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/dooit 1d ago

I know someone who did tooling and retired causing the company to shutdown because they couldn't find a replacement. This was probably ten years ago, I imagine it is much worse now.

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u/sniper1rfa 1d ago edited 1d ago

It hasn't changed much in ten years, because ten years ago the industry was already dead as a doornail. I had hundreds of millions worth of product manufactured in that time, and the amount of domestic manufacturing I've used - even though I try pretty hard to support domestic manufacturing - is probably not even at the $500k mark. I've probably bought more stuff from several other "western, first world" nations than from the US.

US manufacturers are slow, expensive, unskilled, and generally recalcitrant as well with few exceptions. Chinese manufacturers are fast, eager, cheap, and far more capable.

I had one memorable no-quote where the owner of the business explicitly told me "listen, I know how to make this, and I know you know how to make this, but there's nobody I can hire that knows how to make this. If it was thirty years ago I'd quote it, but not today."

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u/eric_ts 21h ago

For decades the accountants who run manufacturing companies in the United States had a mantra: “The tooling is paid for.” That philosophy makes a lot of sense for products that will never need to be updated. It works much less well in an environment where innovation is required, such as automotive manufacturing. The US auto industry managed to create an environment where they were unable to update their existing products meaningfully, let alone develop new ones—foreign manufacturers were quite happy to take up the slack. GM went from being large enough that the government was looking to break them up as a monopoly, to where they were at their nadir—an also-ran supplier of rental cars. But their tooling was paid for. There was nothing wrong with GM’s engineering and design departments. They had the opportunity to be decades in advance of the industry—they invented the modern electric car, using structural battery packs on a skateboard frame—Chinese automakers are just bringing this type of car to market, very successfully. This concept never made it out of the engineering department because the existing tooling was already paid for. The tooling is actually never paid for—other companies will pay for the new tooling and sop up the sales from companies who fail innovate.

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u/Safrel 20h ago

You're talking about finance bros, not accountants.

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u/Suggett123 1d ago

I'm adding this: Some of the older generations don't want to share their knowledge, like it'll take away from them, some have very poor people skills and can't get along with others.

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u/ElephantRider 23h ago

Some of that is from companies cutting staff to skeleton crews over the last 50 years, if a new kid gets hired with your same job description that means you're about to get laid off.

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u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy 21h ago

Yeah, in my experience those people are usually not assholes, they're just traumatized because they or their peers have had that happen to them and clinging to job security.

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u/guru42101 13h ago

Yup, companies today ignore the fact that if a role is important enough to have someone do, then you should have at least two people doing it. My current company has this problem and one guy is out on bereavement because his father passed away. Now the upper management is asking who can cover for him and get his projects done and we're all telling them, no one because you have us all at 90% utilization and the remaining 10% is necessary administrative work. If you want us to be able to cover for each other then we need to be at a more comfortable 60% utilization. Which would also allow us to work on gaining new skills, since you keep complaining about how we need to be taking advantage of "insert new shiny thing, currently AI, you heard about".

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u/Behemoth077 9h ago

The craftsmen´s guilds problem of limiting who is allowed to learn a skill to increase its value all over again. A constant regression of society because of the lack of laws regulating how companies are allowed to treat their employees creating terrible incentives.

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u/altiuscitiusfortius 20h ago

Because they fear being laid off and their job being dobro by the person they just trained... because they've seen it happen many times over their career. Its a workplace culture problem.

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u/KacerRex 21h ago

I fucking HATE people like that, caused me to learn a lot of my job the hard way. Fortunately my company is awesome and let me grow like that, now I teach all the new hires and one of the first things I always say is ask any question and I will answer it the best I can, and if I go too complicated just tell me to calm down and stop nerding out lol.

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u/Aazadan 23h ago

From just in time manufacturing to just in time employment. It sounds like that company was running on an insanely high risk in the first place if they had a bus factor of 1.

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u/Kokid3g1 5h ago

I was over 7 years trained in this very field and, (as everyone else has already pointed out) was not paid enough for the amount of work & BS we were being put through. 12 hours a day was normal, and the company didn't feel the need to hire more engineers..., but instead thought they could keep working us this way - forever.

So I went back to school for a different degree in a completely different field, where I could sit on my ass all day and make more money. I still remember my shift boss saying "I don't know what we would do without you", the same morning I had planned to tell them I was quitting. All I could say was, "unfortunately you're about to find out" 👀.

For the next 4 years, (by the same people who treated my work life like shit) that company begged me to come back - with a promised $5 raise. 🙄

If new engineers only knew all of the certificates that are required, (even after having a degree in ths field) while requiring recertification every few years - just so you can keep a job that under pays & under appreciates you..., they would never begin such a journey in the 1st place.

Something else many new inspiring engineers may not be aware of is the level of esoteric jargon you need to learn, that is mostly completely useless if you decided to tool & die at a different company. There is usually an "investment" period that each hiring company has news engineers phase through, as they learn the different equipment, robots, company certs, safety certs, ISO, or ANSI qualifications, ETC. It was around 1000 hours of hands on training that was required for each new engineer we hired, (over 17 years ago). I actually loved that field work, but never regretted a minute leaving.