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Robotics Businesses

Fearing Lawsuits, Factories Rush To Replace Humans With Robots in South Korea (restofworld.org) 95

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Kim Yong-rae is the CEO of Speefox, South Korea's biggest manufacturer of capacitors, and he thinks robots are key to the company's survival. On his factory floor, free-standing machines squeal as they spit out gleaming sheets of aluminum that roll into coils. The air is filled with the rhythmic thud of stamping and the buzzing of machinery moving continuously, on the ground and overhead. Capacitors are essential to almost every electronic device, and these will end up in thousands of smartphones, cameras, and home appliances. "Throughout our history, we've always had to find ways to stay ahead," Kim told Rest of World. "Automation is the next step in that process." Speefox's factory is 75% automated, representing South Korea's continued push away from human labor. Part of that drive is labor costs: South Korea's minimum wage has climbed, rising 5% just this year.

But the most recent impetus is legal liability for worker death or injury. In January, a law came into effect called the Serious Disasters Punishment Act, which says, effectively, that if workers die or sustain serious injuries on the job, and courts determine that the company neglected safety standards, the CEO or high-ranking managers could be fined or go to prison. Experts and local media say that the law has shaken the heavy industry and construction sectors. Along with pushing the companies to invest to make workplaces safer, they point out, it's triggered a ramp-up of automation in order to require fewer workers -- or, ideally, none at all.
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Fearing Lawsuits, Factories Rush To Replace Humans With Robots in South Korea More

Fearing Lawsuits, Factories Rush To Replace Humans With Robots in South Korea

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    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Reminds me of the outcome from the "fight for 15" movement:

      Activists: We demand $15/hour!
      Fast-food Managers: The required job skills don't warrant paying that rate...
      Activists: We demand $15/hour!
      Self-service-kiosk salesman to managers: Check this out.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        self service kiosks, along with delivery apps, means higher number of orders, which means larger kitchens and more kitchen staff though

      • > Activists: We demand $15/hour!
        > Fast-food Managers: The required job skills don't warrant paying that rate...

        Activist: Of course the job skills warrant $15, just look at the evolution of upper management wages.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Activist: Of course the job skills warrant $15, just look at the evolution of upper management wages.

          This is a non sequitur argument.

          • Re:Humans have lots of rights and lots of lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @12:47PM (#62597418)

            No, it's really not.

            The workers generate $X/ hour of revenue - that revenue (minus operating expenses) then gets divided between labor, management, and capital according to their value.

            Neither management nor capital are contributing any more than they ever have, so how do they justify the fact that their share of the revenue has increased dramatically while labors has stagnated?

            • Re:Humans have lots of rights and lots of lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)

              by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @01:26PM (#62597532) Journal

              Except that is where YOU have it wrong. Capital is contributing more than it ever has. Arguably the advance machinery be it robots or just equipment with a lot of automation to deskill the labor required, delivers much more value than before.

              Want to turn out cheeseburgers, look and taste great consistently? Very import if you are in the fast food biz. Now what is easier to do that with a town-gas jet with an iron skillet set over it - or the modern setup in a McDonalds?

              The capital IS delivering more value then the labor today. If my goal is cranking out 100s of identically cooked cheese burgers, I'll get more results with modern flat top with timers and sensors and any schulb I can find to stand in front of it; than that old gas jet, skillet and experienced/skilled line-cook.

               

              • Ummm, no, not it's not and the Pandemic proved that point.

                • Re:Humans have lots of rights and lots of lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)

                  by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @03:16PM (#62597876) Journal

                  What the pandemic proved is that labor has a little more risk of serious impairment than most guessed.

                  Actually the government made lower skill labor even less employable. Even if I highly compensate and incentivize them some geezer at the CDC or some other government health agency turned legislature + executive combined might tell them they simply can't go to work anyway.

                  It makes them LESS valuable, in that their future productivity must be discounted by the now elevated risk of interruption. Can't pay them more - have to pay them less or invest in more automation to eliminate as much low skill labor as possible for an operation.

                  Hello societal-ladder with the bottom rungs removed.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Ichijo ( 607641 )
                If all you sell is cheeseburgers and lots of them, a robotic burger flipper makes sense. But if you want to sell a variety of food in a limited space, then you will probably need a line cook. Humans are more versatile than robots.

