With old-fashioned electric meters gone, the meter-readers will be laid off.

[mfcorey1]

Technology can be good and bad.

Florida Power & Light’s celebrated replacement of its electric meters with digital devices has brought a predictable side effect: laid-off meter readers.

The utility giant is ramping up its planned elimination of about 690 jobs throughout the state, a downsizing brought on by the stimulus-funded installation of “smart meters” throughout Florida. The new meters link directly to FPL’s computer system, eliminating the need for a squad of workers paid to visit each customer and manually record the electric consumption.

So far, about 190 meter readers have been let go statewide, an FPL spokeswoman said, including 21 last month. That leaves roughly 500 positions to be eliminated in the next 18 months. Of the remaining cuts, 50 will come from the meter-reading ranks.

“We no longer have to send a meter reader to your home,’’ FPL spokeswoman Elaine Hinsdale said Thursday. The company’s meter readers “knew it was a temporary position, and that once this technology was rolled out these jobs would go away.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/06/3437277/with-old-fashioned-electric-meters.html#storylink=cpy

[House of Roberts]

1. I still have a meter reader for water/sewer usage.

They have to cover the same ground whether they read both or just the water.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Technology and society march onward

The car put blacksmiths and farriers out of work, self-service pumps put gas station attendants out of work, the switch to diesel engines put railway firemen who stoked the fireboxes of steam engines with coal out of work, the rise of affordable air travel put Pullman porters out of work, and it goes on and on. Yes, it's too bad for those put out of jobs, but it's the inevitable consequence of technological advancement. The biggest problem seems to be suitable employment for those made redundant by technology (but then we're really at a point as a society where the nature of work itself and the need for it should probably be questioned; in a service economy, most people work at jobs that don't need to be done in the first place).

[Art_from_Ark]

4. And in the meantime, we have gone from a time

when an "unacceptable" unemployment rate was 4%, to a situation where a big deal is made when the unemployment rate dips below 8%. And the new jobs that are being created usually don't pay diddly squat.

[Fla Dem]

3. I would then expect my electric bill to be less.

No salaries to be paid, no expenses to maintain a fleet of trucks/cars for the meter readers and no fuel that has to be purchased. But that won't happen. Yes there will be the initial expense of purchasing and installing the new reader, but when will the benefits of this new technology lower my bill?