The Cotton gin supercharged the “need” for enslaved labor and expanded the slave trade across the south… It did the OPPOSITE of “reducing labor requirements”. some believed it would end the dependency on enslavement in the south, but it did exactly the opposite.
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Automation is a years-long process at best. For a company like Chipotle, they’re also usually custom-designed for the specific requirements of the franchise system rather than an off-the-shelf solution. This seems to be a live test in one store, a step in the process. This chip-making machine itself has probably been in development for the company for at least three years, and the “Great Resignation” only started after the pandemic.
The point being, Chipotle isn’t doing this in reaction to the “BS” of an unusual and unexpected seller’s market in service-sector labour (as Doocy suggests), and certainly not in reaction to the Biden administration’s handling of the economy.
Instead, this sounds like the piloting step of a standard strategy of spending years developing (internally or with a vendor) a customised automation technology that will take one or two tasks off the list for one or two workers per shift.
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Companies have been automating stuff like this for centuries, labor shortages or no.
Fox News was trying to create a narrative suggesting that Chipotle installed these machines because they couldn’t find human workers willing to do the job. The truth, as this CEO clearly states, is that the company would gave probably installed the machines regardless of the current labor market.
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No, companies have to offer legitimate wages and benefits that enable their employees to live reasonable lives in our economy, instead of working themselves to death. The companies offering higher pay and perks like WFH or childcare are having no trouble finding new employees when they need them.
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Once upon a time, Steve Doocy was a stunt weatherman for DC’s WRC-4 and was shot “climbing” the side of the Washington Monument a la Batman ‘66. It was hilarious.
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Really? A Fox News reporter is asking about a technical innovation and the only reason he can think for its motivation is “inflation”? Also, he harps on lack of ability to find workers as if thats a bad thing: that means unemployment rate is down. He has the hivemind talking points down, and top of this list is: “Inflation-- But dont mention record jobs being created or economic growth!”
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Conservatives have been pushing the narrative that raising wages- particularly minimum wage- will lead to inflation and increased automation for years. This narrative ignores that inflation and increased automation happen with or without wage increases, but that’s pretty transparently what Doocey was getting at here.
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I know it’s not the point, but I can’t get over the fact that Mr. Chipotle said, “20 years ago, computers took up a whole floor, now they fit in the palm of your hand.”
Where was he in 2002??? Did he not know we already had laptops?
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To be fair, he’s probably doing that thing where you think about twenty years ago being like in the 70s, because you don’t realize just how long ago that actually is because you’re still seeing it through the lens of feeling like you’re the same person you were in your teens or 20s…
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Yeah, and Doocy didn’t correct him, so they’re probably both doing that. But, still, facts, right? How many young people heard that and were nodding along? (Kidding! Young people don’t watch Fox, do they?)
But to set the record straight - It would’ve been, what? 50 years ago? At least?
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I thought he said in the '20s!
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But we are in the '20ies right now.
And in the 1920ies you’d have had a room full of (human) computers.
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