L1T News: Engagement

1st time poster LT lurker:
Hombre, over 50yo, home built PC since '83

Just something that pops up in my head when the OH fab(s) topic is addressed. Has anyone seen American Factory on Netflix? Its a docu re a Chinese company taking over a shuttered GM plant in OH to make glass (industrial panes). There is so much interesting dichotomy of perspective illustrated between a Chinese manufacture firm and their management of American workers. The Chinese continuously look down on the labor force’s work ethics (they want weekends and time off and overtime and lunches) and then the workers battle to unionize because they arent drones and “the company” is not the center of existence as Chinese management comes to take for granted. It just appears as an oil and water solution.

Just the fact a fab is/will be in OH, there is no guarantee it will be successful once its built. IBM isnt Chinese obviously but Id suspect a fab in the US will have these same labor issues to iron out before the chips are rollin out of the fryer -as I understand how chips are made.

Thanks for the time. Love your work.

Z

Sidenote:
I bought a new 2060 off the shelf yesterday.
Walked in (MC) to get a drive, saw stock paid and walked out. Like the old daze!
What a country!

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Interesting point. I don’t think it will be as bad as that but there will definitely be som culture clash. I’d imagine that is part of the reason that fabs have stayed away from American among other reasons.

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you have seen how amazon operates… its not just the Chinese mate.
every corporation will try to squeeze more out of its workers to increase profits for share holders.
they cant not, as there aim is profit above all.
if that means docking a break till the state gov get involved and issue a fine that will cost less than the stolen hours of work, they will consider it a win and do it.

a 10% cull regardless.
every year amazon fires 10% of its workforce. this keeps there wage bill low comparatively as they wont have any original staff after 10 years.
no having to pay mike 40k a year to do the same job he’s been doing for 20 years when gavin cost half as much and works twice as hard.

other companies employ child labour in conditions we wouldnt let adults work in…
while capitalism has been hijacked by corporations with the help of some shills in governments.

so while its bad in china that the government has its finger in every pie.
its no better in the west as a lot of corporate interests have there fingers in our pie and our governments ears.
and they seem to want the same as the chinese as far as controlling the populations expectations and wants.

yeah its not just china.

:frowning:

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Another side topic is the automation.
Even while the plant [glass] was being fit for production, automation technology progressed to an extent that jobs in the original plan on the line were automated beter done by robotics.

The contracting trades building the place [OH Fab] will be the jobs and the plant will have relatively less local work force down the line I think. Robbie Robot leaves Gavin in the dust and skips lunches.

Automation is not all bad but power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Case in point. I use do implement automation in Long Term Care pharmacies with BPM/BPMn. The goal was to allow all of the boiler plate stuff to be handled by computers while the workers worked on more complex things. The computers would notify someone when something needed human eyes. This allow some pharmacies to grow their business by hiring less data entry types and hire more compounding techs. Even better was when they would repurpose some of those data entry types to another part of the business making more money.

Eventually the bigger, chain pharmacies started to see what we were doing with the smaller mom and pop shops and basically used our products and services to replace people and run lean. I eventually got out of that business because it was demoralizing to go in there knowing that people would be laid off after implementing the site or that some one was just trying to boost their numbers to sell of to a bigger pharmacy, and then those people would be let go anyway. The work became less about the mission and the people they helped and more of how do I squeeze the most profit out of this sector and look attractive to the shareholders.

No matter what anyone tells you, businesses, even though legally People in the USA, exist first and foremost to make profit. Even your “not for profit” and your “non-profit” companies exist to make money first and foremost.

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fascinating-spock

Raises glass