                • ... or any other FF chain.

                  I do get the family run fryer at the local tramstop though. Food is cheap and of prime or very good quality and if I ask for less onions and more cocktail sauce I'll get it right while the owner is making it in front of my eyes.

                  MDs however seems to me like a very strange experience. The food and it's quality are low-end, the prices are nonsense and prep and delivery is just one step short of a vending machine with the new touch screen waiters.

                  I really don't get why people go there

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by realxmp ( 518717 )

                Interesting so if as you say capital is delivering more, why is management reaping the benefits more than labour then? After all it's not management that is delivering more, in fact by reducing the number of people they employ you could argue their job got easier. Maybe worth a bonus for growth but in the long run it suggests management should get a pay cut, especially when a new person fills that role (so as not to disincentivise efficiency savings for an incumbent).

                The reason is of course that management

            • Labor doesn't have any real skin in any given business. They can walk away with their experience and likely get a pay raise swapping to another company.

              This is especially true for high school drop out jobs.

              Now that we have $15 minimum wage in California, things are just PERFECT here. Everyone owns a house, drives an EV and works from home. Paradise has been found.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Askmum ( 1038780 )
              Supply and demand. If you want equal pay (rises), see if your favourite socialist state can accomodate you. Spoiler alert: It won't, because that's not how it works.

          • Activist: Of course the job skills warrant $15, just look at the evolution of upper management wages.

            This is a non sequitur argument.

            Wage Growth by Percentile, 1990-2016 https://www.researchgate.net/f... [researchgate.net]

            Cumulative percent change in real hourly wages, by wage percentile, 2000-2018 https://commons.m.wikimedia.or... [wikimedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Baconsmoke ( 6186954 )
        And even funnier almost all of the fast food places now pay $14-$20 an hour now. So, what did we discover? That they are lying assholes who just didn't want to pay that much because they're greedy bastards. But sure, your argument is great too.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 )
          That argument is interesting but doesn't make sense unless prices have stayed the same. Instead they've skyrocketed. However, to your point, in my area prices have not quite doubled but wages have more than doubled. This is either because they were greedy bastards or they thought their cost increases were temporary and are still compressing prices.

        • Re:Humans have lots of rights and lots of lawyers (Score:4, Informative)

          by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @03:40PM (#62597952)
          ...and the result is that a few weeks ago on a long trip I stopped in at a McDonald's for my kids to use the bathroom, and ordered a medium coke and medium fries. Cost? Around $6.50, FOR FRIES AND A COKE! Not long ago that was the cost for a meal that included a quarter pounder. I barely ever went to McDonald's before, and I'm definitely not buying anything if/when I use the bathroom there.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Have you looked at the price of potatoes, cooking oil or sugar lately? Then there is the cost of real estate, fuel and such. About the only thing that hasn't gone up is hydro here.

          • Where the fuck was that? $6.50? I just checked the app and it's $2.19 for a medium fries and $1 for the coke around here.

            • Trust me, I triple-checked that receipt when I saw it. This was in California, and I have seen other places (Burger King comes to mind) where I did see that an online order costs less than a purchase in person.

          • I stopped in at a McDonald's for my kids to use the bathroom, and ordered a medium coke and medium fries. Cost? Around $6.50, FOR FRIES AND A COKE!

            seems like all fast food has appreciated a ton lately, while real restaurant prices have stagnated (thankfully). and fast food drive-thru lines seem to be longer than ever; a bit odd.

            i stopped going to mcdonalds when a chicken nuggets meal cost $11 or $12.
            no thank you, that's basically the price of real food.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          Well, the whole "required job skills" statement of the GP is bullshit. The reality is that once wages for a position are above minimum wage, they're set based on market conditions of supply and demand of labor. Now that we're entering a period where labor is scarcer due to a smaller cohort entering the job market, all the 20 year olds think they're brilliant because they can get a job anywhere and wages are up. The latter half of Gen X (my generation) was the same, and the millennials had the opposite...

        • What I have discovered is that with the resulting increase in prices, I eat out a lot less.

