Tom's trouble with plumbers union.

[Michigan Dave]

Ask people in Detroit how the unions are...of course you can't talk to the ones that don't have jobs anymore since they were getting paid $40+ an hour for tightening a bolt and priced themselves out of the market. US auto makers are going down the tubes because foriegn car makers don't have to pay ludicrious wages like they do in Detroit and apparently for Boston plumbers. $60/hr what a joke.

Once can cite the unions as a large cause for the economic ruin that Detroit is in right now. We had welders making $80K/yr, not knowing any better that that wouldn't last, buying new homes for $400-500K on short-term IO ARMs, 4-5 years ago. All of those bubbles have been bursting in the last 3 years, leaving a ton of people who can't afford their homes (since they either were laid off and now make significantly less, or are out of work completely) and the real estate market has dried up. Economically, this area is a wasteland, save for Ann Arbor, which thrives with the University and the businesses that it attracts (though the jobs here are all white collar.) The auto makers are in a HUGE bind because of the way they were taken behind the woodshed by the unions for years. Pensions, retiree health care (that alone is the largest threat to the Big 3 in Detroit), it's a mess. You can't cut it at this point, and the unions keep pressing for more.

I appreciate the origin of the unions and what they stood for in the early days when working conditions were ghastly and the workers needed a voice to speak for them, and leverage to get a fair deal. However, where we are at now when unions are setting wages that are not equitable to the job and are basically committing extortion, that I'm not cool with.