This makes sense until you compare he cost of automation to the cost of unskilled labor. No company or customer will be paying 3x more for human hands to assemble something. Robots will be replacing most of these jobs and will continue to grow. It's sad but trying to create jobs just to keep workers busy and not poor sounds a lot like a form of welfare to me. That's fine too so long as we call it what it is and stop pretending America will grow in manufacturing jobs for people.
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Pegatron Ready to Build iPhones in the U.S. If Apple 'Is Willing to Absorb the Costs'
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I know a lot of you who aren't in metal fab might think it's a crock of poo that the US is lacking in skilled workers in the field of manufacturing, but it's absolutely true. As someone who owns and operates a sheet metal fab business, it's not always so easy to find workers with the skills we need. Craftsmen are a dying breed in the United States. It has nothing to do with wages, but a lack of interest and a lack of importance in the education system. Vocational skills are not taught in schools like they used to be.
So while yes, I'm sure many Americans would "love to have the job." But do they have the skills? I would love to have a custom tool and die maker in-house. We used to have one. Operated manual milling machines/lathes and custom built many of our tool/die by hand. Finding someone to replace him has been beyond difficult.
So while yes, I'm sure many Americans would "love to have the job." But do they have the skills? I would love to have a custom tool and die maker in-house. We used to have one. Operated manual milling machines/lathes and custom built many of our tool/die by hand. Finding someone to replace him has been beyond difficult.
It depends on how you define "plenty". <500 in any given city. Is that "plenty", yes, in some sense, but not to the manufacturer standards.
Tim probably laughed his you know what off when that was suggested. Apple makes sure its customers and in some cases, suppliers, "absorb" anything.
You've hit on one of the major challenges - skilled labor. Manufacturing is often no longer the "take a high school graduate or even dropout and show them what to do and put them on the floor;" it has shifted to jobs that require real skills that take time to learn. A precision machinist needs to be able to do more than flip a switch, it takes skill to read a blueprint, setup and run a machine so you don't wind up with an expensive piece of scrap.
I agree with you on the lack of vocational training, it's as if skilled labor has become some sort of lesser vocation because you don't need a 4 year degree; yet many of those jobs pay very well and require a good bit of education. I recently heard a piece on the radio about carpet mills having hiring problems because the manufacturing has gone from labor intensive to much more automated systems and they can't find people with the technical skills to run the machinery.
That is a tide that turned for my generation and the one a bit older than mine, at least in the D.C. area. It was kind of drilled into us around the time I was in high school with the pop culture of the time that "greed is good" and as silly as it sounds, I knew a lot of kids, most of them male, that got caught up in that and a ridiculous number of them wanted to be Alex P. Keaton. I went along with it to appease my family, but I think I was a hippy trapped in the body of a business student. I should have gotten my own bathroom for that!
Man it was weird to go to school with teenagers who WANTED to wear full business attire to class. Ack, the 80's. Kids who had an interest in vocational tech were getting really looked down on. Elite establishment values were taking hold and pushing the idea that the skilled trades were non cerebral and would lead to a beer gut and dirty fingernails, when in fact we recognize now, almost too late, that they require a vast amount of intelligence, but of a kind not adequately recognized by the power brokers. Teachers and parents and forces of the era pushed college prep on everyone, regardless of inclination or affinity for it.
But when I got out into the real world, I saw that there are in fact so many office jobs for which it might be actually be a detriment to have too much intelligence and I started to believe that psychopathy might be a prerequisite to some cushier jobs.
Lord help you if you also have imagination and initiative. Bureaucracy will kill that in no time. I am not saying a factory job is Nirvana. But it might be a better match for someone who would otherwise have their soul sucked out in an office job. Options are great.
let's not dismiss it out of hand without thinking about it - let's say, we (US) can get a guaranteed of 20k quality full time workers+automated lines (we know it won't be 500K workers like they have now) - I think there is deal to be made here if a) it becomes a necessity to make iPhones here and b) this would be a 1 time cost
There is so much in your post that is 100% spot on. And while I did not grow up in the USA, my experience and that of my peers were definitely similar to what you have just described…That is a tide that turned for my generation and the one a bit older than mine, at least in the D.C. area. It was kind of drilled into us around the time I was in high school with the pop culture of the time that "greed is good" and as silly as it sounds, I knew a lot of kids, most of them male, that got caught up in that and a ridiculous number of them wanted to be Alex P. Keaton. I went along with it to appease my family, but I think I was a hippy trapped in the body of a business student. I should have gotten my own bathroom for that!
