JOHNTHOMAS
Super Member
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2008
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- Somerset, Ky
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Merry Christmas to you also. JESUS, THE REASON FOR THE SEASON!!Bethesda you hit it pretty darn close. I really have to wonder where people get their wage figures from, I think out is they're pulling them out of their arse or getting them from Fox News. I know what the current wage is where I used to work in "Closed" Union Shop, "closed" as in you had to be in the Union or you didn't work there. I'm gonna tell y'all right here and now that I do not I know of any Union workers making $50-75/hr. The current wage in the shop I'm going to tell you about for a Journeyman Machinist is $25.04/hr. plus benefits and benefits get lower with every contract. To get in this shop is not easy, they recently wanted to hired 3 Journeyman Machinist, meaning you better hit the floor able to do or make what's put in front of you. In the last hiring session over 50 showed up, when told there would be a mandatory drug test about half left, when they got through doing aptitude testing only 2 made it through. There's more talent in the Union shop I worked in than any place I've ever worked and there's been quite a few. This facility has cranes from 1 ton to two overhead 200ton cranes, that's not a typo it's 200ton, that's the kind of equipment being handled there.
I realize it's cute and all to throw off all the problems of this country onto Unions and there probably is some Union workplaces where stuff isn't getting done or done right but I can assure you there's Union facilities out there that are the envy of the world. The facility I spoke of has been visited by nearly every Class 1 railroad, the head of FRA and Rail Administrations from other countries. The workmanship coming out of that shop is top notch. Equipment so well built that they have built massive amounts of equipment for other railroads.
I tried to bugout of this thread but some of you folks haven't a clue as to what you're talking about. Turn off the Fox News, stop drinking their Kool-Aid and start thinking for yourself for a change. Merry Christmas!
Read your entire post and applaud it but I see nothing in it that supports a Union as having anything to do with the quality of work. Looks to me like any good employer with some good employees and I don't see where the Union had anything to do with the quality output.
If 25 people graduate from HS and all go to work in the same community. Say one to a Union Assembly Company and all the others to a Non Union Assembly Company. All 25 work a 40 hour week putting a part on an assembly moving by them on a moving line. One (the Union Worker) gets paid $35 per hour plus "benefits" and the other 24 earn $9.27 per hour and a few benefits. Now which of these workers can buy a boat and a new car and a more expensive house and all of them having the same education and work experience and work output? Now, will the $35 an hour employee plus "benefits" ask all his neighbors to support him and only buy products that his company makes or even to only buy products assembled at a Union Shop?
Now if I'm one of the $9.27 an hour workers that didn't have the "pull" or luck to get a job that pays almost 5 times as much as I make for basically the same work.......... no, I'm going to buy the item that I can afford like MOST of my neighbors that work for a more normal local rate of pay. Am I going to feel "sorry" for my $35 an hour plus benefits neighbor when his company shuts down????
The cost of living is less in different locations. I live in an area with a low cost of living. Many retired ex Union workers move here after they retire and their retirement income puts them up in the more high priced housing neighborhoods and where they make about 4 to 5 times as much during their retirement age as most of the other retired individuals that live in the area as well as more than most skilled currently workers in the area. Many are complaining about having to pay part of their insurance now while their neighbors are covered under Medicare which "ain't" great.
Most are nice people but due to some lucky breaks are living much better than most of their neighbors. Many took their pot of gold and split Detroit and Cincinnati and moved further south where the living is easy (and cheaper).