we get our own people to do it either, by incentive or otherwise.
The aim should be that no one is stuck doing degrading, unfulfilling work. If automation fails to be as efficient than human labour, be it in the short term or long term, and whether that be in terms of profit or resources, it’s still worth it to minimise the number of people stuck in unfulfilling wage slavery.
Again, to emphasise the point, even if human hands are cheaper than automation for the next hundred years, we should still drive to automation.
That being said, this all assumes we get our shit together as a society to get UBI and other ways for people to live meaningful lives without the factory work!
Factory jobs aren’t inherently unfulfilling or degrading. There are bad jobs and good ones like any other field. Generally, factory jobs actually pay pretty well for the amount of education required.
Good point! I did mean to acknowledge this. I don’t mean to say factory work is necessarily unfulfilling by nature. We should be looking to automate all unfulfilling jobs away where we can, factory or otherwise. I’d guess factory work is often more fulfilling than the range of white collar bullshit jobs (“B” ark type stuff 😜) where there’s no sense of really doing anything of value. I suspect though a lot of the unfulfilling white collar bullshit work does require automation replace, but we can just stop making people do pretend work just to be able to live! (I say this confident of my ticket on the “B” ark myself!)
I would say however, how well they’re paid isn’t the whole picture thought. If there are nasty jobs that need doing, we should at least make sure they pay well, but better that all have fulfilling and well paid jobs, rather than sacrificial one for the other. Utopian/idealistic I know, but if I’m going to be dreaming might as well dream big! 😁
I don’t know my Marx, but doesn’t he have a thing about factory work being by it’s nature dehumanising due to its focus on being just one tiny part of making something, rather than the craftsman it replaced. I think there’s something to be said for that, and where we can accepting that while a production line may be strictly more efficient than craftsman, that efficiency isn’t everything all the time. (Again using factory analogy here but the same comparison can be made of various “white collar” jobs too).
Oh I should also say, that I can imagine the full automation of some jobs being bad for similar reasons, even if it might seem like a win. If there is joy to be found in, for example, the work of a making furniture by hand, then I can see it being a negative to fully automate that job away, even if we can ensure every furniture maker isn’t affected financially by the loss of the jobs. There’s something of value in the feeling of performing ones craft in the equitable service of someone else, and if we have machines making the furniture the same, then we risk robbing people of that.
No simple answers I guess! Balance in everything, everything in balance and all that.
Assuming both means more jobs at the factory which suggests more labor involvements and automation in the process of manufacturing, I would advocate against the former until we have universal healthcare and stronger safety standards and laws.
So after 8 decades of psychological warfare to get manufacturing and fabrication moved to nations that used to have lucrative slavery, we’ve decided (because of a dry, boring “national security” issue) to bring back these factories…
so… $2 an hour? Honestly, we’d rather make it $2 a day, but… yeah… maybe we can make it $2 a day, if payment of rent is included into the salery? We can’t trust China, but we sort of want to recreate the conditions.
I’m down. I have a college degree, but have never had a job that required it. My skills fit the bill. But I still have the college bill to pay! I have often thought about moving to a big city and trying my hand at a factory job but there aren’t that many of them. Until soon?
Last year I quit cooking after nearly 15 years and got a job at a semiconductor factory. I was making more money on day one and the work is soooo much better. Went from having no breaks to 1.8 hours of break time. No vacation to 5 weeks PTO. I never have to stay past my scheduled time out.
I’ll never go back.
I think that more shows how crap it is to work in catering. Especially when chefs in popular Michellin star reseraunts make the same, sometimes less to work in such reseraunts.
Interesting relevant factoid.
I am a truck driver. I make $75,000 per year. Required a license that cost me 2 years of my life or $10,000 (my choice) for school (12 weeks) and roughly $1000 in admin fees to my State to aquire.
My wife is a mental health therapist. She makes roughly $55,000. To do her current job required a Master’s degree($80,000 +6 years), and 2 separate licenses with an unknown (to me) cost but required a total of 5 years on the job to acquire. Before she got that second license, she made more money working at McDonalds. And she still has continued education requirements costing upwards of $800 per course.
She loves her job (usually) and I love that she loves it, but if you’re looking for money, THE TRADES PAY! And usually a heck of a lot earlier and better than jobs that require a college degree.
