
14 People Make 500K Tons of Steel a Year in Austria - anjalik
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-21/how-just-14-people-make-500-000-tons-of-steel-a-year-in-austria
======
Animats
That's a hot rolling mill. They're not making steel, just forming it. The old,
messy plant next door makes the steel.

Better hot rolling mills have been mechanized for a long time. Here's a plain
rebar mill in Delhi that's for sale.[1] There must be some people around
somewhere, but they're not near the machinery when it's working. The machinery
is huge, but not computerized. On the other hand, here's a rolling mill in
India that has lots of people handling hot metal with tongs.[2] That's about
where the US was in 1935.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW0jAMxAN3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW0jAMxAN3Y)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lGaC8OJGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lGaC8OJGs)

~~~
theoh
Even the automated ones are dangerous to be close to, apparently. There's a
characteristic type of snarl-up known as a "cobble" where white-hot steel rod
flies everywhere: [https://youtu.be/uxbsgWOjX5o](https://youtu.be/uxbsgWOjX5o)

~~~
delazeur
Every American steel mill I've been in or heard about has cages that people
have to stay inside if they are near the part of the line where this can
happen. (Presumably an OSHA requirement, but I'm not 100% on that.)

~~~
sswaner
Not the one I worked in back in the early 90's. You could walk along to
rolling line and had to hit a pause button to stop the feeding of billets in
the reheat furnace to cross the line to the other side of the plant. Nucor
Plymouth.

~~~
delazeur
I was a Nucor engineer in the early 2010s, and all their rolling mills had
them by then. Things had changed a lot since the '90s, though. The old guys
talked about having to manually replace the electrodes in the arc furnaces,
which has been done with a robot arm since the late '90s or early 2000s.

(For those of you who don't know what this is, each electrode is a graphite
column one or two feet in diameter and about 20 feet long. Replacing them took
two guys, selected for their resemblance to linebackers, and had to be done
multiple times each day.)

------
MrBuddyCasino
Slightly click-baity headline:

"While about 300 other workers in Donawitz carry out support roles such as
shipping logistics and running the internal rail system, the rolling mill
itself will be operated by just over a dozen people."

~~~
delazeur
Yeah, and that's not even remarkable. 70-90% of employees in a modern
manufacturing facility will be in maintenance or support roles.

~~~
lancewiggs
To emphasise this. The entire plant needs to be maintained, with daily,
weekly, quarterly, annual and longer preventative maintenance schedules.
Sometimes these will require taking down the whole plant for a week or two,
other times for shorter times or the work can be done without interruption.
There is also unplanned maintenance - when the plant stops working and a team
is needed to get it bak up and running. For this yo gals need a warehouse full
of critical spare parts - and people to manage it all.

The plant also needs people working on product development (e.g. different
wire materials and weights), process development (improvement in capacity to
over name place capacity), health and safety (even with a hands-free plant
like this there are plenty off hazards and a large amount of environmental and
H&S compliance work), and so on. All these people need managers. And then
there is demand management - figuring out what to make and when, goods inwards
(and its quality control), dispatch and managing all the associated paperwork
and QC.

And there need to be people who make are those controlling computers and all
the transmitters and controllers are working properly.

and so on. But a laudable achievement nonetheless.

------
guimarin
We should not be employing people in jobs that can be automated. We should try
and automate everything. We should develop technologies, processes, and
abilities so that everyone can learn new things. The people that want to learn
will be incredibly leveraged and provide a ton of value to society. Those who
don't want to learn should be given enough for basic subsistence. A stipend
which covers food, shelter, clothing, catastrophic healthcare, reasonable
water access, and unlimited data. I would also push that all humans can be
close to nature in some way, be it a park or otherwise. We have the technology
to do this. Instead we have protectionism and fear.

~~~
savanaly
I agree with this for the most part. There is a real human need though, and
not one that makes a lot of rational sense, but a need nonetheless, to _be
needed_. And for a lot of people in that world you described it wouldn't be
met. It's kind of perverse right, because people don't want you to
artificially create need for them (it wouldn't be fun to receive your basic
income in compensation for digging and then filling in a big hole), they want
it to be a genuine need for their talents. And unfortunately although we
evolved that yearning to be helpful, we also evolved the ability to automate
away most of the tasks that would have stimulated that.