Kids who had an interest in vocational tech were getting really looked down on. Elite establishment values were taking hold and pushing the idea that the skilled trades were non cerebral and would lead to a beer gut and dirty fingernails, when in fact we recognize now, almost too late, that they require a vast amount of intelligence, but of a kind not adequately recognized by the power brokers. Teachers and parents and forces of the era pushed college prep on everyone, regardless of inclination or affinity for it.
But when I got out into the real world, I saw that there are in fact so many office jobs for which it might be actually be a detriment to have too much intelligence and I started to believe that psychopathy might be a prerequisite to some cushier jobs.
I am not saying a factory job is Nirvana. But it might be a better match for someone who would otherwise have their soul sucked out in an office job. Options are great.
Oh definitely.I started to believe that psychopathy might be a prerequisite to some cushier jobs.
This. I used to do management consulting and for many projects we needed people who had SQL skills. I would have loved to hire US workers, but there just wasn't anyone interested in these programming jobs. So, we had to fight to get more H1B visas to bring in Indian workers. It had nothing to do with what we could pay them, and everything to do with finding someone capable of doing the work.
But that doesn't get people riled up like saying "companies are giving skilled jobs in America to Indians"
Can't we just build stuff where they make most sense to be made?
[doublepost=1489607217][/doublepost]Where the hell is the USA going find a quarter million people to operate one giant plant?
[doublepost=1489607326][/doublepost]Also it'll have to unionized, which means we will get our iPhones for 2x as much and it'll take 2 years to ramp production of a new iPhone release.
[doublepost=1489607217][/doublepost]Where the hell is the USA going find a quarter million people to operate one giant plant?
[doublepost=1489607326][/doublepost]Also it'll have to unionized, which means we will get our iPhones for 2x as much and it'll take 2 years to ramp production of a new iPhone release.
There's really no such thing as pricing yourself out of an industry as an individual worker. Necessary items like food and shelter have inflated quite a lot, and much of this comes from other industries. Even with well managed finances, the minimum amount that a worker would need to make is quite a bit higher than it would have been 30 or 40 years ago.
I use the word need quite literally, given vagrancy laws, an expectation that you pay for food with dollars, and required hygiene standards in any place of employment.
Rice Cakes and Proper suicide tools are payment enough eh? You would be surprised what can be made here, if manufacturers want it bad enough.
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Never heard of a right to work state?
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No one bothers with apprenticeships? Train your people.
How much do people really think the cost of labor accounts for in iPhone production?
Take out the margins, the cost of warranty and support, the R&D, the cost of parts, marketing, packaging, shipping, returns, defects... the cost to assemble it is a very small part.
How many man hours to assemble it? Assuming the parts are delivered to the station sorted (by machines), maybe 20 minutes? Even at $30 an hour with benefits that's $20. And I'm guessing when done with more automation and an assembly fashion the time is reduced to 10 minutes or $10 a phone.
What these companies really will have a problem with is just in time parts supply. They have moved that entire capability from the USA to other places. It used to be that the chips and boards and screens were all fabbed in the USA, but now it's all over there for most things. So moving assembly back here would require more inventory of parts and more wasted parts if a change is required making the current batch of parts worthless.
Take out the margins, the cost of warranty and support, the R&D, the cost of parts, marketing, packaging, shipping, returns, defects... the cost to assemble it is a very small part.
How many man hours to assemble it? Assuming the parts are delivered to the station sorted (by machines), maybe 20 minutes? Even at $30 an hour with benefits that's $20. And I'm guessing when done with more automation and an assembly fashion the time is reduced to 10 minutes or $10 a phone.
What these companies really will have a problem with is just in time parts supply. They have moved that entire capability from the USA to other places. It used to be that the chips and boards and screens were all fabbed in the USA, but now it's all over there for most things. So moving assembly back here would require more inventory of parts and more wasted parts if a change is required making the current batch of parts worthless.
That's me. 6 years of computer repairs was fun work. 20+ years of office work made me one of the walking dead.
