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> 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 d

• candiddevmike 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
      there are jobs people just won’t keep doing no matter the pay I do not believe this common claim.
      • carlosjobim 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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.
          • chongli 11mo ago
            You used to be able to buy a nice house in the suburbs with car in the garage and a white picket fence, support a stay-at-home wife with three kids, put them all through college, and take annual vacations to Disneyland or the Caribbean, and cover the healthcare needs of the whole family, all on the salary of a high school educated factory worker. Now all that sounds impossible. You’d have to pay factory workers well into six figures for a lifestyle like that. What happened? Cost disease [1]. All of the big ticket things in that lifestyle (except for the car) skyrocketed in price relative to inflation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
            • nradov 11mo ago
              That was never the reality for most factory workers. Usually the car was cramped with a single bathroom, the wife picked up some part-time work, most vacations were road trips to go camping, and not all the kids went to college. Inflation and growing income inequality are legitimate problems but let's not paint an unrealistic picture of "the good old days".
    • Pulcinella 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
          Yes that is my point. What business owners consider "significant" and what sane people consider significant are often quite different.
          • stouset 11mo ago
            I apologize, I misread this and thought you were suggesting that $0.05 was significant.
        • Spooky23 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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.
• gaindustries 11mo 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 11mo ago
    It's all full time 4x10 work with the employer covering 100% of health insurance premiums.
    • gaindustries 11mo ago
      There's somethhing you're not telling us or not being honest about.
      • flybrand 11mo 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 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      • culll_kuprey 11mo ago
        It’s probably the hours. A lower middle class income is not worth losing my every waking hour over.
  • jordanb 11mo 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.
• kelipso 11mo 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 11mo ago
    Marysville
• honkostani 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
        Companies go to ManPower or other job staffing agencies when they need X number of low level employees or temps
        • WarOnPrivacy 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    Listening to music should work, no pun intended. Watching YouTube though?
    • keiferski 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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).
      • 11mo ago
• pseudocomposer 11mo 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 11mo 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.
    • hitarpetar 11mo ago
      finally a positive framing on social media addiction
      • antonvs 11mo ago
        “Get addicted to this phone, son, or you’ll end up working in a factory!”
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • denkmoon 11mo ago
      Then long hours of repetitive labor are a skill which needs to be attracted for.
    • dangus 11mo ago
• carlosjobim 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • jltsiren 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
          What is your alternative, except slavery?
  • foobarian 11mo ago
    > There's nothing wrong with "western workers" Yeah nothing other than not being willing to work 9/9/6 for $2/day
  • ASalazarMX 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    “MBA shrinkflated garbage” I’m definitely going to find a way to slip this into a conversation.
• profsummergig 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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)?