~~~
seer
I think iain bank's "the culture" novels explore this future in depth quite
well. I will not spoil it but the basic idea is "games" \- people will just be
able to play all the games they want and compete with one anoher without the
need to survive.

~~~
marvin
Also, there is absolutely no abuse of power in Banks' society. This would
certainly be a problem in a fully-automated capitalist society. I think Banks
is a great inspiration, but it is not a world we will get by default. It needs
active political effort.

~~~
anigbrowl
_absolutely no abuse of power in Banks ' society_

':-|

~~~
noir_lord
That statement makes no sense either, the Culture had an explicit department
for abusing it's power, Special Circumstances.

I think his point was that even if you live in a post-scarcity anarcho-
communist society where everyone is live and let live, the rest of the
universe isn't an occasionally you need headbangers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Circumstances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Circumstances)

------
mbroshi
"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The
man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from
touching the equipment." \- Warren Bennis

~~~
kbenson
The Matrix wasn't about a Humanity enslaved by an AI race and fighting for
their freedom, it was about a Humanity being kept from complete obsolescence,
depression and death by our loving evolutionary descendants in the only way
they found that worked, and our accidentally fucking it up royally.

Man, the stories we tell ourselves to justify our mistakes.

~~~
bjourne
Is life only worth living for working?

~~~
ajmurmann
This touches such an important issue! The answer is "yes" but it must become
"no". Our culture has made it such that we think life is about work and
"accomplishing things". "Things" are of course work things. We might or might
not get to a point where we don't need everyone to work. That should be
awesome. Basic income guarantee might solve the economic problem associated
with it, but not the social problem. We cannot derive our self-worth from our
work. We need to learn to appreciate "free time". We need to legitimize
enjoying and practicing the arts. I personally would love a future in which I
could focus on practicing potter, learn Japanese, study economics just for fun
and build the occasional video game or AI player for existing video games
without worrying if it makes money or not. From conversations I've learned
that this is not the case for many people. In a recent interview Marc
Andreessen claimed that people in the midwest don't want checks form the so
called coastal elites, but they want opportunities. We need to learn to be
happy about the freedom we get form just getting the checks.

~~~
njarboe
Maybe a good possible future would be that people focus on earning and saving
capital when they are young and try to get to financially independent (ie.,
can live off the production of saved capital) as soon as possible. If most
people were financially independent, jobs people did not want to do would pay
well and people could quickly reach financial independence working these jobs
(in a decade or so?). I think working hard and having the feeling of earning a
life full of choices would go a long ways to prevent the psychological malaise
of sucking from some one else's (the government) teat ones whole life. Also,
having most of society overseeing capital instead of the 1% would probably be
a good thing. This is possible today in the USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea,
Australia, etc. See the Mr Money Mustache[1] blog for an extended description
and discussion of one way of living this life.

[1][http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/)

------
strict9
Similar story for Gary, a once booming town around a single industry (steel).

>The Gary Works is a major steel mill in Gary, Indiana, on the shore of Lake
Michigan. For many years, the Gary Works was the world's largest steel mill,
and it remains the largest integrated mill in North America.

>The Gary Works remains Gary's largest single employer and a key element of
the city's tax base. However, employment levels have fallen substantially
since the mid-20th century; the plant and allied facilities employed over
30,000 people in the early 1970s, but only 6,000 in 1990, and 5,000 in 2015.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works)

~~~
brianwawok
Oh the smell of the Gary Works. It is rough.

------
sparky_
Austria's generous social welfare system and wide availability of other blue-
collar-yet-comfortable-pay work should mean that the average joe won't be
screwed over too much by this.

Unlike in the US, where laid off folks really have no recourse.

~~~
dv_dt
I would go further. Because Austria has blocked off the tempting and easy path
of abusing a labor market to secure a profit stream, other long-term paths
were explored that ultimately ended up in a higher level of productivity &
profit for society as a whole.

------
mpalmes
I would imagine there will still be a sizable number of jobs outside of
Voestalpine group from contractors/companies maintaining machinery and
transport companies. Will be interesting the long term impacts as well on the
local communities in a country like Austria.

