How Much Did it Cost
Every day milions of us walk into our local Sears, or Walmart, or hardware store to buy a hand tool. Tools are pretty cool items to have around the house if you’re a handyman or just a weekend fixer-uper.
Do we really have any idea how much those little items we spend our money on really cost? Not in terms of money, but in terms of what it took to actually manufacture those items.
Before I began my long and checkered career with Corporate America in the IT industry, I was employed by a company who manufactured tools for a large department store. They were excellant tools, and nearly indestructable. Unfortunately the people who made them were not.
Working in an assembly line isn’t what you would really call "skilled labor", even though some people have developed a high level of skill at it. The company starts you out at maybe slightly above minimum wage for that reason. Health benefits are usually pretty good, thankfully, because you will probably need them.
Shortly after starting to work, I noticed several people walking around with "gauntlets" on either one or both hands. We called them gauntlets, but in reality they were wrist and hand braces designed to help people with wrist and hand problems. Shoulder, back, neck, and arm braces were also commonly worn. It was like working in a rehab center with a lot of accident victims.
What many of you may not be aware of, is that assembly work in itself is extremely repetitive. According to doctors repetitive motion can cause carpal tunnel, a swelling in the "tunnel" where your tendons go through your wrist which can cause numbness and loss of control in the hand. An operation to correct this and relieve the pressure can actually do more harm than good. You can lose feeling permanently.
I also noticed many people walking around with mutilated or missing fingers, smashed hands, burns, etc.. All in all, not a very cheery place to work.
Oh, did I mention dangerous? Bad enough I suppose to lose a digit, or the feeling in one or both hands. Any idea what the physics are when a two ton press comes down on a piece of metal? There are "safety" devices to keep a workers hands out of the mechanism while they put tools to be pressed into and out of to the tune of several thousand a day. I was witness to a time when all the safety devices in the world wouldn’t have helped a worker when the die shattered. Part of the die embedded itself in the wall behind him, sunk in about two inches. How it missed him no one ever could figure out.
OSHA does visit manufacturers by the way. It may be that they announced their visits that they rarely found any serious violations.
The next time you buy a tool stop and wonder… how much did it really cost? If you look closely you might even see the blood and sweat still there, or if not maybe you can imagine the ruin in terms of the people who will never be able to do what you’re doing right now because they can’t control their hands any more.
I made it out of there myself with all my digits intact, with only occasional problems with numbness and tendonytis in my elbow and shoulder. Sadly many others do not.
D Brooks