Exactly.  Can't see the forest through the trees.

Hmm you must not have ANY idea at all about global economics and how taxing imports can KILL your economy. If you want a little idea of what will happen if we tax imported products and how bad it can be do a google search for chicken tax and Ford Transit Connects. It's actually pretty insane and even more insane that almost 50yrs later this farce has been allowed to continue.


Hmm again 12% and dwindling doesn't control the corporations.

You wanna know what EVERY UAW worker I ever met says about working for UAW? Best job they ever had. I know one guy that's been with Chrysler for over 30yrs and he loves the union but knows it needs to go. The stories I've heard from him about idiots and what they've done and not been fired would piss off most people.


Let's be honest MOST of the time the union scale is way too high. There's no way an 18yr old with 3 months job experience should be making $20pr hr, or more.


Not from what I've read. The plants in SC aren't worried about the unions at all. The laws down there almost prohibit unions. It's not like the Honda plant is going to lose employees to GM in Detroit.


Hmm it's kinda funny that Chrysler was "killing" with their per-vehicle profits with vehicles that had spotty reliability and poor initial quality. Daimler did a lot to hurt Chrysler but seriously how long could they keep paying insane pay rates and having to pay pensions on insane pay rates without going under?

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You've never been inside an auto plant.  You have no idea what you're talking about.  $20. is bare minimum what they should be making, the minute they walk in the door.  Most people wouldn't last 6 months inside an autoplant, especially in the summer.   

What do you have against a 20 year old kid making $20 per hour?  $20 per hour isn't that much money per hr. 

My dad worked in the plants for 2 years when he came from KY.  Before that he worked in Coal mines.  The plants broke him before the coal mines did.  

Autoplants are not easy places to work.

BTW.  Tier II employees make $17. per hr.  not $20.

Unions are evil...period

I was in the Steamfitters union local 486. When the unions were started we needed them. Not so much now. The standards that you speak of are nonsense. Most union people I've been around know that they can't be fired so their standards are crap. Where do you think the term "good enough for government work" came from? Union guys.

Let me tell you a great little story about unions. 100% true and easily proven. With the Steamfitters you'd have guys collecting unemployment while going on vacation. They'd also turn down work in order to keep collecting unemployment and wait on a job that would last longer, a contract for 6 months work instead of a month. My direct boss was an alcoholic that would literally get the shakes if he didn't have a drink by 3:30pm. The big bosses knew how he was and knew that he treated the guys under him like shit but he had been with the union for 20-some years and they were letting him fly under the radar til he retired.

As for people fighting and dying many other people have fought and died for things like having slaves and killing Jews for two quick example. Does them dying for it make it right?

You make mention of one union, which also happens to be a rather small one compared to others. Should a wire monkey that doesn't know anything make $20pr hr? That's how much electrical wire monkeys out here make. Working at the plant and in the mines is TOUGH work and you will never hear me say otherwise. The tedious nature of the work alone would drive me crazy on an auto line, probably within one shift. Living in the Baltimore, MD area you are almost guaranteed to know someone that worked in an autoplant. I happen to know quite a few and have heard stories that would keep me away. The politics of the unions alone are enough to keep me from going union.

By your own admission you've heard stories that would make you not want to work in an auto plant, you've also admitted that it's tough, tedious work.  

But it's not worth $20 per hr?  I don't get it. 

The very nature of an assembly line is so that a person doesn't need to know "everything" he needs to know "his" thing.  So experience doesn't really matter when you're installing a new bumper on a car every 1.5 minutes for at least 8 hours per day.

Hi Honey what did you do today?  

I put 350 bumpers on cars today.
70,000 bumpers in a year
1.75 million bumpers in a 25 year career. 

You can share stories about the Steamfitters Union, but that sotry is playing out across the country right now, whether or not it's a union shop. 

It might not be rocket surgery, but that's back breaking work.

If that's not worth $20 per hour what is?  

Never mind. We are already on page 3.

Working in an auto plant sucked ass. It's a special kind of mundane hell where an hour is an eternity. It is, without a doubt, the most miserable job I have ever had. If the job was so fantastic why did less then 50% of the 220 people I hired in with (april 3rd 1995) make it past the first two years? The simple fact was that many people simply couldn't tolerate the work.

Any time you have a facility with 3000 employees, there's going to be idiots that make an impression on everyone, and those are the stories that get told.

What's makes for the best stories here? The f'd up jobs. Shit, I got to take a picture of this f'd up rack and post it on Remote Central! Holy cow look what those geek squad morons did!



Except an 18yr old with 3 months job experience doesn't make $20pr hr (or more). It takes years to get to scale and that's if you can make it past TPT/EPT status. I knew people who worked for a decade at TPT status before they got their time in and then waited more years to get to scale.


News/Information is a neat thing. People seek out information that confirms their personal bias.

|The plants in SC aren't worried about the unions at all. The laws down there almost prohibit unions. It's not like the Honda plant is going to lose employees to GM in Detroit.

