I'm not a factory worker, but I can tell you first hand that people are definitely being replaced. At the end of last year the Lowe's where I work went from having 6 or 8 manual checkouts with 2-4 cashiers working at a time, to 6 self checkouts and two manual checkouts usually with only 1 cashier watching them all. Sometimes if we're lucky we might get a second cashier, but they usually end going to cover breaks or something, so it's still pretty rare to have more than one person watching all 6 checkouts.
I'm a huge fan of Rings of Power too, it does a lot of it's own stuff, but it's still pretty much following the basics of what we know from the books. The only thing I know of for sure that it is directly contradicting the books is Gandalf's origin, but that's been one of my favorite storylines in the shows, so it doesn't bother me. Pretty much all adaptations make changes like that, and it really has stayed pretty close to the books in most of the other parts of the show.