A real reason for gravel bikes?

On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country, always confident
of finding a day or two of work everywhere and anywhere (As I did.
Everywhere.) .

Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I also did it
while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It seemed I'd have
to spend many hours waiting inside a Manpower office to have a chance at
getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt than at the
bottom of society, those who suffer most.

I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will, many have
very high barriers in front of them.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 21:38:44 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 9:16 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 20:16:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 6:55 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 05:30:10 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 2/20/2020 12:16 AM, John B. wrote:

snip

Wasn't California a state that instituted the "3 strikes and you're
out" thing where habitual criminals were kept in jail?
--
cheers,

John B.

Like many laws, it was a poorly thought out, feel-good law. It created
tremendous prison over-crowding, keeping many people in prison that were
no threat. One person received a life sentence for his third
strike--stealing a piece of pizza from a group at a birthday party in a
pizza place, even though he asked one of the kids for a slice and the
kid nodded yes. The kid said that he was scared and prosecutors said
that it was "robbery by intimidation."

The 3 strikes law resulted in another poorly thought out law, Prop 47,
that allowed habitual criminals to not go to prison in an effort to
comply with federal mandates to reduce prison over-crowding. It has led
to a wave of retail theft and car break-ins
https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsID=1247.

Go to a department store or a drug store these days and it's almost like
back in the olden days where a shop employee has to get you the
merchandise. And we're not just talking about liquor or smart phones,
we're talking about Tide detergent, bicycle accessories, ibuprofen,
sometimes even candy. It's locked up
https://sacobserver.com/2018/01/shoplifting-is-to-blame-for-locked-up-items-not-walmart/.

England, in the 1800's, and I'm sure other countries, have tried to
solve the problems of habitual criminals. England, at least partially
solved the problem, by shipping the miscreants off to Australia, but
what can be done today?

One might try branding a big "T" or "R" on the evildoer's cheek or
forehead but that might start a new fashion trend like the ripped
jeans and the four day growth of beard,

Or perhaps the "Prison Farm" solution as was used in Mississippi,
among other states. That could, if managed properly, turn out to be a
profit making establishment.

Or is working now deemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment?


The precedent is a branded face with an "F" for "fugitus",
which was effective because giving food or shelter to a
branded fugitive was a capital crime. We're not ready for
that here. Yet.

While of course there are exceptions I do read that a rather large
percentage of those imprisoned commit further felonies after being
released, as many as 70% in some instances. It would seem that a
certain percent of the population are criminally inclined and
unfortunately this percentage appears to be increasing as in 1976
incarcerated amounted to some 232/100,000 in the U.S. while in 2018 it
was 655/100,000, an increase of 280% in 42 years (unless I got my
numbers wrong). Scary!
--
cheers,

John B.


Many aspects of our culture have changed over that time, not
the least being the demise of casual (cash) labor and
draconian barriers to entry (minimum wage, reporting, ID
cards, endless capricious liability resulting in 'background
checks' and such) into labor markets. This is pernicious as
regards young and unskilled since no 'first job' often means
no job whatsoever. But it's fatal to the formerly incarcerated.

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work everywhere
and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) . This is no longer
true, to the greater loss of the nation's wealth and
productivity, no more painfully felt than at the bottom of
society, those who suffer most.

It is largely a factor of a richer economy I think. When we were first
married, 50 years ago, getting a housemaid was easy. You told the
housemaid next door that you wanted a maid and the next morning there
would be three or four waiting at the gate. Today there aren't any
Thai housemaids, they've all got a job in a factory and ride around on
motorcycles. We have a woman that comes in and does the heavy work (
my wife is 75 ) and she has a pretty busy schedule - "Well, lets see,
I could let you have Mondays and maybe Saturdays, as I'm busy the rest
of the week".
--
cheers,

John B.

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 2:16:46 AM UTC, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/20/2020 6:55 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 05:30:10 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 2/20/2020 12:16 AM, John B. wrote:

snip

Wasn't California a state that instituted the "3 strikes and you're
out" thing where habitual criminals were kept in jail?
--
cheers,

John B.

Like many laws, it was a poorly thought out, feel-good law. It created
tremendous prison over-crowding, keeping many people in prison that were
no threat. One person received a life sentence for his third
strike--stealing a piece of pizza from a group at a birthday party in a
pizza place, even though he asked one of the kids for a slice and the
kid nodded yes. The kid said that he was scared and prosecutors said
that it was "robbery by intimidation."

