Tarsand Drivers To Lose Jobs To Automation

[tay]

For Suncor’s roughly 1,000 heavy-haul truck operators, however, the prospect of driverless trucks has raised more immediate fears of significant job losses.


“It’s very concerning to us as to what the future may hold,” said Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707A, which represents 3,300 Suncor employees. Smith said Suncor has signed agreements to purchase 175 driverless trucks.


“That will take 800 people off our site,” Cowan said of the trucks. “At an average (salary) of $200,000 per person, you can see the savings we’re going to get from an operations perspective.”


A wider push to automate various functions in the energy industry is already underway. For example, Canada’s largest drillers, Precision Drilling Corp. and Ensign Energy Services Ltd., use high-tech drilling rigs capable of moving autonomously between oil wells throughout North America.


Unifor’s Smith said he expected that if Suncor began pulling drivers from its “autonomous-ready” trucks, other oilsands mine operators would follow suit and thousands of jobs would be eliminated.






more




How Canada’s oilsands are paving the way for driverless trucks — and the threat of big layoffs

 

[Walter]

Blacksmiths of the world unite.

 

[petros]

Terrible math.

 

[lone wolf]

People out of work don't pay taxes. Rich people have to bitch about the slack they have to pick up. Some fools just can't see a balance

 

[petros]

Smith said Suncor has signed agreements to purchase 175 driverless trucks.


“That will take 800 people off our site,” Cowan said of the trucks

4.57 drivers per truck?

 

[MHz]

3 shifts is 525 people and the fuelers and greasers would make up the rest that are no longer needed.

 

[taxslave]

That is really funny because UNIFOR is basically against resource extraction.
Anyway their prediction is way off because of the increase in technicians required to make these things run. Then there is the incredible amount of downtime when the computers quit talking to each other.We got underground drills that are capable of this but thankfully don't use it. A good driller can line up on a hole in about 2 minutes, takes sometimes 20 minutes with the computer guide. And when the computer or the genius that programmed it get it wrong it is almost impossible to override. Production just stops until the computer is sorted out.

 

[petros]

3 shifts is 525 people and the fuelers and greasers would make up the rest that are no longer needed.

They don't work 5 8s.

 

[MHz]

At 12 hrs you can't run 7 days a week and still have people get time off. (as well as going over the hours limit that OHS enforces)

 

[petros]

At 12 hrs you can't run 7 days a week and still have people get time off. (as well as going over the hours limit that OHS enforces)

Turn arounds son. Turn arounds.

 

[MHz]

Take it up with the author, I already gave you my version of an explanation. Syncrude would have the actual reason. $160,000,000 plus whatever jobs in other mining operations follow the same route. The OP puts that at 1,000's more. Without a replacement job that puts them on welfare at $10,000/yr. Think they will need any counseling for depression?

 

[petros]

Oil Sands aren't going away. Didn't you read the other threads? They'll be extracted and sold off by 2050.

You didn't think that they were going to go unused and left in the ground did you?

 

[MHz]

I'll bet they will get some real big offers on a mine that has 10% of it's product left. BTW they can't predict what is happening 1 year ahead let alone 35. Headlines are to become (even more) science-fiction than it already is.

CNN to Produce 'News-Like Content on Behalf of Advertisers'
Native advertising — sometimes known by its colloquial name, “fake news stories paid for by the world’s most hideous corporations and private interests” — has long been a hallmark of print journalism. Just pick up a soiled copy of Time magazine from the floor of a public restroom and have a look if you don’t believe us. And now the whorish cornerstone of journalism is official TV news practice, although Pentagon contractors posing as concerned citizens have been playing this trick on live television for years. CNN of course is leading the way:

CNN has announced the formation of a new unit that will not report the news. Instead, it will take money from corporations to produce content that resembles news but is actually PR designed to burnish its clients’ images.


The name CNN gives to this mercenary enterprise? “Courageous.”
​

Yes. Courageous. Truly, the only appropriate name. We enjoyed FAIR’s simple yet elegant take on this:

So advertisers will come to Courageous because CNN‘s “trustworthiness” and unwillingness to “blur the lines” will be transfered by viewers to advertising content that is “similar” to CNN‘s news but “clearly label[ed] and differentiat[ed].” This is a business strategy, of course, that only works if the similarity outweighs the differentiation.
​

 

[petros]

80% won't be mined,.

