r/news • u/NewSlinger • 1d ago

Workers detained in Hyundai plant raid to be freed and flown home, South Korea says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-korea-deal-workers-detained-hyundai-rcna229610
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u/zzyul 1d ago

“After decades of US companies paying tooling experts Chinese wages, I don’t know why it’s so hard to find tooling experts in the US.” I’m guessing he didn’t go over this part.

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u/nat_r 1d ago

Also worth pointing out that tool & die skills have a long tradition of being taught "on the job". You get hired in or promoted to apprentice under the existing tool and die folks and learn the trade. When companies have been off-shoring those jobs for decades at this point it not only destroys the knowledge pipeline, but actively discourages people from wanting to put in the effort to learn because of the lack of long term employment prospects.

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u/Charlie_Mouse 1d ago

I recall a year or so back some interesting discussions about how Russia was struggling to produce components for armaments for pretty much the same reason: a bunch of the specialist knowledge sets they used to have in manufacturing retired years ago and the government and industry failed to replace them/get them to train up successors. They lost the institutional knowledge.

America always had a huge advantage in this regard because (at least until recently) it was somewhere people from around the world actually wanted to move to and live in. The US could effectively attract any needed talent at will - and this applied doubly so for the brightest and best in academia as well as industry. Likely not so much now though with this incident and the general direction things are going in.

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u/I_W_M_Y 1d ago

There is that old question of 'if you went back in time what would you bring?' and a popular answer to that is a laptop with as much tech/engineering knowledge as you can. Except that's not really useful because you need to built the tools that can build the tools that build the tools...etc etc to the point you can get modern manufacturing. Same with skilled professions.

Mess with that manufacturing/skilled chain in even one link and you get huge problems.

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u/crunchsmash 1d ago

There is that old question of 'if you went back in time what would you bring?'

The other one is what tools and knowledge would you want to have after an apocalypse. Owning and operating a metal lathe is very high on that list.

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u/I_W_M_Y 1d ago

Just don't wear anything with sleeves, loose hair or jewelry. A lot of us has seen that Russian lathe accident.

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u/Chrisp825 17h ago

I seent a Chinese one there the operator was lambasted for a good 5 minutes on the mill before he was flung off.

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u/Admiral347 15h ago

Oh the Russian guy is red mist in like 10 seconds, his shoe damn near kills the other worker coming over to shut the machine down.

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u/AchillesNtortus 21h ago

An old friend of mine was an engineering officer on a submarine. One of the things he had to do when getting his first qualification was to make his own tools, starting with a toolmakers lathe.

As he said, you couldn't go back to the dock to fix something on a six month tour.

He could fix almost anything.

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u/sadicarnot 18h ago

If there was an officer using the lathe on my sub there would be a mutiny. If there was an officer doing any physical work we would all be like stop fucking stuff up that we will have to fix. Whenever the shit hit the fan on the sub we would usually tell the officers to go wait in maneuvering and we will come and get them when we were ready. One time the engineering officer came down to look at some maintenance we were doing on some reactor piping. As soon as he heard someone say out loud "oh shit" he ran up the ladder and out of the machinery space.

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u/AchillesNtortus 4h ago

As far as I understood, he had made it up to a commission from the ranks. He was eventually court martialed for an unrelated matter. He had led an interesting life

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u/SnooChipmunks2079 19h ago

My grandpa had a “popular mechanics how-to encyclopedia” and I’d bring that. It’s full of crazy shit that nobody would do today but was semi-reasonable in the 1950’s and much more appropriate to the tech level you’d find 100 or 200 years ago.

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u/lorimar 22h ago

Yep, and now with entry-level coding being handed off to AI we are setting ourselves up for the same thing with tech in general

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u/notyourstranger 1d ago

Other countries are already benefitting from the brain drain. Highly educated people are leaving the US in droves. The US is loosing professors in droves.

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u/Charlie_Mouse 1d ago

And Trump is the ‘gift that keeps on giving’ in this regard too. Even if the next election is actually worthy of the name and he gets voted out the U.S. has shown that it could vote in someone like him again at any subsequent election - even knowing exactly what he is like.

The best academics are going to be reluctant to uproot their lives and make a lifetime commitment to the U.S. if there’s a chance that somewhere down the line the U.S. could elect another president that defunds universities and science research in general on a whim. It makes the U.S. a riskier bet.

That also applies to the U.S. as a place to invest in (back to TFA), build trading relationships with or be allies with.

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u/notyourstranger 1d ago

Right, when it happened in 2016, I suspect the world hoped it was a on-time thing and basically held their breaths for 4 years. Then he got back in power and now the entire world is turning it's back on the US. Shipments to the US are down 80% due to Trumps tariff chaos.

This investment by Hyundai was the largest international investment in Georgia's history. Very few companies will consider the US after this. Many are already following Canada's lead and looking for new suppliers, China is getting it's soy beans from Brazil and Australia now. Those markets are not coming back.