The 3 strikes law resulted in another poorly thought out law, Prop 47,
that allowed habitual criminals to not go to prison in an effort to
comply with federal mandates to reduce prison over-crowding. It has led
to a wave of retail theft and car break-ins
https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsID=1247.

Go to a department store or a drug store these days and it's almost like
back in the olden days where a shop employee has to get you the
merchandise. And we're not just talking about liquor or smart phones,
we're talking about Tide detergent, bicycle accessories, ibuprofen,
sometimes even candy. It's locked up
https://sacobserver.com/2018/01/shoplifting-is-to-blame-for-locked-up-items-not-walmart/.

England, in the 1800's, and I'm sure other countries, have tried to
solve the problems of habitual criminals. England, at least partially
solved the problem, by shipping the miscreants off to Australia, but
what can be done today?

One might try branding a big "T" or "R" on the evildoer's cheek or
forehead but that might start a new fashion trend like the ripped
jeans and the four day growth of beard,

Or perhaps the "Prison Farm" solution as was used in Mississippi,
among other states. That could, if managed properly, turn out to be a
profit making establishment.

Or is working now deemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment?


The precedent is a branded face with an "F" for "fugitus",
which was effective because giving food or shelter to a
branded fugitive was a capital crime. We're not ready for
that here. Yet.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

As a consolation prize, it won't be long before Bloomie arranges for smokers and soda pop guzzlers and the obese and those unfortunate enough to be young while being black to be hunted through the streets for being a drag on his plans for a cleaner, better-organized, smarter, thinner America prior to selling it to China.

Andre Jute
Irony didn't die, it was overtaken by American elections

On 2/20/2020 9:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work
everywhere and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) .

Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I
also did it while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It
seemed I'd have to spend many hours waiting inside a
Manpower office to have a chance at getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt
than at the bottom of society, those who suffer most.

I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will,
many have very high barriers in front of them.


And changes in work itself. It was once possible to show up
at any truck terminal around midnight and to transfers
(truck-to-truck, dock-to-truck) which was badly paid
unskilled manual labor. Now, almost everything is palletized
and moved (more efficiently) by machines. There are no
mason's helpers (really crappy job and very hard work). Even
dishwashing has a much lower labor content. In the larger
sense these are improvements but, again, a closed door to
the marginal human.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 2/21/2020 8:54 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/20/2020 9:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work
everywhere and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) .

Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I
also did it while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It
seemed I'd have to spend many hours waiting inside a
Manpower office to have a chance at getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt
than at the bottom of society, those who suffer most.

I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will,
many have very high barriers in front of them.


And changes in work itself. It was once possible to show up at any truck
terminal around midnight and to transfers (truck-to-truck,
dock-to-truck) which was badly paid unskilled manual labor. Now, almost
everything is palletized and moved (more efficiently) by machines. There
are no mason's helpers (really crappy job and very hard work). Even
dishwashing has a much lower labor content. In the larger sense these
are improvements but, again, a closed door to the marginal human.

Another example: I was once doing robotics work at a large manufacturing
facility. A problem we were trying to solve was orienting components.
Injection molding machines were spitting out thousands of components,
but their orientation was random. The robotic assembly operation
downstream needed perfectly consistent orientation and location.
Vibratory bowl feeding is the most common solution, but couldn't work
with these parts. Oh, and there was a similar problem on a different
line, where the parts were larger but had to be consistently oriented to
pack them for shipping.

The company was trying all sorts of cutting edge technology, up to
multiple machine vision systems controlling multiple robots just to get
the parts oriented.

At one point, I asked why we couldn't just hire people from one of the
local "developmental disabilities" programs, and give them jobs
orienting things. It was my understanding that some such people welcome
work like that. It would give them fulfillment, pride of work, a bit
more independence, etc.

Nope. Not permitted. It would violate a union contract, and nobody had
any interest in wading into contract modifications.

When I left there, they were still wrestling with the orientation problem.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 10:23:46 PM UTC-6, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 21:38:44 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 9:16 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 20:16:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 6:55 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 05:30:10 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 2/20/2020 12:16 AM, John B. wrote:

snip

Wasn't California a state that instituted the "3 strikes and you're
out" thing where habitual criminals were kept in jail?
--
cheers,

John B.

