November 21, 2005
Unions
Talking about unions/automaker problems with some people I work with at supper tonight one of them said this:
"Unions created a middle class in America."
He went on to say that with out the unions, there would only be the rich and the poor. I thought he was right, but wrong. If you look at how civilizations have increased, the one deciding factor in almost all class standing is education. The higher you were educated, the higher you could rise in wealth/power. Look at middle ages europe, the most powerful people were the most educated. (No, not the kings either, The Church) We talked about it for a bit, and I came up with the idea to ammend his idea to the following:
"Unions created an uneducated middle class in America."
I think that with out unions, there wouldn't be people with no education higher than highschool making more than people with high degrees. When the UAW is bargining for people to "work" at $25-30 an hour base salary (not including benefits), what real drive is there for the children of these people to get education? Honestly, I would have had a hard time justifying it to my child 20 years ago if I had grown up in an autoworker family.
Now the industry is paying for this, and companies like Delphi and Visteon are going bankrupt. GM is planning on laying off 35,000 people in the coming year. What are these people now going to do? If your job for the last 20 years has been using the torque wrench to tighten 10 bolts a vehicle, you don't have much of a skill set to build upon.
The point of this is I think education has been undervalued in the United States since probably around World War I/II, esp. with the Great Depression showing that you couldn't cound on education to be able to keep you in food/shelter. My guess is in the next 50 years, we will see both an increase in people becoming educated as they realize that it will be needed to compete in a Global Market.
Posted by Cynan at November 21, 2005 07:47 PM"GM is planning on laying off 35,000 people in the coming year."
/laugh
"If your job for the last 20 years has been using the torque wrench to tighten 10 bolts a vehicle, you don't have much of a skill set to build upon."
Don't you DARE try to say such a thing. You'll have 1000 UAW workers beating down your door for such blasphemy.
It is funny though, we were just talking about this yesterday. During run off of a machine, there were two line operators talking with my supervisor (who’s been doing this 10+ years) telling him that he did so and so wrong…or this and that wrong.
Now, I don’t have a problem with operators coming in for machine run off. It makes sense. They are here to check that everything is ergonomic, everything is functional, and that the screens/messages aren’t confusing. The BIGGEST reason they are here? To test all of the safeguards we have to program in to make sure that the 10 bolts get put in correctly before it goes to our automatic station, to make sure our automatic station doesn’t crash because of their “UAW required” manual station screwed up and only got 9 of the 10 bolts in.
UAW workers think they are so smart, but it’s funny when you look at how many safeguards we have to put into GM/FORD/Chrysler plants, vs. some of the other plants I’ve been too. AND, then you also look at the pay scale between UAW plants vs. non union plants. 12$/hour vs. 25$/hour??? And the 25$/hour is WITH the safeguards in place. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?? A monkey could operate most of those machines. Heck, my dog could be trained to operate most of those machines if he’d have an opposable thumb.
But I digress. As it is with most things, we focus on the negative.
As for your statements on education, I would tend to agree with most of it. But I would like to broaden it to nearly every type of union there is. I know I focused on the UAW above, but I’ve spent a lot of time around a lot of Union Millwrights, Electricians, and Pipe Fitters in the last 3 months. Now, with this type of job, I wouldn’t say they don’t have any education. On the contrary, I think they do apprentice work for 3-4 years? But it is a very focused education.
The problem is, they start out making 25+ $/hour, and never move beyond that, either in pay, or education. So there is a large majority who have been doing nothing but their specialized task for over 15 years. In this majority, there is a very large minority, who are in this type of rut: Work for 9 months, make 40-50k, and then get laid off, then do unemployment for 3 months. Then another job comes up and they work for another 8-10 months. So on and so on.
I was talking with one of the Millwright supervisors the other day (his son is in Engineering Tech, and he was asking me questions). But he got started in the trade the summer after he started college. When he went back to college his sophomore year, and the bills started piling up, and he wasn’t having as much fun as he was when he was working (lots of moola = moola to blow on fun things) he dropped out, started his apprenticeship, and has been doing it ever since. Now, being a supervisor, he’s not in the “rut” described above. But there are many, many people out there who are. And not to discredit all union workers, there are also a lot of them out there working at places like Lows, McDonalds, etc. which is better than unemployment (in my opinion).
But put yourself into that position. Being 40-50 years old, being laid off from your job, and having nothing else to fall back on.
Shouldn’t it really be this way? You go to school, go to some sort of college, get some sort of job, and start out making 12-18 bucks an hour. Then, if you get layed off, have to move, ….whatever the reason is you lose your job….you fall back on a factory type job making 10-15 bucks an hour until you get back on your feet?
This is where I agree with your ideas. Unions have made it very acceptable to not have any type of education after high school (I don’t classify high school as education…it’s the baseline for everyone now a days). When you can start out with nearly no education (I would say most of the apprenticeships are too focused to count) and live and work for nearly 20 years of your life making 25+ an hour, and then lose that income, what DO you fall back on? As I said above, lots of people end up working in fast food, retail work, or on unemployment. It’s sad, not only for the workers, but for their family’s who have to endure the hardships in between jobs.
This post and comment make me want to quit my job and start working as some sort of bolt-affixer.
Except I'd probably get "fired" by the union boss for working too hard.
Posted by: Naginata at November 22, 2005 09:00 AM"Don't you DARE try to say such a thing. You'll have 1000 UAW workers beating down your door for such blasphemy."
Don't worry, I'll just escape on their break time! :)
Posted by: Cynan at November 22, 2005 06:21 PM