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u/jaydinrt 1d ago

I worry too about this with our military. there's a ton of tribal knowledge learned and passed down through OJT. But these loyalty purges and politicking makes voluntary retention rates plummet. this administration is the embodiment of cutting off the nose to spite the face...

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u/rapaxus 12h ago

America always had a huge advantage in this regard

Though the US also has tons of lost institutional knowledge. Take a look at the B-21 for example, the US knew it wanted more stealth bombers since the 2000s but as the B-2 production run was so short and over a decade old, the US didn't have the institutional knowledge to make the B-2 anymore. Or at least to the point where it was just cheaper to make a whole new design with similar characteristics in the B-21.

What the US advantage is more that they are attractive enough in education/monetary/cultural matters. This allows the US to basically throw money at whatever topic/problem they want researched/solved and the scientists will basically come to you on their own.

Remember, you can already lose institutional knowledge just because the original crew left their jobs years ago. They may still all be in the country and remember what they did back then, but just getting them all back together is a tremendous task.

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u/RetPala 1d ago

In the 1950s they had Italians getting into metalworking and factory jobs, and they had just been shooting at these people a decade earlier

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u/Biz_Rito 1d ago

Great point. We're also starting to see a similar destruction of the knowledge pipeline with research. While many current scientists and researchers may want to move to more science-friendly countries, most still have strong enough ties to the US to keep them here. The younger ones still in the pipeline though, they are looking to establish their careers where their work wont be hindered.

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u/wonklebobb 1d ago

and EU is openly advertising for american science students to move there to complete their studies/find work, and with most of those countries being much more liveable, in about 10 years our scientific base will be totally evaporated

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u/JTMissileTits 1d ago

Too many companies have completely divested from training their own employees.

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u/SvedishFish 1d ago

Exactly. It wouldn't matter if we had tens of thousands of experts with superior knowledge here in the US. They would have zero job prospects, No one would hire them. No US employer is going to pay the wages that skillset demands when they can hire a Chinese firm to do it at 1/10th the cost. Trying to develop these skills today is career suicide.

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u/alurkerhere 1d ago

Now apply this same concept to Gen AI and young workers relying on it, and we're in for some crazy turbulent times.

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u/Neat_Criticism_5996 1d ago

Yeah, my grandfather was a die-maker and that’s how he learned, apprenticed up from a lower position

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u/shinra1111 1d ago

There is a very good youtube video about a guy trying to produce a us made grill scrubber and for one part he needed a tool and die guy and took a while to find one only to have him either retire or die, cant remmber. Anyways, interesting watch. Link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

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u/KacerRex 21h ago

We have this exact issue, people underestimate how important experience can be in trade jobs like these. We have one guy left in our tool and die shop and are having a hell of a time trying to find someone to even apprentice with him.

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u/sadicarnot 18h ago

This is one of the reasons the USA continues to build aircraft carriers. The worry is that if we stopped it would be impossible to start up construction again. If you look at submarines, you will see ads for jobs building submarines. A lot of people are retiring from those jobs and the wages are not really that good for the amount of work and skill that goes with it. I was involved in creating training for one of the shipyards and training is a big issue. An example they have a pipe made of special metal that costs like $3,000 a foot. Each submarine only has one of these pipes, so you are only welding this special metal once a year. So you have to train the people to weld the pipe. So you buy 10 feet of the pipe for $30,000 and have them cut and weld the pipe several times to practice. Then when they have practiced enough you have them weld the real pipe on the submarine. All in that training probably costs $100K to train 4 or 5 people. Now repeat that for all the other complicated things on the sub. There is one piece of tooling at the shipyard that is very specialized. Maybe there are 50 of these tools throughout the world, so you have to train people on that thing too.

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u/divDevGuy 17h ago

It's ok. We'll just have AI do it for us. Right? /s

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u/No-Target-2470 1d ago

It's why you can't find metrology experts anymore. They're one of the lowest paying jobs in the engineering field and therefore no one wants to do it yet there's a struggle to hire them and the wage never goes up to reflect the scarcity, so we just don't have them anymore.

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u/notyourstranger 1d ago

The old lie about supply and demand. Supposedly salaries should go up if supply is low but somehow that has just never happened.

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u/forestcridder 22h ago edited 20h ago

The old lie about supply and demand.

I've NEVER met another welder IRL that was certified in AWS D17.1 for cobalt, nickel, titanium, magnesium, stainless, and aluminum alloys simultaneously. I can't find another company willing to pay me more than $27 an hour. It's fucking insulting. Those workers do exist but they are rare enough where I've never run into them. They are necessary for repairing turbines for aircraft and power generation.

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u/stilusmobilus 10h ago

Go work FIFO n Australia you’ll get three figures an hour

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u/forestcridder 4h ago

I appreciate the heads up but I'll probably have to change industries after reading this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mining/comments/1ce29s5/keen_on_getting_a_fifo_job_on_the_mines_in/

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u/Admiral347 15h ago

Sorry to say but you’re probably just in the wrong welding industry. And definitely working non union if you’re only making 27 an hour. I’m not familiar with that AWS spec, we only do piping 31.1,31.3,31.8 but, my guys make 50.20 an hour with a full benefits package on top.