Like many laws, it was a poorly thought out, feel-good law. It created
tremendous prison over-crowding, keeping many people in prison that were
no threat. One person received a life sentence for his third
strike--stealing a piece of pizza from a group at a birthday party in a
pizza place, even though he asked one of the kids for a slice and the
kid nodded yes. The kid said that he was scared and prosecutors said
that it was "robbery by intimidation."

The 3 strikes law resulted in another poorly thought out law, Prop 47,
that allowed habitual criminals to not go to prison in an effort to
comply with federal mandates to reduce prison over-crowding. It has led
to a wave of retail theft and car break-ins
https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsID=1247.

Go to a department store or a drug store these days and it's almost like
back in the olden days where a shop employee has to get you the
merchandise. And we're not just talking about liquor or smart phones,
we're talking about Tide detergent, bicycle accessories, ibuprofen,
sometimes even candy. It's locked up
https://sacobserver.com/2018/01/shoplifting-is-to-blame-for-locked-up-items-not-walmart/.

England, in the 1800's, and I'm sure other countries, have tried to
solve the problems of habitual criminals. England, at least partially
solved the problem, by shipping the miscreants off to Australia, but
what can be done today?

One might try branding a big "T" or "R" on the evildoer's cheek or
forehead but that might start a new fashion trend like the ripped
jeans and the four day growth of beard,

Or perhaps the "Prison Farm" solution as was used in Mississippi,
among other states. That could, if managed properly, turn out to be a
profit making establishment.

Or is working now deemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment?


The precedent is a branded face with an "F" for "fugitus",
which was effective because giving food or shelter to a
branded fugitive was a capital crime. We're not ready for
that here. Yet.

While of course there are exceptions I do read that a rather large
percentage of those imprisoned commit further felonies after being
released, as many as 70% in some instances. It would seem that a
certain percent of the population are criminally inclined and
unfortunately this percentage appears to be increasing as in 1976
incarcerated amounted to some 232/100,000 in the U.S. while in 2018 it
was 655/100,000, an increase of 280% in 42 years (unless I got my
numbers wrong). Scary!
--
cheers,

John B.


Many aspects of our culture have changed over that time, not
the least being the demise of casual (cash) labor and
draconian barriers to entry (minimum wage, reporting, ID
cards, endless capricious liability resulting in 'background
checks' and such) into labor markets. This is pernicious as
regards young and unskilled since no 'first job' often means
no job whatsoever. But it's fatal to the formerly incarcerated.

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work everywhere
and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) . This is no longer
true, to the greater loss of the nation's wealth and
productivity, no more painfully felt than at the bottom of
society, those who suffer most.

It is largely a factor of a richer economy I think. When we were first
married, 50 years ago, getting a housemaid was easy. You told the
housemaid next door that you wanted a maid and the next morning there
would be three or four waiting at the gate. Today there aren't any
Thai housemaids, they've all got a job in a factory and ride around on
motorcycles. We have a woman that comes in and does the heavy work (
my wife is 75 ) and she has a pretty busy schedule - "Well, lets see,
I could let you have Mondays and maybe Saturdays, as I'm busy the rest
of the week".
--
cheers,

John B.

You illustrate a very obvious difference between your part of the world, and the USA or western Europe. Almost no one lives in houses where people would be "waiting at the gate." I've never lived in a house with a gate and presumably surrounded by a fence. I assume to keep the undesirables away. I know in your part of the world there is a definite caste system.

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 11:27:14 AM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 5:18:53 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 3:16:28 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 6:03:22 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 2:49:10 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 10:08:15 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/19/2020 11:39 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 8:44:43 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 7:44:15 AM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 8:30:57 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 6:47:53 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/18/2020 5:08 PM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 18 Feb 2020 14:36:28 -0500, Frank Krygowski wrote:

“In 10 years, we’re going to start turning roads back into gravel†if
nothing changes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/b...sin-roads.html

As I've mentioned, Ohio has 88 counties. Some, like mine, have many more
miles of county roads than do others. But the state's funds distributed
for county road maintenence gives each county 1/88 of the total instead
of giving on a per-mile basis. I frequently see the effects when riding
from one county into another.