~~~
ramy_d
Don't know about that, 3 of the 14 employees monitor the plant, the rest:

    
    
      The other employees maintain equipment or retool the plant for various wire gauges—hundreds of variations ranging from 4.5 millimeters to 60 millimeters.

~~~
mpalmes
Good point, that takes care of maintenance. Definitely a small/efficient
workforce for the amount of output.

~~~
ramy_d
I mean, to what extent of maintenance are they talking about? At some point,
someone has to fix the machines that fix the machines, right?

~~~
joss82
And who said maintenance can't be automated?

~~~
ramy_d
and why not! it's just another thing we think we're uniquely good at :p

------
nickbauman
There's a theory that any market that is subject to higher and higher
productivity gains will eventually become highly volatile followed by its
collapse.

------
rurban
Incidently I worked on planning the next generation fully automated VOEST-
Alpine plant in Kapfenberg several years ago, when I worked as architect.
Sorry, but I don't have the pictures. They still haven't decided on it.

This is just a new rolling mill to produce HQ wire, all the blue collar
workers are in the iron blasts next door. You can easily get summer jobs
there, which is better than going to Switzerland working in a nuclear power
plant. Some pictures:
[https://www.google.de/search?q=voest+alpine+donawitz](https://www.google.de/search?q=voest+alpine+donawitz)

For the introduction of this new automated mill they didn't cut any jobs:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdiepresse.com%2Fhome%2Fwirtschaft%2Feconomist%2F5211856%2FvoestalpineChef-
will-Arbeiter-durch-whitecollar-workers-ersetzen&edit-text=&act=url)

"Digitization will continue to have no negative impact" said Eder. The
transformation process would "take certainly 15 years - without job cuts," as
the CEO said.

The automation process and foreign producers (Mittal) with its cheap labor had
a huge positive impact on us architects then. We were able to cut costs on
huge steel buildings, e.g. the RESOWI University in Graz, which I also worked
on, the largest building in the country. It was planned for 1.2bill and was
finished under 800m, just because the steel price exactly from this company
VOEST Alpine went down dramatically. Before everything was build with
concrete, brick or wood, then suddenly steel had an unexpected rise in
popularity.

------
edpichler
Here is an interesting video about automation "No one should have to do work
that can be done by a machine, by Roberto Mangabeira Unger" on youtube
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5OyrsHmjW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5OyrsHmjW0)

PS: He is Brazilian, and gave lessons about the field of philosophy to Obama
on university.

~~~
amadeusw
Thank you for sharing. Today I learned that wage labor was intended to be a
transitional relationship until free labor can be achieved.

------
cornflake
The economics behind this disruptive innovation in the steel industry were
broken down really well by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in his
writings and this clip:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5FxFfymI4g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5FxFfymI4g)

------
chrismealy
Where was all the equipment in the new factory made?

~~~
vkou
In another factory, which may well had also employed <20 people.

It almost certainly did not require 10 * 1000 person-years to produce all the
machinery that this factory needs to run for 10 years. If it did, it wouldn't
have been a cost savings.

------
anovikov
There is clearly a mistake in hours per ton of steel calculation. It just
can't be true. It is probably per thousand tons, then 250 hours to make 1000
tons of steel sound reasonable - wholesale market of steel is ca. $300 a ton
so that would be about $1000/hour worked, about average for a highly automated
industry.

------
TotallyGod
But how many people were required to build the automation and also to keep it
running? If they're anything like automated check-out stations in grocery
stores, they employee more people than the low-tech solution did previously.

------
fergie
On a related note, its really surprising how industrialised Austria is- their
Alpine valleys are full of heavy engineering.

------
grashalm01
I've played enough factorio to know that you only need one person. Also
handling the rail system at the same time.

------
amarant
clickbaity as the headline may be, it is yet another indicator that the only
way to secure future employmentrates is to invest in education. "unskilled"
workers as the article calls them, wont be needed anywhere in the not at all
distant future.

~~~
lmm
Education is an easy answer, but are we sure education will be enough? Is
everyone educatable to the point where they will be skilled enough to
contribute to the economy?

------
holri
No wonder. Working hours are heavily taxed while energy / resource consumption
is not.

------
dustinmoris
Blue collar is dead, white collar is the new blue collar and AI is the new
white collar.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Chairman Mao would be proud.

(clicky:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Chairman+Mao+steel](https://www.google.com/search?q=Chairman+Mao+steel)
)