Honda pays a competitive wage that removes the incentive to unionize.


And yet, there they were making money hand over fist. Daimler didn't hurt Chrysler, Daimler flat out stripped the company. There have been books written specifically on the subject (I know, you heard from a friend of a friend who knew a guy that was UAW).

That fact of the matter was, Chrysler was paying those wages and making incredible profits doing so. Enough that they could pay out 250-280 million in profit sharing to employees a year.

As far as reliability/quality a line level worker has almost no control over quality which is dictated by the parts. Let me know when you build a killer rack with walmart house brands....

With a job promising $20 an hour or more, the churn on employees was extremely high. The majority of people who got hired could not handle it.

Experience actually does matter even though the work is repetition. The minivan plant in Fenton spit out a van every 45 seconds. You aren't working on a stationary object either, it's in constant motion. Jobs were maxed out and even a minor screwup would put you "in the hole" and cause a cascade effect down the line since assembly is cumulative.

A huge part of the problem in Autoplants isn't the line worker churn but the engineer churn. There were no experienced engineers. Every new engineer thought they had a solution previously unthought of leading to the implementation of the same failed concepts over and over and over. All of which resulted in a depressing amount of wasted labor and resources.

During a retooling shutdown, a clever engineer decided that weatherstrips should be hung on a rack. Sliding door weatherstrips came in plastic containers with 35 weatherstrips per stacked 6 high. These were originally placed on pneumatic lifts. The engineers racks, although quite fancy and expensive were insufficient to bear the weight and didn't hold up long requiring constant repair.

The lunacy of the concept was that it now took a forklift driver extra time to bring material one box at a time (instead of a skid) and then unload the 35 weatherstrips individually and place them on the rack. The driver had to return every 25 minutes or so to restock (instead of once per shift) Further, material should be handled as little as possible. Any time you handle material you increase the probability for in system damage. Worse yet, the engineers design of the racks had all kind of sharp edges which led to tears and leaks in the water test. To meet the extra labor demand for the material handlers, they added an additional forklift driver to the section. The end result, more labor costs, more material costs, more defects. Yet, this engineer absolutely could not acknowledge the stupidity of it.

I agree with many that unions have played an important role in the history of labor relations in the US. They still do.
I have nine years of experience in custom residential audio/video. Vendor training and real-world experience with brands like Krell, Sunfire, Adcom, B & K, JM Labs, Revel, B & W, KEF, Martin Logan, Monitor Audio, Velodyne, Runco, Faroudja, DVDO, Kaleidescape, McIntosh, Meridian, Lutron, Crestron, AMX, RTI, URC, Pronto Pro, and Elan. I hold advanced certifications for configuring (I don't call it programming) RTI and URC controls.
I also have limited experience in commercial projects, from restaurants to MDUs.
In a startup company, I was the project manager, as well as the qualifying party for the contractor's license. In an established company, I'm the lead technician, installer, and assistant programmer. I've made up to $34/hr, and I feel lucky to be making $20/hr in this ecomony.
Putting a lot of bumpers on a car is hard work. I don't think anyone can justify $20/hr for that work today. Maybe in 1990, but not now.

My best friend is a field rep for the leading power turbine manufacturer in the US. He's not union. He's making low six figures. He goes on and on about how union electricians, pipefitters, welders, elevator operators, and other union workers are delaying his schedule, to the tune of way more than an hour a day. He spends a lot of his time sitting around on job sites, waiting for these 'professionals', and the waiting amounts to literally more than half of his paid hours. He's told me stories about the substandard work ethics of union employees that surpass anything in this thread so far, but I don't want to retell them from the 3rd person's perspective.

I can see both sides of this story. I think unions have been, and still are, critical to protect the US labor force, but I think they've evolved far past the point of being beneficial to the competitive ability of American corporations. I have no idea what needs to be done to reign them in, but I know that abolishing them would bring us down the level of the worst communist nations on earth. All I can say is they can't continue to survive the way they are.

You guys act like $20 per hour is alot of money.  It's $42,000 per year.   You guys act like these guys are floating around on Yachts.  

And as I and Fiasco mentioned.  They don't make $20. per hr.  Tier II employees make $17.00 per hr.  That's $35,000 per yr.   

Poverty line for a family of 4 (2 parents, 2 kids)  is $22,500.  

The difference between 35,000 and 22,500 is $12,500. 

That difference per week = $240.  

That's before taxes.   Not alot of money

I only mentioned $20/hr because someone mentioned it earlier in reference to UAW workers, and because it's my current wage. It took a lot of time for me to get where I am, and I've taken a significant pay cut in order to keep working in a down economy. The economy is what it is. I'm not floating on a yacht, I'd like to buy a decent sport bike for $2,000 next month.

Do you enjoy what you do?

Tier 2 started @ $14 an hour. I think they got bumped to $16 last contract.

I keep seeing bumpers mentioned. Think you want to install 600 of them a shift? Think you could?

Again, it's a special kind of hell you can't possibly comprehend unless you have done it.