Are roads in the U.S. really as bad as described here? I grew up in
New England, went to school in Florida, lived in a number of states
including Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, California and Maine, drove coast to
coast a couple of times and while I wouldn't say that all the roads
were as smooth as a billiard table I would say that they were pretty
damned good.

Granted I left the U.S. in 1972 but have U.S. roads deteriorate from
"pretty damned good" to the wilderness of chuck holes that I see
described here?
--
cheers,

John B.


I'm also of the glass-half-full school on that. Are there
roads in poor repair? Sure. But there are long term
replacement schedules which can be reviewed at your State
DOT web site.

Example- WI Hwy 19 from Springfield Corners to Mazomanie, a
road I use weekly, was about 1/4 literally AWOL. With an
oncoming milk truck, the best technique was to pull over
where possible and stop because two vehicles couldn't pass
in large sections. That was rebuilt in 2018 and is now an
absolute joy.

#2- WI Hwy 60 in front of our building is being replaced
this year. Sure it needs help, but I'm much less excited
because this will involve an assessment and months of dust.

On 2/20/2020 4:55 PM, John B. wrote:

snip

Or perhaps the "Prison Farm" solution as was used in Mississippi,
among other states. That could, if managed properly, turn out to be a
profit making establishment.

Or is working now deemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment?

A lot of the high cost is in medical care, personnel, and food. Highly
unlikely that enough money would be generated to offset those costs.
Plus it would take jobs away from non-criminals.

The root cause will be unlikely to be addressed. Used to be a lot of
living wage union jobs in auto manufacturing, large appliance
manufacturing, ship building, etc.. Those jobs have been shipped to
China, Mexico, etc.. California's been especially hard hit in that
regard, the only automobile factory left is Tesla. Used to have multiple
Ford and GM plants, as well as the shared GM/Toyota factory that Tesla
took over.

Manufacturing continues to be hard hit under Trump, partly because of
tariffs. In just the four months following Trump’s swearing-in nearly
12,000 American jobs were moved abroad. On top of GM’s layoffs, Ford
recently announced that about 24,000 out of 202,000 workers, may lose
their jobs.

On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 12:09:03 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 10:23:46 PM UTC-6, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 21:38:44 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 9:16 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 20:16:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 6:55 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 05:30:10 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 2/20/2020 12:16 AM, John B. wrote:

snip

Wasn't California a state that instituted the "3 strikes and you're
out" thing where habitual criminals were kept in jail?
--
cheers,

John B.

Like many laws, it was a poorly thought out, feel-good law. It created
tremendous prison over-crowding, keeping many people in prison that were
no threat. One person received a life sentence for his third
strike--stealing a piece of pizza from a group at a birthday party in a
pizza place, even though he asked one of the kids for a slice and the
kid nodded yes. The kid said that he was scared and prosecutors said
that it was "robbery by intimidation."

The 3 strikes law resulted in another poorly thought out law, Prop 47,
that allowed habitual criminals to not go to prison in an effort to
comply with federal mandates to reduce prison over-crowding. It has led
to a wave of retail theft and car break-ins
https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsID=1247.

Go to a department store or a drug store these days and it's almost like
back in the olden days where a shop employee has to get you the
merchandise. And we're not just talking about liquor or smart phones,
we're talking about Tide detergent, bicycle accessories, ibuprofen,
sometimes even candy. It's locked up
https://sacobserver.com/2018/01/shoplifting-is-to-blame-for-locked-up-items-not-walmart/.

England, in the 1800's, and I'm sure other countries, have tried to
solve the problems of habitual criminals. England, at least partially
solved the problem, by shipping the miscreants off to Australia, but
what can be done today?

One might try branding a big "T" or "R" on the evildoer's cheek or
forehead but that might start a new fashion trend like the ripped
jeans and the four day growth of beard,

Or perhaps the "Prison Farm" solution as was used in Mississippi,
among other states. That could, if managed properly, turn out to be a
profit making establishment.

Or is working now deemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment?


The precedent is a branded face with an "F" for "fugitus",
which was effective because giving food or shelter to a
branded fugitive was a capital crime. We're not ready for
that here. Yet.

While of course there are exceptions I do read that a rather large
percentage of those imprisoned commit further felonies after being
released, as many as 70% in some instances. It would seem that a
certain percent of the population are criminally inclined and
unfortunately this percentage appears to be increasing as in 1976
incarcerated amounted to some 232/100,000 in the U.S. while in 2018 it
was 655/100,000, an increase of 280% in 42 years (unless I got my
numbers wrong). Scary!
--
cheers,

John B.


