SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker:
Polar Manufacturing has been making metal hinges, locks, and brackets in south Chicago for more than 100 years. Some of the company's metal presses—hulking great machines that loom over a worker—date from the 1950s. Last year, to meet rising demand amid a shortage of workers, Polar hired its first robot employee.
The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works.
Jose Figueroa, who manages Polar's production line, says the robot, which is leased from a company called Formic, costs the equivalent of $8 per hour, compared with a minimum wage of $15 per hour for a human employee. Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different work, increasing output, Figueroa says.
"Smaller companies sometimes suffer because they can't spend the capital to invest in new technology," Figueroa says. "We're just struggling to get by with the minimum wage increase."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday January 19 2022, @08:53PM
The bare minimum wage is one thing, but when comparing to a Full-Time Employee it's even cheaper. Due to the fact that with a full-time employee you have things like, paid time off, overtime pay, and pesky things like insurance. Trust me, the insurance for a thing is much cheaper than medical insurance. In the event that you don't even have to pay that, just the $8 an hour, you as an employer are getting quite the deal. You could have twice as many robots and still come out ahead.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"