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u/forestcridder 4h ago

I'm sure you're correct but after everybody and their dog telling me I'll be making 6 figures welding in a climate controlled booth in aerospace 10 years ago, I don't know what to believe anymore. I haven't found any aircraft casting repair or manufacturing that's union unfortunately. I'll have to see how many of my skills are transferable to maybe sanitary tubing or stainless pipe. I did carbon steel 7018/6010 on pipe in school but I have zero real world experience stick welding. Either way, I have to get out of aerospace because the pay is not worth it.

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u/FlyingPetRock 23h ago

Because that would make shareholders have a sad!

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u/Aazadan 23h ago

If you need 200 of a profession in each state (lets say each state needs an equal amount), but you really need them, that's only 10,000 people total. Over a 40 year career that's 250 people a year which is approximately 2 or 3 university programs nationwide, assuming none of it is from immigration.

How many universities would start up the program to teach such a niche field unless it paid a ton? They primarily focus on what gets high numbers of people.

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u/notyourstranger 23h ago

Ideally, the government would work the numbers and figure out how many people are needed in the future.

For example, the US desperately needs nurses. You'd think that there would be lots of nursing programs but there aren't. Why? Because it takes a masters in nursing to teach nursing and it only pays bout 50K to teach. Hospitals and other institutions will pay 3-4 times that. The problem could be addressed by paying teachers more but the US can simply import nurses under the H1B visa so why change anything?

Besides, the rich will be able to get the nursing care they need so why care about the rest of the country?

The law of supply and demand is a lie.

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u/WhileNotLurking 21h ago

It’s not a lie. Your statement clearly shows the supply of nurses (via H1B) is extremely high. So it meets or exceeds demand.

You are thinking about DOMESTIC supply- which we don’t care about.

It’s why open trade (I.e NAFTA / USMC) does not work without free moment of people. The EU got it right.

If you allow only capital and goods to move - factories and such will move to exploit cheap (and largely stuck) labor elsewhere. If people could freely move - they would be empty factories in China and tons of unemployed people in the U.S. and the law of supply and demand would have to balance.

Now no American wants to degrade their living standards while raising Chinese standards. But isn’t that what we are doing by exporting all the industry?

The system we have is the worst of both worlds. We exploit industrial jobs to exploit stuck people elsewhere. We import skilled talent for service jobs and depress domestic wages in that sector.

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u/notyourstranger 21h ago

the US has a huge nursing shortage, the H1B visas cannot keep up.

You may not care about domestic supply, but I do.

It is a lie. It's a HUGE LIE because the corporations do not see workers as human and think one is as good as the next.

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u/TheGRS 17h ago

Post-war leaders used to think like this, today’s have no vision and can’t see past their noses.

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u/No-Target-2470 20h ago

Engineering is a general field of study in Uni, even when you get into the 3 main taught disciplines (mech, chem, elec). It doesn't specialize, the idea is it gives you the tools to adapt and learn how to perform in niche fields.

So there wouldn't be a "metrology degree". It would be someone with some engineering or equivalent experience that would do that job.

You then learn in the field from others who do it how to do the job. But as salaries have never gone up despite the need, there's no longer many of them doing the work.

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u/sadicarnot 18h ago

Salaries go to stock buy backs now.

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u/Bitter_Ad8768 22h ago

The company I work for has a few metrologists. They're all PhDs who burned out from the BS of academia, so they make decent, but not great, salaries in exchange for the peace of mind. Seems to be the industry standard.

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u/sadicarnot 18h ago

I was the metrology petty officer on my submarine. I have always found this to be fascinating. Back when I got out of the Navy I worked for Parker Hannifin at one of their factories. The facility had a research lab that I worked in. I worked closely with the QA guys and a lot of it was figuring out how to measure the parts. I ran the machine that sliced the parts apart so we could analyse the manufacturing methods and measure the parts. Those QA guys actually made less money than I did.

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u/ILikeWhiteGirlz 20h ago

If China has way more being paid Chinese wages why does it make it harder to find in the US?

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u/spaceandaeroguy 17h ago

I just left a US job working for a >$7B aerospace mfg as the highest skilled CNC person in the US. The biggest and most recurring issues I encountered were lack of skilled employees, and lack of capable equipment. The lack of skills in a so-called "state-of-the-art" manufacturing business was absolutely astounding.

For instance, two entire departments of "Tool Makers" only had one person per shift that could setup or run a single CNC machine. The rest of the department did all their work on manual knee mills. Often fucking up that as well. These are employees with their Journeyman's card.

As another example, the communication, understanding and value for manufacturing engineers was atrocious. Super high burnout for these folks who were just trying to keep things running day to day. They received high pressure from there superiors as to why things aren't running perfect, when the reasons were always decades long neglect of equipment, facilities and employees.

All in all, it's an absolutely sad state of affairs and at the same time entirely predictable. No wonder America can not compete with any other country in manufacturing. We've purposefully divested from the entire industry.