Comment by thaack

Comment by thaack 5 hours ago

39 replies

> 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.

WarOnPrivacy 4 hours 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.

  • i80and 4 hours ago

    > job portals auto-trash applications w/o a job history (1st time job seekers).

    It rather feels lately like civilization is the project of putting up as many catch-22's as we can.

  • thaack 4 hours 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 4 hours 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 3 hours ago

        Also they’ll do local job fairs on site, at local community colleges. You’d be surprised how many people still listen to FM in their car so ads go up there too locally.

      • phillyboy82 3 hours ago

        Companies go to ManPower or other job staffing agencies when they need X number of low level employees or temps

        • WarOnPrivacy 18 minutes 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.

pseudocomposer 4 hours 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 3 hours 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.

    • [removed] an hour ago
      [deleted]
    • hitarpetar 2 hours ago

      finally a positive framing on social media addiction

keiferski 4 hours 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.

  • rgblambda 4 hours ago

    From my limited experience working in a factory environment, listening to music can be a real workplace safety issue if it reduces your ability to hear forklifts or coworkers shouting warnings.

    • lesuorac 2 hours ago

      Do you hire deaf people?

      I always found the laws prohibiting drivers from wearing earplugs (some exemptions for motorcycles) and the like pretty funny.

  • scns 4 hours ago

    Listening to music should work, no pun intended. Watching YouTube though?

    • keiferski 4 hours 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.

    • ASalazarMX an hour ago

      Having worked at a very simple factory job that involved hot-pressing plastic-aluminium film into shapes, yeah, that would end badly. It's unskilled job, that doesn't mean it's mindless.

      If you look away from your job you might lose a finger,.. or *gasp* even worse, stop production!

    • WarOnPrivacy 4 hours 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).

  • bluGill 4 hours ago

    Music might be allowed - though the factory is often loud enough that it isn't really practical. You still need to be able to hear the safety signals though.

    YouTube cannot be allowed - you need to be ready to work when the line moves the next part to you. There are also safety concerns with watching youtube instead of the various hazards which are always there.

kelipso 5 hours 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.

honkostani 4 hours 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.

candiddevmike 5 hours 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 5 hours 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.

    • lenkite 2 hours 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 44 minutes 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.

    • Pulcinella 3 hours 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 an hour 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.

    • snozolli 4 hours ago

      there are jobs people just won’t keep doing no matter the pay

      I do not believe this common claim.

      • stouset an hour 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.

      • carlosjobim 4 hours 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.

gaindustries 5 hours 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 4 hours ago

    It's all full time 4x10 work with the employer covering 100% of health insurance premiums.

    • gaindustries 4 hours ago

      There's somethhing you're not telling us or not being honest about.

      • flybrand an hour 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.

carlosjobim 4 hours ago

If people don't want to work for you, then you have to pay better and/or improve working conditions. There is nothing more to it. There has never in the history of the world been anything else to it.

There's nothing wrong with "western workers". There's something wrong with your family.

  • ASalazarMX 40 minutes 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.

  • foobarian 3 hours ago

    > There's nothing wrong with "western workers"

    Yeah nothing other than not being willing to work 9/9/6 for $2/day

  • jltsiren 4 hours 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 an hour 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.