NOVEL WEB Chapter 3: Titans of Industry
The King Aerospace mega factory south of Porto sprawled like a shining white city. This was where the rockets that carried hunds into a new space age had been designed and built. This was where dreams came to be made.
At over a hundred acres it was one of the largest buildings in the world. The roof was dotted with grids of black solar harvesters on white poles that produced enough surplus electricity to power most of Porto.
The harvesters were meter wide spherical balls of matte black modified silicon that drank in every spectrum of light, every radio wave, every little bit of heat. They sucked the life out of the world around them and pumped it down into the factory below to power the massive machines.
The roof and the poles that held the collectors were painted with a special white reflective paint that made the building shimmer like a mirage. You could recognize it from space, the white dot that showed where home was.
Every day thousands of workers rode the rail line in from the city of Porto to work in Simon's factory. Wages were higher than industry average, benefits were exceptional, and education for the workers and their families was free. But this wasn't because of some socialist dream. There was a reason behind his apparent charity.
"I needed better workers and they weren't available so I took it upon myself to make them." Simon had explained to the reporter who came to interview him. I remembered how the soft white katzen with her long hair and watery blue eyes had held onto every word like she was in the presence of a god or some other divine being. She kept looking around like she couldn't believe she was allowed to be there in his office. Nervously she rubbed her thumb against the pen in her hand, too scared to write.
"It started with the construction of the factory itself. We recruited local labor and paid them well. Funding wasn't a problem because those days the Western Alliance was throwing money at us trying to speed things along. But we didn't have enough people. Nobody did. Every company was banging their head against that same wall. We were drinking international and local labor pools dry trying to finish our factories. That was when I realized that if I wanted to make rockets I'd have to manufacture a suitable work force first."
"It all broke down to math. Cold hard numbers. We needed X amount of bodies to do X amount of work. But unlike the competition who had a one day at a time approach we worked the problem in reverse. We started with the end goal in mind and worked our way backwards step by step. We had a twenty year plan when everyone else was flying by the seat of their pants and cutting corners to try and be first. We didn't need to be first, we needed to be the best. I had no desire to burn bright, only to burn out."
Simon paused dramatically, leaning back in his red leather desk chair and looking at the ceiling, his fingertips pressed together.
"Building a factory of this size has an immense effect on the local economy. Every decision ripples outward causing new problems as time goes by. We couldn't hire enough people to fill our needs. There just weren't enough qualified workers. And what about when the factory was finished? Would we just lay everyone off and wash our hands of them?"
"Like I said before, everyone else was scrambling full speed ahead trying to get their factories built. Our two main competitors Altitude Dynamics and Victory Aerospace were on track to finish construction a full year ahead of us. So I did something that none of them saw coming, I pumped the brakes."
He smiled because this was his favorite part of the story. "There are some benefits to owning your own company and one of them is being able to do what is right long term instead of having to capitulate to anxious investors."
"There was no need to rush to finish the factory because I didn't have enough workers to fill it yet. Nobody did. We were dividing up the labor pool among too many companies. Now, if you think finding construction workers is hard, try hiring engineers and machine operators. So while the competition was laser focused on building their factories as quickly as possible I was investing in improving my workforce."
"Victory Aerospace was working their people for twelve hours a day in hellish conditions. We gave our people two options. They could work a standard eight hour shift building the factory. Or they could do a shorter six hour shift and we would pay for them to go back to school. The smart ones, the ones we actually wanted to keep once construction was finished, jumped at the opportunity. Then we doubled down and sent their children and spouses to college as well."
"There was an unexpected side benefit to this. Because we were training some of the workers as machine operators and engineers they were able to spot issues that the architects overlooked. I still remember when a young hund named Javi nervously approached me because he realized the doors he was supposed to install weren't big enough."
"The architect hadn't noticed. The site supervisor hadn't noticed. But Javi had been training as a machinist and he knew there was no way the new lathes were going to fit through a door that small. Because of Javi we rechecked every door in the facility and were able to fix our mistakes before they became real problems."
"When our competition completed their factories the market was suddenly flooded with construction workers looking for jobs. Workers who had hands-on experience building factories like ours. Many of the companies they worked for had gone under or closed down after the work was finished which meant we could acquire their assets and equipment for a fraction of what it was worth."
"Some of them went to finish the factory and others were pulled for other projects. But our labor shortage was over. In fact, I finally had enough people to form my own construction company, King Consolidated. We went to work building affordable housing and beefing up the city's aging infrastructure."
"When the factory was completed we were in an advantageous position because we already had a reliable and well trained workforce ready to go. Construction had taken four years, enough time for the children of the original workers to finish school and join their parents."
"The extra year of delay hadn't hurt us much. In fact it might have saved us. Altitude Dynamics and Victory Aerospace were burning through money and getting nowhere fast. Manufacturing issues and rushed production schedules had led to a series of high profile disasters and unnecessary deaths. Investors were panicking and threatening to pull the plug."
"Meanwhile King Aerospace hit the ground running. Our initial tests weren't particularly impressive, but they didn't explode either. We were using old and proven technology made with modern manufacturing methods to reliably launch satellites and other cargo into orbit. We weren't trying to reinvent propulsion. We just wanted to perfect what was already known to work."
"Altitude Dynamics was the first to go under. Everyone expected us to try and take them over but I knew better than to swallow that poison pill. Victory Aerospace ended up absorbing their former rival but the acquisition left them overextended. They ran out of money and closed down not long after…"