      • Who knew CEO of McDonalds trolls Slashdot.
      • How about having wages automatically track inflation? In 2009, the $7.25/hr of the federal minimum wage was equivalent to $9.77/hr in 2022 dollars. In 1968, the $1.60/hr of the federal minimum wage was equivalent to $13.29/hr in 2022 dollars.

        My point is: Even if minimum wage workers get their $15/hr at the federal level, in 20 years they will be back where they are now, especially considering how governments today are perfectly fine with printing obscene amounts of money out of thin air to prop up the st

        • Why don't the House Democrats bring this up in a bill? Then should be able to pass that and then lay the blame at the Senate Republicans for not passing it. Then they could at least say, well, we tried but those assholes blocked us.

          My theory is, both sides are assholes playing people off each other. Both parties are the business party and if you think differently, you are delusional.

          • Politics is the art of distracting people from the real issues, so the real issues are never debated. For example, by separating people by race and gender and having them bicker at each other on those "differences", the Democratic Party has managed to shift all the attention of their voters there, so work reform issues that would annoy some very wealthy "donors" are never discussed.

            • I forgot my /s on that last post.

              I already assume the world works the way it does because the super powerful want it to work this way.

    • Also if a robot can do it and do it well, why have humans risking life and limb doing this work.

        I just hope job placement in other areas is in perfect sync with the installation of these robots.

    • Yeah, but the gov has given the corps more rights and they can actually afford to hire lawyers.
    • And companies have the right to automate as they please with replacing humans.

  • It's got nothing to do with lawsuits (Score:4, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @11:39AM (#62597236)
    The cost of robots has been plummeting due to massive advances in tech in the last 10 to 20 years. In the past it was much more expensive to build out this kind of automation. Algorithm improvements coupled with reliability improvements mean you can do this kind of automation at lower scales then you used to be able to.

    To be fair increased wages in China probably do have an effect. I mean when you're paying somebody just enough rice and tea to make it through the day then yeah, they're going to be able to compete with robots. Slave labor can to a certain extent compete with robots. Of course it's hard to square slave labor was Communist China's rhetoric about workers of the world uniting. And while we know that's bullshit and that they're not really a communist Nation the cognitive disconnect is going to cause problems. The end result has been rising wages, not through the insane levels of a decent quality of life but to the point where they have food security and shelter. And just that little bit is enough that robots take over.

    The point is no matter how low your quality of life you can't compete with robots. As an American I learned this in grade school decades ago from stories of Casey Jones. It's funny that we seem to have forgotten that

    • Re:It's got nothing to do with lawsuits (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@@@earthlink...net> on Monday June 06, 2022 @02:09PM (#62597652)

      You should have learned that from "John Henry" rather than from "Casey Jones". "Casey Jones" should instead have taught you that driving systems beyond their design goals is expensive.

      • Casey Jones under pressure to be on time and was filling in for an other person.

        • Casey's last train had left the station 75 minutes behind schedule, but by the time of the crash, he was only 2 minutes late. When his fireman saw the red lights of the train ahead of him he as going an estimated 75 MPH, but by the time he hit he'd brought it down to 40, and was the only fatality.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            OK. I was mainly thinking of the songs, but that is also an "expensive". He may have been the only fatality, but collisions aren't cheap to repair, even at only 40 MPH. And railroad cars/engines are expensive.

            Still, John Henry is the one who was competing against automation.

      • It's been a long day but my point still stands. The entire point of the John Henry story was that John Henry killed himself trying to compete with the machine. I hadn't heard the full song in a long time but the only reason the machine broke down is it was missing one of the steps needed to clear away debris after drilling a hole. Basically they automated one job but not the other. The solution of course is to just finish the automation and improve the durability of the parts. Which is exactly what's happen
    • I notice how you wistfully declare China "not really a communist nation". Lol. Well, they tried that for a while, but when six million (at least) starved to death while the government kept grain locked in warehouses because they couldn't figure out that food-production wasn't as important as food-consumption they went ahead and tried some Capitalism economics. They did keep the Communist social parts, though. Also, you are free to move there anytime.

  • about time (Score:3)

    by cellocgw ( 617879 ) <cellocgw.gmail@com> on Monday June 06, 2022 @11:40AM (#62597244) Journal

    Point One: who the [bleep] thinks keeping humans in jobs with high danger potential, safety rules & switches & keepouts be damned, is a good idea? Mechanising everything involving high or low temperatures, toxic materials, loud noise levels, and so on is a good thing.

