My father is a paper mill worker, specifically, a hydroelectric technician. He spent over thirty-five years with the same position in the same mill. He used to feel like his job was secure but now computers are taking over the working world. Slowly but surely, computers took over my father's job.
The first time that computers affected my father's job was in the eighties. It involved his overtime pay. This overtime consisted of men being called in to perform maintenance on some of the equipment that was used on the job. My father was one of the men that received overtime pay. In order to cut down on these overtime costs, his company decided to invest in computers that would automatically maintain this equipment when needed. Before these computers were installed, men that were called in when maintenance needed to be performed did this job. My father felt like this was unfair and it made him angry that a machine was taking over a part of his job.
The company however, liked the results that these computers were giving them. Overtime costs were drastically cut down. As the years went by and technology progressed, my father was still working in the mill as a hydroelectric technician. As a hydroelectric technician he works on the rivers producing hydroelectric energy. It was a required part of his job to be able to read dials that gave information about the water level, current flow, temperature, and various other properties of the water. This information is taken down and called in to a dispatcher. It was sometime during 1993 when computers changed this aspect of his job. The dials that were in current use were considered old and not as accurate as new computers that show a digital readout. Once again, the company invested in some new technology and computers replaced the old system of dials. During the process of the installation of these new computers, the stations where the hydroelectric technicians worked at were shut down.
