How robots are replacing manufacturing employees at Boeing

This article is a bunch of idiotic dribble. I have friends doing both the automating of those jobs as well as the manual manufacturing. All the article relies on is here-say from an incredibly out-spoken person, it's a straw man argument if I've ever seen one.

First off, Boeing is moving out of Puget Sound/Pacific North West/Seattle area for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with automation. The political climate has not been good for them so they switched headquarters from Seattle to Chicago a number of years ago. I mean when you have a local politician saying the union should "rise up and take the factory" and then "retool these machines from making weapons of war to make buses" it's kinda high time to get out of there. Although I heard that the main reason they moved was because the politicians refused to do basically anything they wanted, like fix the horrific traffic situation up there. Politicians were more content with bitching and arguing with each-other compared to actually doing something useful. Chicago and South Carolina actually wanted to attract jobs, so they were willing to work with Boeing rather than talk down to them, and Boeing moved as a result.

Second, no-one is getting fired from the plant because of the automation. That's right, no-one. Boeing is switching them around to do other jobs.

Third, just because Boeing is not hiring in the Seattle area does not mean they are not hiring. South Carolina is where the major hiring is going on because it is far easier to do business there. The Seattle union has been a major pain in the ass for Boeing and has costed them a lot of money, so they're expanding elsewhere where they don't have to do absurd commitments asked of them.

Fourth, this entire way of thinking about robots getting rid of jobs is fundamentally flawed, new jobs that did not exist before open up. A few decades ago there would be entire hangers full of thousands of drafters making part drawings. Then the printer, computer, and CAD software came and made them obsolete. Well guess what, those guys are still employed, they just have a different work load.

I can't stand how much publicity this type of argument gets, automation has been happening since the printing press and unemployment is at 5%. Please stop posting this crap.

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