Edit: Spolling is hard!
It really comes down to the degree. Someone could spend significantly less to get an IT related degree and start out making more than what your wife currently makes with, probably, a much better work life balance. That person could easily double that in a few years.
Honestly, we simply do not value health care and teachers as much as we should.
Just FYI, a “factoid” is by definition not a fact but something that somebody believes to be a fact because it was printed. That definition is clearly changing over time as the English-speaking population as a whole forgets this, but it’s not there yet.
I make decent money working freelance from home.
I might consider working in a factory if they payed me like 150,000 a year and offered on the job training and promotions and pay raises yearly that beat inflation.
I don’t make anywhere close to 150,000, but I’m not willing to drive to a factory, work in a place that may be bad for my health, and give up the experience I’m gaining each day in my current field of work.
Honestly, the jobs would probably fill at 75-100k/y
Not worth it, it’s more than I’m earning now, but then you have to figure in the commute and the hour lunch break that I have to be there for but not get paid for.
It’s a tough sell.
Then I guess corporations will just have to start paying Americans living wages, huh?
Factory jobs do pay living wages. I worked at a Fortune 500 factory in rural AL and the entry level jobs (running the street sweeper inside the factory) started at $28/hr. Operators that took OT would make over $100k/yr. The operators that worked there 20+ years made more money than I did as an engineer.
I’ve worked in factories in California, Ohio, Alabama, and my peers have worked all over (different companies). Factory jobs pay very decent and often have a hard time finding employees.
Thanks for the injection of reason. I work as an engineer in a manufacturing plant. We’re short-staffed with a high turnover. However that’s because of the hours, not the pay. This thread is filled with people who think factory workers are manual-labor oppressed people with no upward mobility. It’s borderline classist. Factory jobs aren’t inherently bad or unhealthy.
Exactly. It’s the hours that suck, depending on shift. Do you forever want to live life in 3rd shift? If you have kids, you’ll rarely see them… You’ll be asleep when they’re awake and at work when they are.
It’s just not ideal for most people.
Just to be clear, the hours suck because there’s a labor shortage, causing us to be short staffed, causing us to put in extra hours to make shipments in time. This is a relatively recent thing. It’s also the number one priority of the plant right now to reduce overtime. The plant is supposed to run for 8 hour shifts 5 days a week.
Also, there are plenty of people who prefer 3rd shift. It has higher pay. You’re asleep while spouses and kids are at work/school. you’re awake when they’re home and working while they sleep.
I think most people still visualize these roles as we see them on TV where its a person in all white scrubs screwing in 4 things before passing it down the line for 12 hours per day.
The factories that can actually be profitable in North America need massive automation in order to function and most of the jobs are far more complex than we think. CNC operators, forklift operators, etc.
Whoa whoa whoa - let’s not get ahead of ourselves; what is America if not the exploitation of the critical working class?
No thanks
All of this article completely ignores why manufacturing left in the first place. By the 1970s Japan’s manufacturing quality revolution put financial pressures on American corporations to become more competitive. As more globalization occurred, the ability to economically compete with foreign economies became more prominent in management philosophy. Pair this with the invention that corporations exist to drive shareholder value, increasing shareholder value became the primary concern driving corporate strategies.
Companies who listen to shareholders and not markets become asset-light with high risk aversion. Few companies want to weather a storm not because the employees don’t want to work there, but because any slight can be perceived in the market as a weaken position. There has to be a fundamental disconnect from the companies and the investors. We cannot be a stable manufacturing economy if the primary driver is speculation.
With weak labor protections currently prevalent in the United States, there’s little possibility to buy the notion that employees and their product will be placed higher than speculative investors who are completely disinterested in the particulars themselves. So long as boards listen to financial gurus who prognosticate from their Excel tea leaves and market models, and less to middle management who just want the company to do well, there’s zero ways manufacturing will attract the numbers required for a complete return to domestic production. If we want the people to work, we must give the people the power to dictate that work. Anything less is sure fire means for a return to whence we came.
Nice try
Oh so you mean she doesn’t work in a factory?
Good spot!
Okay but all of the proponents have to go first and stay at the job for at least 3 years.
Interdependence is a war preventative.
NOOO not THOSE jobs