I'm a hands-on, hand in the dirt kind of guy. If not for the constant the house repair a home owner deals with, I would have gone crazy long ago. Never in my youth did I consider fixing a leaky faucet fun. But every weekend, I look forward to fixing things at home and my rental property. Last weekend, I spent 3 hours tracking down an electrical short. If I could do it all over, I would have been a handyman or carpenter. I love woodworking, although my skills are severely lacking.
Modern companies: we will let crucial jobs go unfilled for months rather than train otherwise qualified people in the specific skill they lack.
It's nuts. "Sure you know 18 programming languages/platforms, but how do we know that you will be able to learn a very similar 19th if we hire you?"
You are not willing to pay more money to bring manufacturing back to the US and make America great again?
The don't want the old factory drones from years gone by, they will need highly skilled engineers to maintain the robots and production line equipment, design engineers who can modify that production line for next years model.
The idiot who's job was to clip widget A onto widget B is unemployable in this new factory, and these skilled workers are already being employed in the automative, aircraft, space, electronics industries.
Having a modern factory does not automatically increase the skill of the local workers, those rust belt jobs are NEVER coming back.
It's a perpetual cost.
- An investigation into labor practices at Chinese factories run by Foxconn and Pegatron, which make Apple products, has found that laborers work over 60 hours a week and make less than two dollars an hour
- With overtime accounted for, the factory's workers earn about $753 in monthly wages.
I am unwilling, as a tax payer, an Apple stockholder or a customer, to pull money out of my pockets to move manufacturing of Apple products into the US.
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They can come back. But everyone should be ready for federal minimum wage levels to be adjusted - to something like $3/hr.
I have no problems with that - as a consumer, stockholder or as a tax payer.
No, Americans have used capitalism in order to get the lowest price they can,this now includes labour which can be found elsewhere cheaper. And the rest of the world is also not willing to pay extra either.
However "USA first" translates to "USA last" for the 96% of humanity who are not in the USA.
Thats over $2 Trillion worth of US exports being put at risk. Any tariffs or other restrictions put on items imported into the USA will be met with the same tariffs and restrictions on exports. Can you see Boeing being happy about a 30% tax on their planes and not on Airbus ? Apple would be unhappy to see 30% added to their products in other countries while Samsung, HTC, etc etc dont have to pay it.
So, at best products for the US market may get made in the USA, however products for the rest of the world will still be made elsewhere, cheaper, faster, better. US customers will soon get brassed off paying MORE (when they can get them from Canada and Mexico cheaper) and lagging by months the rest of the world.
Hell just look at the MacPro and how that has languished , I would not be surprised if this is because retooling for a new model is not cost effective given the higher price of manufacture in the USA and the low sales volumes.
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And the pollution that comes with those jobs. Also the lowering of life expectancy, lowering of healthcare, lowering of education, etc etc etc that comes with that too.
Not clear how any of that affects me or my own. For as long as it doesn't, why not?
How do you think people who didn't have the skills got the skills? Pay more or train people on the job.
Eh... not if it only creates a couple dozen jobs in a robotic Apple factory.
There needs to be 100,000 jobs created to fix infrastructure in this country. Bridge repair, road paving, grading and erosion control, etc.
Apple isn't gonna do that!
Even skilled workers are being replaced by technology. The machinist layout skills being replaced with CAD operated laser precision cutting machines. Give the system a design and material and it will figure out the best layout, most efficient way to cut, and accomplish the task in less time with more precision, then the skilled worker. Not a good jobs trend.
Foxconn wants too fully automate iPhone production in the near future, eliminating over 300k Chinese jobs. Speaks volumes as to what the manufactures real visions are. Not jobs for sure!
Foxconn wants too fully automate iPhone production in the near future, eliminating over 300k Chinese jobs. Speaks volumes as to what the manufactures real visions are. Not jobs for sure!
Ahh..the qualities of being American.... its all OK so long as I am not impacted.
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So how is Trump going to do this ? Lowering taxes reduces income.
Skilled workers takes YEARS to train, by the time someone starts and completes an apprenticeship Trump will be out of office. And even once they have completed their formal training there are more years to go before they become truly competent.
For a start you need enough people to offer the training, there is a shortage of them too.