"Tom Gardner" wrote:

I went from a high of 80 employees twenty years ago to 15 today and doubled
sales. Motivated by a parasitic union, our thrust into automation in addition
to outsourcing to non-union companies has eliminated these union jobs. The last
machine we built will eliminated another union job and the next will eliminate
two more. The union has priced themselves right out of the job market! I wish
I could eliminate a union job every 23 minutes! Hurray for unions!!!

My first serious encounter with automation was when an engineer bought a
used GMF (GM Fanuc) robot to perform a task with out realizing that actually
getting it to do the task was outside his skill set. Being a former radar
tech and a computer geek (pre-msdos), getting it to work was interesting but
not terribly challenging.

That marriage of General Motors and Fanuc was one of GM's investments
designed to get many high priced bodies out of their factories.

It is a fact of life that a workers wage + benefits x number of shifts x pay
back period is the budget for eliminating that job.

Which is why you always want to upgrade your skills.


Wes