    PointTwo: when will we finally get rid of the "OMG no jobs anymore!!!" bull? What in the world could be better than an egalitarian society with drastically reduced workload and time) so we can relax and live a little?

    • What in the world could be better than an egalitarian society with drastically reduced workload and time) so we can relax and live a little?

      According to TFA, a world where killing humans on the job didn't result in those responsible for safety to go to prison or pay penalties / restitution to the victim's loved ones.

      Somehow I don't think your vision of a better world lines up with the vision of the big and powerful....

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        There's an intersection. They want a world where they aren't killing/injuring humans on the job because it's a liability issue. But broadly speaking, don't we all want people to not be killed/injured in jobs?

        So motivations may differ, but that doesn't mean the end result is necessarily incompatible.

        Of course, at some point easy access to flexible non-human unskilled labor, we have to figure out how to deal with the whole 'livelihood' versus 'job' and that has all sorts of room for dystopian result, but redu

        • You do realize companies are not doing this it make the job safer. They are doing this to avoid law suits.

          They could have made the job safer in the first place but decided it wasn't worth it.

          You can fuck off now.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Junta ( 36770 )

            I never claimed they had a noble goal, I'm saying the goal of 'I don't want to be sued so I'll find a way to have a robot do the work' is compatible with 'I don't want a human to be at risk, so I'm happy to see robots do the work'.

            If we can have a robot do a bullshit job, then we should have a robot do bullshit work. For now, we can find other things for humans to do that is valuable, and even when we can't, we shouldn't only value people on their 'utility' and arbitrarily make them do busy work that we do

    • What in the world could be better than an egalitarian society with drastically reduced workload and time) so we can relax and live a little?

      One were piracy doesn't walk away with one's efforts regardless of why one's doing it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      who the [bleep] thinks keeping humans in jobs with high danger potential, safety rules & switches & keepouts be damned, is a good idea?

      Likely those who live in a world where people need to rely on unskilled labor to provide food, shelter, and opportunity for their family. Even in that world they would want their job to be as low-risk as feasible, but plenty of people throughout history (and today) have been happy to take on hazardous jobs because of increased pay (or simply for more likely job placement).

      Taking away jobs does not automatically lead to an egalitarian society with reduced workloads and more free time. If effort is put into r

    • We're already producing too much crap. What happens when costs for physical goods are driven down to almost nothing?
    • "What in the world could be better than an egalitarian society with drastically reduced workload and time) so we can relax and live a little?"

      Now take a moment and read that sentence again. I think you will understand what is wrong with that statement and realize you look like a fucking moron.

      • Oh, another "hey I worked my tail off so everyone else should too, forever" idiot, huh? There is no other species on Earth with the labor/{everything else} time ratio us humans have placed upon ourselves. Obsessive hoarding (which is what C-level folks are doing) at the expense of others (all employees) is not a good thing for civilization.

        • No one is stopping you from quitting your job and relocating to a California beach. More and more people are doing it every day. We call them homeless. Feel free to join them if you think that's better then working for the man.

    • Reducing the working hours, so that whatever jobs still need to be done by humans need more people, is indeed the optimal solution. At least for the manual jobs. This is what happened when steam power became a thing: working hours were reduced from 16 to 8. And yes, people used to work 16 hours a day, even if they were self-employed farmers. You see, they didn't have tractors back then. IMO it's time for another reduction.

      Unforunately, the left will demand UBI (aka unconditional welfare entitlement) for

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        UBI means it is universal, not to only some subset of people. So I think you are saying the left will argue *against* UBI (preferring something else).

        Also I think it is mostly the right that wants conditions for entitlements. It is a method of making sure they don't work and are inefficient. Also people get to bitch that somebody is spending their food stamps on champange, when if they actually got food stamps they would have direct knowledge of exactly how tiny the subsidy is.

        The left's main problem is wan

        • Yeah, sure, UBI will be universal, and people will totally opt to flip burgers or scrub toilets instead of opting for that universal UBI. And it's not like every UBI to date is being "piloted" in a small subset of a country's population and has stayed there since.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by spitzak ( 4019 )

            UBI means everybody will get it. They can flip burgers if they want, and get additional income, and still get the UBI.