Many aspects of our culture have changed over that time, not
the least being the demise of casual (cash) labor and
draconian barriers to entry (minimum wage, reporting, ID
cards, endless capricious liability resulting in 'background
checks' and such) into labor markets. This is pernicious as
regards young and unskilled since no 'first job' often means
no job whatsoever. But it's fatal to the formerly incarcerated.

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work everywhere
and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) . This is no longer
true, to the greater loss of the nation's wealth and
productivity, no more painfully felt than at the bottom of
society, those who suffer most.

It is largely a factor of a richer economy I think. When we were first
married, 50 years ago, getting a housemaid was easy. You told the
housemaid next door that you wanted a maid and the next morning there
would be three or four waiting at the gate. Today there aren't any
Thai housemaids, they've all got a job in a factory and ride around on
motorcycles. We have a woman that comes in and does the heavy work (
my wife is 75 ) and she has a pretty busy schedule - "Well, lets see,
I could let you have Mondays and maybe Saturdays, as I'm busy the rest
of the week".
--
cheers,

John B.

You illustrate a very obvious difference between your part of the world, and the USA or western Europe. Almost no one lives in houses where people would be "waiting at the gate." I've never lived in a house with a gate and presumably surrounded by a fence. I assume to keep the undesirables away. I know in your part of the world there is a definite caste system.

Disregarding "shop houses" where the family shop is on the ground
floor and the family lives in the upper stories, practically all
houses have a fence around them... with a gate.
And, yes, it does keep the undesirables. i.e. thieves, away.

And yes, there is a definite caste system in Thailand... based
primarily on money. And nearly all self made.
The Charoen Pokphand Group Co., for example, is the world's biggest
producer of animal feed, as well as a great many other foods, was
started by the grandfather of the current family selling flower seeds
out of his house.
The Chirathivat family controls Central Group, the country's biggest
mall developer, again the business was started by the grandfather
selling goods out of the front of his house.

And so on.
--
cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 11:14:17 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 2/21/2020 8:54 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/20/2020 9:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work
everywhere and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) .

Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I
also did it while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It
seemed I'd have to spend many hours waiting inside a
Manpower office to have a chance at getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt
than at the bottom of society, those who suffer most.

I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will,
many have very high barriers in front of them.


And changes in work itself. It was once possible to show up at any truck
terminal around midnight and to transfers (truck-to-truck,
dock-to-truck) which was badly paid unskilled manual labor. Now, almost
everything is palletized and moved (more efficiently) by machines. There
are no mason's helpers (really crappy job and very hard work). Even
dishwashing has a much lower labor content. In the larger sense these
are improvements but, again, a closed door to the marginal human.

Another example: I was once doing robotics work at a large manufacturing
facility. A problem we were trying to solve was orienting components.
Injection molding machines were spitting out thousands of components,
but their orientation was random. The robotic assembly operation
downstream needed perfectly consistent orientation and location.
Vibratory bowl feeding is the most common solution, but couldn't work
with these parts. Oh, and there was a similar problem on a different
line, where the parts were larger but had to be consistently oriented to
pack them for shipping.

The company was trying all sorts of cutting edge technology, up to
multiple machine vision systems controlling multiple robots just to get
the parts oriented.

At one point, I asked why we couldn't just hire people from one of the
local "developmental disabilities" programs, and give them jobs
orienting things. It was my understanding that some such people welcome
work like that. It would give them fulfillment, pride of work, a bit
more independence, etc.

Nope. Not permitted. It would violate a union contract, and nobody had
any interest in wading into contract modifications.

When I left there, they were still wrestling with the orientation problem.

In contrast, Thailand has, effectively, more than 100% employment with
some 2 million registered foreign workers employed and probably nearly
another 2 million unregistered foreign workers. And, yes, some of the
largest factories have robots but work is essentially still done by
hand.

Of course, we don't have labor unions either. Minimum wages are set by
the central government and actual wages are set largely by supply and
demand.

For example, my wife's "woman who comes in to help with the heavy
work" (free translation) gets paid about 30% more than the minimum
rate simply because there is a large demand for her services and she
can charge that much. Which somehow seems pretty fair to me.
--
cheers,

John B.