 

[MHz]

Whatever ratio it is (in that not all is suitable for this process as the oil content is lower), that 2050 date is still only a prophecy. Did they see this downturn coming, most likely, did they give the public a heads up, nope, came as a total surprise, so was it news or advertising?
If you were one of the heavy truck drivers and you read that part before as it was published some time earlier they would be thinking their jobs were safe until 2050. Now 800 are facing lay-offs in 2015 and by 2020 that number could be a lot higher if robots in industry is the coming trend. The shift in jobs would be robot designers.

 

[mentalfloss]

Uh oh.

You said the T word...

 

[petros]

When? He never called you Twat.

Whatever ratio it is (in that not all is suitable for this process as the oil content is lower), that 2050 date is still only a prophecy. Did they see this downturn coming, most likely, did they give the public a heads up, nope, came as a total surprise, so was it news or advertising?
If you were one of the heavy truck drivers and you read that part before as it was published some time earlier they would be thinking their jobs were safe until 2050. Now 800 are facing lay-offs in 2015 and by 2020 that number could be a lot higher if robots in industry is the coming trend. The shift in jobs would be robot designers.

Well, if it confuses you, why bother trying to figure it out?

 

[tay]

At the Suncor oilsands mine north of Fort McMurray, drivers and heavy equipment operators nervously watch as massive trucks rumble by with no one behind the wheel.

With each passing truck, workers can imagine their jobs slipping away.

"Trucks don't get pensions, they don't take vacations, it's purely dollars and cents," said Ken Smith, president UNIFOR 707A in Fort McMurray.

Canada's largest private-sector union, UNIFOR represents 3,400 employees at Suncor and considers the emergence of the automated haulage system, or AHS, a greater threat than any economic downturn in the oilpatch.

"The second wave of layoffs due to technology will be crippling to Fort McMurray, for sure," said Smith.

Once those jobs disappear, Smith said, he's worried his members won't be able to find work that comes close to earning the $200,000 annual salary an operator on site now makes.

"It's one of our biggest fears," he said. "That these autonomous-haul trucks will replace one-third of our workforce."

The use of driverless trucks is part of a year-long pilot project by Suncor.

"There are six trucks involved in the evaluation," Suncor spokesperson Erin Rees said in an email. As the company replaces its truck fleet, Rees said, "trucks are being ordered that can be run both by an operator and autonomously."

Rees said no decisions on the "final approach or timing have yet been established."

To Smith, that translates into a future where hundreds of trucks one day displace thousands of workers.

Each autonomous truck represents an estimated loss of five jobs, said Smith, who predicts the technology being tested today will put 1,000 workers, some 30 per cent of the workforce, on the unemployment line. And that's just at the main Suncor mine. There are several other massive mines in the region.

The AHS trucks are being used in an isolated section of the Suncor mine site.

Suncor has contracted the trucks and technology from Komatsu, a Japanese company that is a world leader in AHS. According to information on its website, Komatsu specializes in construction and mining equipment, and first introduced a commercial AHS in 2008.

Smith predicts the Suncor site is just the beginning. He anticipates other mines will quickly adopt the same system, putting more men and women out of work.

"If we lose one-third of the workforce out here in the oilsands, it would be devastating to a community that's probably down about 15,000 jobs as it is, just from the downturn."

"In terms of its employment impact, they're potentially fairly significant, and that is a challenge for government and for the private sector, and for the union sector as well," Mason said. "So we'll all have to address that in the future. There's going to have to be a good amount of public discussion about this as we go forward."

Suncor said the evaluation of the AHS system is ongoing, and data collected will determine if autonomous trucks will be implemented in the future.

No decision has yet been made and no firm timelines are in place.

Oilsands workers worry driverless trucks will haul away their jobs - Edmonton - CBC News

 

[taxslave]

Fewer jobs for truck drivers maybe. But if our atuomated equipment is any indicator many new jobs for computer techs and mechanics.

 

[Danbones]

they figure all the driving will be robotic in about ten years
but not just driving jobs will be gone
better hope they come up with something better then welfare
there is very little trickledown with welfare

Fewer jobs for truck drivers maybe. But if our atuomated equipment is any indicator many new jobs for computer techs and mechanics.

depends on whether we go PC or Mac
lol