            You seem to be using the term UBI to describe something else.

            • So, money for nothing basically. Will fairies put those money under our pillows or will they have to come from the taxes of people who work? That's what my "annoy the people who work 8 hours" comment above meant.

              Also, in reality, UBI is yet another welfare entitlement given to a subset of the population everywhere it's currently been "trialed".

      • Have you seen the talks about California's restitution for black people? They are busy trying to figure out if they want people to prove they actually had ancestors that were actually slaves. Other people say they need to give every black person equal handout otherwise it may cause rifts in the black community.

        Forget the fact that a large portion of our tax payers today not only never owned slaves, but also don't come from families that have lived in the USA when slavery was a thing.

        For instances, how many

    • "PointTwo: when will we finally get rid of the "OMG no jobs anymore!!!" bull? What in the world could be better than an egalitarian society with drastically reduced workload and time) so we can relax and live a little?"

      The problem is the Utopian ideals almost never sync up with reality.

      The rich demands their tributes to be paid to them or else you become homeless to be preyed upon by teenagers who want to set you on fire in your sleep.

      These rich people also want to eliminate as many

  • changes nothing (Score:3)

    by xorbe ( 249648 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @12:09PM (#62597310)

    Someone has to maintain the machinery / robots no matter what. Until they become self-repairing ...

    • What's the ratio of robots to repairmen? 20:1? And those robots work around the clock, probably faster, without breaks... each robot could replace at least a few workers... With from-my-ass numbers, you might get 1 new job and lose 49.

  • So , instead of being good employers and having good safety practices to assure worker safety , they prefer to be assholes and automate.
    Way to go ! .. Who needs people that can afford our products anyways ?

    • Of course they can afford it by doing jobs that can't be automated like making music, or creating art.

      • True enough, but only the ones who can hack it. Most artists and musicians are trying not to eat cat food. The rest are working retail and fast food jobs. Maybe 1/2 of 1% of those that try it actually make it. So, it IS a great way to get ripped off on an art degree or pad the pockets of some for-profit school, though.
    • They are just dispassionately looking for profit, not trying to intentionally maim folks. If robots turn out to be cheaper, they aren't going to share your sense of loyalty. They are going to buy the robots. However, your entitled attitude reminds me of how people expect women to have a bunch of kids to keep up replacement ratios. Yeah, uhm, tough shit. They aren't going to do it without an incentive. If you remove incentives instead of adding them, they are going to walk away from the game.

      • Keep your ridiculous totally groundless and baseless personal attacks to yourself. You have no idea who i am at all. What i think ? even less ..
        LIke anyways , i should care about a random boyo's idiotic comments on the internet ? .. Idiot. take your meds and go home to mother , maybe have a change of diapers because you're full of it

  • Logical (Score:2, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 )

    Please, realms of internet experts: please tell me again how DEMANDING insupportably-high minimum wages and our cadres of emotionally-sensitive 20-somethings isn't going to drive exactly the same mechanism for the limited good manufacturing jobs remaining in the US.

    The only question in my mind is if the now-obvious vulnerabilities of outsourcing your manufacturing to Vietnam to shave 0.25% of your per-part costs will outweigh these obvious disincentives to restoring manufacturing on shore in the US.

    My bet w

  • If everything ends up automated, no human workers to speak of, then humans will all have to be on welfare, paid by the government so they can survive, or homelessness will become orders of magnitude worse, people will be starving in the streets, and crime will become the new pandemic.
    But the vast majority of people on welfare has already been described in numerous cautionary tales. People will become lazy and even more stupid than they already are. Why even get an education when you have no use for it?
    Idl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      While I don't necessarily agree with all of your points, I can wholeheartedly agree with your final sentence.

      We're screwed.

    • Or we could reduce working hours, so whatever jobs remain human-powered need more people. At least for the manual jobs. This is what happened when steam power became a thing: working hours were reduced from 16 to 8. And yes, people used to work 16 hours a day, even if they were self-employed farmers. You see, they didn't have tractors back then.

