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In a World of Robots, Carmakers Persist in Hiring More Humans (bloomberg.com)
It looks like car-industry employees who are concerned about robots taking their jobs don't need to worry -- for now, at least. Of the 13 publicly traded automakers with at least 100,000 workers at the end of their most-recent fiscal year, 11 had more staff compared with year-end 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Combined, they had 3.1 million employees, or 11 percent more than four years earlier, the data show. From the report: Carmakers in China and other emerging markets, where growth is strongest, favor human labor because it requires less upfront investment, said Steve Man, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Hong Kong. In developed markets, tasks that can be handled by robots were automated years ago and automakers are now boosting hiring in research and development as the industry evolves. "There's been a lot of growth in emerging markets, especially China, so that's one reason automakers are adding staff," Man said. "More staff is being added on the R&D side, with the push for autonomous, electric, connected vehicles." A trio of Chinese automakers, SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motor Group and BYD -- in which Warren Buffett is a major investor -- increased staff by at least 24 percent. Volkswagen accounted for more than one in five jobs among the group of 13, and increased its employee count by 12 percent in the period. Things, however, look differently at General Motors, which shrank its payroll 18 percent to 180,000, and Nissan Motor, which contracted by 2.8 percent to 139,000 workers, the report added.
It's below minimum wage for many jobs. It's about $125 a week a month for manufacturing jobs.
Why are the chinese hiring humans? They are still cheaper than robots.
Plus chinese workers are often injured on the job (often permanently) because their safety standards for working with chemicals is still worse. In part, because life is still worth less in china. In the U.S. republicans appear to value human lives at about 1.2 million (based on the regulations they pass). democrats and the courts appear to value human life at about $8 million (based on the regulations and laws they pass and court judgements.)
I think the first is too low (it used to be 2 million) and the second is too high. It used to be about 2 million-- I expected it to be about 3-4 million when I researched this post.
In china, it looks to be about $5,000 to $10,000 currently tho it is more expensive if the person lives but is injured/crippled.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
On Autoline After Hours a robot-programming gentleman said "Using robots to build cars is difficult. We nickname them Blind, Dumb, One-Armed Bobs because they can't see what they are doing. They have no intelligence. And they only have one arm so the tasks have to be extremely simple."
He then went on to explain there are many situations where the human is the better worker.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
When Toyota discontinued the Scion line, they carried over many of the models, but with Toyota badging. I just rented a Toyota iA which two years ago was called the Scion iA.
Similarly some of the Saturn cars were simply rebadged as "Buick" and continued onward (same production lines).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The demise of Saturn was a little more complicated than that... It grew from the panic that GM went into when it realized that it could not figure out how to achieve the quality that Toyota was able to muster on a regular basis. It might surprise people today, but in the 80s Toyota was a willing partner to GM. They tried to teach GM everything they knew about building cars. GM sent engineers and workers to Japan and Toyota was very open with their factories. GM and Toyota renovated one of GM's worst plants and started jointly producing cars (now that factory builds Teslas!). Toyota acolytes tried to implement Toyota procedures in other GM plants, only to fail for a variety of reasons. GM hit the panic button and decided to start fresh. New plants, non-union workforce in the south, fresh supply chain, etc. Why did it "fail"? I'm not sure it did. GM slowly improved their quality at all their factories, the workforce at Saturn unionized, small cars fell completely out of favor, unique (and risky) features like plastic bodies went away, and in general Saturn and the rest of GM just sort of moved towards similarity. In the end it probably did what it needed to - moved the company to improve labor relations, improve supplier quality, and even altered the corporate culture a bit.
That was long winded - my point is that automation was just one of many factors. They made all sorts of experimental and risky decisions (spaceframe, plastic bodies, all-new lost-foam aluminium engines, no-haggle sales, etc.), and ultimately moved to bog-standard GM platforms, significantly diminishing any distinction they had.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.