To the editor:
I have written about this subject a while back ,and wanted to touch on it again, as every day, I see it becoming reality, more and more.
This country is, and was built on, blue-collar workers. But automation is taking away the physical jobs that this country needs to survive.
We’re all in this together and we all contribute to the advancement in life. No matter what the job, it contributes to our way of life. We all need the bucks in our pockets to buy, attain others services and to sum it up, live and survive.That’s what makes the world go around.
What I foresee is a sad state for our future with all this hi-tech stuff going on. I think it’s great with hospital care and in different areas, but not when it puts people out of work! Go in a building that use to be bustling with people and now you see a few people and machines that have taken thousands of jobs.
Take the Gloucester Post Office, for instance, where I worked for a year. Its system was upgraded with new technology to provide faster and cheaper ways to be efficient. That means mail goes to Woburn, where a lot of it, if not all, is presorted and comes back to the post office here so it can be racked faster.
Now we have e-mail, electronic communication, and everyone want to use online because no stamps, faster and don’t have to get off our chairs. What’s happening to all the employees and their families that are outsourced by automation.
The country is hurting economically right now, in debt up to our eyeballs, and I really don’t see it coming back with jobs being eaten up by machines, and everyone thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread. So many jobs are not needed because of hi-tech.
I know I’m going to hear that I should get with the times, and that my ideas are old-school thinking, but to me it’s a reality. I’m sure nothing is going to change. As more time goes by, more automation has to cause the loss of physical jobs.
I’m glad I can say I was born in this city, and at a time when, everywhere you went, there were people working in high numbers, whether cutting fish, working in offices, operating telephone switchboards or serving in other roles that are now long gone.
I feel for our grandkids who won’t have the chance for tech jobs, that won’t be able to find work in the blue-collar industry anymore cause there work is now being done by machines. This world, in my opinion, is going in the wrong direction.
I’m sure many will disagree; they think it’s so easy to do things now. But I see things continually getting worse and worse for the economy because of the loss of jobs to machines.
SAM FRONTIERO
Stuart Road, Gloucester