      • So you think a company wants to pay me double the cash for half the hours? Where do I sign up!!!

        Or did you mean the government is going to some how magically make my cost of living some how stay covered by me working half as many hours so someone else can also work?

        All of this just leaves the individual worse for wear and society won't be better for it.

        • The government's legislative branch can reduce the maximum working hours to something less than 40hours/week while still mandating the same minimum wage they would for 40hours/week (and also mandate no reductions in salary for above minimum wage employees). At least for manual labour. It's not like 40hours/week or 8hours/day is written in stone, it was made to satisfy the needs of societies powered by steam. Sure, the libertarians will whine and moan, much like they did when the 8hours/day and 40hours/week
          • And by "future" I mean "next couple of years".

          • California is considering this but specifically excluded anyone under a bargaining contract, which really nicely lines up with a swath of essential workers. Go figure.

            I'm sure paper pushers will enjoy 32 hour work weeks for the same pay though.

            People that actually are productive the entire 40+ will end up just costing their employers more money in OT, because it's still going to be cheaper to pay OT then add additional employees that also require benefits like healthcare and sick leave.

            You already see that

    • and in the USA the jail docker does stuff ER does not.

    • Idle people become bored.

      Many bored people may turn to crime.

      Also people who are handed money become entitled, and it's even worse when it becomes ingrained in them after generations of it. They'll want more and more for free. When the government can't deliver more, they'll take their entitlement and become violent. It's all there in the tales, people.

      Now, the 'UBI' people will refute all this, and claim that welfare (which is what UBI really is) will save humanity. It won't. It'll wreck humanity, as out

      • No. Also, except the Republican party seems to want to arm as many of their people as possible. Wonder why that is? Civil War 2?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          Wonder why that is? Civil War 2?

          You better hope not. There is a number of studies coming out that show in case of a armed uprising of the civilians of the United States, there are no scenarios where a socialist, communist, movement comes out on top. Surprisingly, its not the guns that are the tipping point, or the number of. It's the ammo. The non socialist sides in the United States have more of it and it is typically manufactured in so called red states.

  • Korean Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration...

    Frankly, I'm surprised Korea didn't have an OSHA already.

  • Anyone think it's NOT part of China's strategy to lobby for worker rights in other countries in order to make manufacturing costs there higher?

    China is probably now lobbying the Korean manufacturers who don't want to pay for automation to move the work to China.

    • There is something to be said here about not trading with unelected regimes which use a country's workers as a pool of slave labour. Or at least weaning the dependence. In plain English, it's China that has to reform if they want to participate in global trade, not the countries with elected governments that have to stoop to China's level. Unfortunately, mass media has convinced people that trading with China no matter what is the right thing to do and anyone who says the opposite is labelled "populist" and

  • Motivational poster (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @02:01PM (#62597632)

    ... for the robots.

    Think Quality.

    Remember, the next capacitor you make could go into your own power supply.

  • Andrew Yang has entered the chat.

  • There's a reason there's hardly any humans in the paint and welding areas of automotive manufacturers, and hasn't been for decades. Those were the worst places to work in those plants, from a safety perspective. Automating the most dangerous jobs makes sense. That's a great reason for automation!

  • Fines or prison (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @03:20PM (#62597894) Homepage

    CEO or high-ranking managers could be fined or go to prison

    There needs to be a lot more of that, in all countries. Anytime a company does something illegal, and management knew (or should gave known) about it, the top level managers should be sweating...

  • workers wanting less pay = fired (Score:3)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @07:46PM (#62598584)

    South Korea's minimum wage has climbed, rising 5% just this year.

    Those greedy workers!!! oh wait...

    Consumer prices in South Korea rose 5.4% in May 2022 from a year ago
    https://tradingeconomics.com/s... [tradingeconomics.com]

  • Fortunately the US CEOs are not as corrupt (many are, but not as much). But robots will still replace with workforce.

    With cost of living increases, people understandably ask for higher wages. Here in Bay Area, practical minimum wage for a reliable worker is $25/hr, and even that is hard to find.

    But a robo-casher, a robo-cleaner, or a robo-warehouse-worker, will not ask for a raise.

    And that will be the conundrum of 21st century: we can produce things much cheaply, but people will need even more money to surv

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