Chapter 146 - 146 Labor Safety and Health
Steve was at the factory's prototype building with Nick and Cyril.
Before their eyes stood a vertical press machine, with a die and a thin steel plate set in place. The plate was large, protruding significantly from both the die and the press machine. Furthermore, a humanoid iron golem was wired to the press machine. The material of the wire was steel.
Nick was tapping that golem with his fingers.
"Is this guy the safety device?"
"Yes, it is."
Steve, wearing a ring that allowed him to command the golem, held the thin steel plate with one hand.
"Push!"
At Steve's command, the golem pressed the start button of the press machine. The upper die descended, sandwiching the lower die and the thin steel plate, then rose back up.
Next, Steve placed his hand, which was not holding the thin steel plate, onto the lower die.
"Push!"
He gave the command again, but the golem did not press the start button of the press machine.
Steve was satisfied with this.
"See? When there is a possibility of a hand getting caught, the golem judges it and does not press the start button. I thought we could do this when we can't use area sensors."
Area sensors are safety devices that prevent machine tools from operating if an object is within the sensor's range. While they are basically installed on all press machines, many products have layouts that make installing area sensors difficult.
When Steve created the press machine with his magic, he discovered that reproducing area sensors was possible. However, anticipating cases where area sensors could not be used, he tried having the golem press the start button instead.
The reason for the wired connection was to make it clear which golem corresponded to which press machine.
And, the golem had pre-programmed commands to not press the start button if a worker's finger was about to be crushed while operating its assigned press machine.
"Wakasama."
"What is it?"
"Wouldn't it be better to reverse it?"
"It won't work. There is a possibility that a person could enter the golem's rotation range and get injured."
Nick's doubt was reasonable. If there was a possibility of fingers being crushed, dangerous work should be left to the golem. However, based on Steve's experience, there were many cases of people getting injured by entering the movable range of industrial robots.
Therefore, the golem was made to perform only the action of pressing the button.
Nick understood and accepted what Steve said.
Then, Cyril asked a question.
"Can't we just have the golem do the dangerous work in the first place?"
"If we do that, the subjects' jobs will disappear."
This was the side effect of automation. Simple tasks could be replaced by industrial robots, but doing so would make the workers who were employed there unnecessary. While this might be very welcome news for a business owner, from Steve's standpoint, there was a worry that if he did not prepare the next job for the subjects who became unnecessary, they would become unemployed and turn into a source of social unrest.
For that reason, he deliberately chose not to have the golem perform all the work. There was an option to do so when there was a shortage of workers, but he thought that workers might feel anxious about being fired, so he couldn't bring himself to take that step.
Hearing Steve's explanation, Cyril understood that this was how it would be from the perspective of a lord.
"Even so, it's going to look like the castle of the Demon King from a story. The factory will be full of golems. Why don't you have them do security work too?"
"I won't do that because it would be troublesome if the subjects mistook me for an intruder."
Even while saying that, Steve imagined a Demon King's castle.
"The Demon King doesn't live in a factory, right?"
As a result of his imagination, he could not find even a fragment of the "Demon King-ness" in a factory surrounded by golems like industrial robots. Nick laughed.
"Well, we do have a president with strength like a Demon King."
"As a Demon King, I was thinking of making my subordinates' wages human blood."
"If the subordinates were vampires, they would cry with joy, but unfortunately, I am human."
While the two were having such a joking conversation, Cyril was seriously thinking about the safety of the press machine. In Japan, press machines are regulated by the Labor Safety and Health Act. However, since the Kingdom of Cascade did not have such laws, they had to create them from scratch. Furthermore, the Labor Safety and Health Act was the result of the accumulation of past accidents, and the Kingdom of Cascade had no such accumulation of accidents.
Therefore, it was difficult to consider what was dangerous and what needed to be regulated by laws and rules.
"I think it is difficult to easily reproduce golems, but we must create rules considering safety."
"That's right. We could create a definition for 'workplace accidents' and have them reported to the country, starting from gathering information on situations where people got hurt at work."
Nick thought that was impossible.
"Wakasama, that's impossible."
"Why?"
"Ordinary workshops have the idea that if you get hurt, it's your own fault. Even I, when I got hurt when I was young, was told by the master that it was my fault and that was the end of it. Also, people might think there will be a penalty if they report it, so some might hide their injuries."
"That's true."
As Nick said, in the world of craftsmen, the idea that those who get hurt are at fault was common. Furthermore, even in Japan, workplace accidents were often hidden. In the equipment manufacturer Steve had dealings with in his previous life, he had heard stories that when an injury occurred upon delivering equipment to a client's factory, the injured person would go home once, change into casual clothes, go to the hospital, and claim they had gotten hurt doing DIY at home.
This was because causing a workplace accident at a client's site would cause trouble, and there was a possibility that orders would not come from them in the future.
In fact, when an equipment manufacturer caused a fatal accident at a large company's factory, the police got involved and the factory stopped operations for several days. Because of this, that equipment manufacturer was excluded from the list of selected ordering destinations.
However, since it was an excellent equipment manufacturer, he had also heard that they took the form of a trading company taking the order, while the actual work was done by the original equipment manufacturer.
For these reasons, he fully understood the possibility of accidents being hidden.
"The only ones we can definitely grasp are the work ordered at our factory and the Royal Research Institute, and those working inside the institute."
"Besides, press machines aren't generally circulated. It's mostly just the ones you made, Wakasama."
"That's true for now. But if we make rules like that, in the future, no one will lose their fingers, right?"
"Yes. At the current number of machines, you can keep track of them, and even if a finger is lost, it can be healed, right?"
Nick bent and straightened his fingers, gesturing that a lost finger could be regenerated.
"For our employees, yes. If we tried to heal all the injured people in the country, we wouldn't be able to do anything else, so we won't do that."
"That's true. Well, but press machines and grinders don't stop just because they hurt. If this were a saw we used ourselves, we would stop if it hurt, and we wouldn't lose our fingers. I don't want to let unskilled amateurs handle them."
"Actually, they might become more careless after getting used to it. When it's the first time, they are scared and become cautious, right?"
"Now that you mention it, that's exactly right. I remember being scared of hot iron when it was my first time and pulling back my waist. The master got angry at me for being scared, but I got burned after I got used to it."
"See? That's how it is."
He rarely heard of craftsmen who lost their fingers while grinding lathe cutters with a grinder having had such accidents when they were newbies. Most of the time, accidents where fingers were lost happened when they were skilled and their attention became scattered.
The industrial machinery Steve created was groundbreaking, but in that respect, there was no accumulation of safety knowledge in the country. How to handle this was a major issue.
"By the way, golems don't need to be humanoid, do they?"
Cyril asked while touching the golem's body.
"That's right. It's just for ease of understanding. Having just a hand to press the button is enough."
Golems can check the field of view with magic even without eyes, so there is no need to make them humanoid. This is simply because it is Steve's hobby to make them humanoid.
"Wakasama, that would be boring. If there were beautiful golems with big breasts or handsome golems, everyone would be motivated."
"I think they would get distracted and defects would multiply."
Steve sent a cold look at Nick, who was looking at the golem with impure thoughts.
"Is that so? I always think I can work harder if a beautiful woman cheers me on from behind."
"Shall I report this to your wife?"
"Please stop."
"Then shall we place a golem that looks exactly like your wife in the factory?"
"Stop it even more."
"Be serious at the workplace."
"Yes."
He made Nick give up by saying that at the time, but later, Nick conspired with the employees to deliver many voices to Steve saying that humanoid golems of handsome men and beautiful women would be good for the workplace, achieving that purpose.
Thank you as always for your typo reports.