{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/conveyor-operators-and-tenders/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Conveyor Operators and Tenders", "soc_code": "53-7011", "category": "Transportation", "us_employment": 22930, "median_annual_wage": 42420 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 30, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 8, "embodiment": 15, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 2, "judgment_accountability": 4 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Starting, stopping and speed-adjusting a belt, watching for spills and logging tonnage are already done by PLCs, load cells and photoeyes in any plant built after 1995 — the 8 rather than 3 reflects that unjamming a rock crusher chute, hand-feeding irregular bales or lumber onto a moving belt, and hosing down a plugged transfer point still need a body on the floor.", "embodiment": "You work on catwalks and in transfer tunnels around pinch points, moving guards, shoveling spillage under tail pulleys, and reaching into equipment that will amputate — uncontrolled dust, noise and grade conditions put this at 15, short of the 18-20 reserved for jobs that move to a new unmapped worksite every day.", "liability_shield": "No state licence, no board certification: your employer's OSHA 1910.147 lockout/tagout authorization and a forklift or crane card are internal paperwork, so the citation lands on the company, not you — the 1 rather than 0 is only that authorized-employee designation.", "trust_premium": "Downstream nobody knows which tender kept the line running; the output is tons moved past a scale, and a temp from the agency can hold the same station tomorrow — the 2 covers only the crew knowing which of you can hear a bearing going bad.", "judgment_accountability": "Your calls are bounded by written procedure — e-stop when the belt tracks off, radio the millwright, don't reach past the guard — and the real decisions about feed rate, blending and shutdown sit with the control-room operator or shift supervisor, which is why this sits at 4 and not 10." }, "rationale": "The job is physical — standing at a line, starting and stopping belts, clearing jams, sorting and positioning material, logging throughput — so language AI barely touches it directly, but conventional automation does: sensors, PLCs, vision-based sorting, and variable-speed drives were built specifically to eliminate the tending function. What remains is jam-clearing, manual feeding of awkward loads, and lockout/tagout maintenance help in cluttered plant environments, which is genuine embodiment but low-discretion and easily consolidated into fewer material-handling roles. No license, no client relationship, and almost no ambiguous decision authority means there is nothing holding headcount in place once a facility upgrades its line.", "outlook": "Employment keeps eroding as facilities retrofit sensor-driven, self-regulating lines; the surviving jobs will be titled maintenance tech or material handler rather than conveyor tender.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "OSHA's lockout/tagout standard (29 CFR 1910.147) and machine guarding rules designate 'authorized employees' who must personally perform energy isolation; an update to 1910.147 (long on OSHA's regulatory agenda) or a state-plan rule that explicitly bars remote/software-only de-energization sign-off for conveyor jam clearing — requiring a named trained employee physically at the isolation point to verify zero energy — would make the tender the person whose signature the plant needs. MSHA's conveyor standards (30 CFR 56/57.14105-14107) already work this way in aggregate mining.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Waste/recycling and agricultural processing lines handle non-uniform, contaminated, deformable material where vision sorting still fails and jams are frequent; if the occupation's employment concentrates further in MRFs and food/ag processing (as single-stream recycling contamination rules and state organics-diversion mandates like CA SB 1383 push volume there), the surviving work is disproportionately unpredictable-environment jam and foreign-object handling rather than clean-line tending.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier split exists: routine start/stop/speed and throughput logging vs. diagnosing why a line keeps jamming and improvising a fix. If PLC/VFD upgrades absorb the first tier while the role is retitled toward conveyor troubleshooting and belt maintenance (splicing, tracking, roller replacement) — the path many plants already take when consolidating material-handling roles — the remaining day is harder to automate, though headcount falls at the same time.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "A union contract or corporate safety policy giving the line tender explicit stop-work authority — the unilateral right to halt production on suspected guarding or entanglement hazard without supervisor approval, as USW and some Teamsters warehouse agreements contain — converts a low-discretion post into one owning a consequential call. Post-incident, that authority is what OSHA and plaintiffs' counsel look for.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "No realistic route to a trust premium: there is no buyer who knows this role exists, let alone one who would pay extra for a human at the belt. Even where the liability and judgment levers land, they attach to fewer bodies — the shield protects the position, not the payroll count, and a plant needs one authorized employee per isolation procedure, not twelve tenders." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 26570, "wage": 32300 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 23390, "wage": 32980 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 24050, "wage": 34660 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 23160, "wage": 35770 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 28650, "wage": 36420 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 27780, "wage": 36890 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 24660, "wage": 39260 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 26060, "wage": 41230 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 22930, "wage": 42420 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -13.7, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "tank-car-truck-and-ship-loaders", "title": "Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 53, "median_wage": 58870, "overlap": 83, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Financial Resources", "Mathematics" ] }, { "slug": "operating-engineers-and-other-construction-equipment-operators", "title": "Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 64, "median_wage": 59850, "overlap": 78, "skills_to_close": [ "Equipment Maintenance" ] }, { "slug": "tree-trimmers-and-pruners", "title": "Tree Trimmers and Pruners", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 70, "median_wage": 50960, "overlap": 77, "skills_to_close": [ "Equipment Selection", "Management of Financial Resources" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }