Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Being on strike sucks,butthis is worse!

One more thing...I stumbled over the perfect answer for that question a prospective employer inevitably asks the succesful interviewee: How much money do you want?

Answer: More than you're going to pay me.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

When I was young and inexperienced, I went thru a lot jobs. When I finally landed a decent opportunity I worked hard to learn all they had to offer and to make myself valuable enough that it would be too expensive to replace me.

I started with the company I'm with now on my youngest daughters 4th birthday. She will be 40 tomorrow.

I've managed to live and raise my kids pretty well in that time and have a decent retirement waiting whenever I choose to take it.

Many of my past supervisors did not care for my attitude and the fact that I tend to speak out about things I don't like. They did seem to like the fact that I got the job done, mostly without them being around. In fact, the nearest manager I have to answer to is almost a thousand miles away.

The last of a long line of supervisors that made it their

goal to change my attitude will retire friday, but me and my attitude are still going strong.

The reason I'm still around is that the company cares more for the profit I make for them than anything else

Well, when it comes to luck, seems the harder I worked the luckier I got!

Thats awful broad statement Tom. Ever have an electrician work for you? What about a plummer or a carpenter? Expensive work ain't it. The problem with my trade is that we never formed a union like the others. We've done time studies, we are competitive cost wise as outside shops. The difference is that the job shops pay their employees low wages, the owner pockets the rest. The price of the parts are still the same!!!!!!!!. By the way, I've got the same education as a mechanical engineer, why should I expect a lower wage than other skilled trades?

Don't like billout rate vs. pay? Go to a different job shop.



Why should you expect lower wages than a mech engineer?



For one thing, you don't have a degree. It's just an expensive piece of paper, and doesn't say all that much about qualifications. And still, it's the ticket to better money/jobs.



So, you may know just as much as a mech engineer, but you are not a mech engineer. Liability for the company comes into play here. If you were an engineer, you could be billed out as such, and your work would take on different value to the company.

Stick, guess your lucky to be in a target rich enviroment <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Wasn't long ago they pushed the need for training in the "high tech" field. Everyone went to college expecting good paying IT jobs, only to find most of them were moved to India upon their graduation. Hindsight may well be 20/20, but dang, whom do you trust ?

Know where your comming from. I'm sure most concider me an assh*le at work, but I've also been told I'm the assh*le they want on their side. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Whom do you trust? Yourself....

Being an [bleep] may not matter, if you got the skills to back it up...

AJ300MAG, am I really? After all you are the one that said you went to a union shop and got double the money and bennies. Anyway you cut it, slice it, or dice it double the money and bennies is double the cost to a company. tom

In the USA, union workers get paid as much as union-free workers. The only exceptions are in industries which are effectively monopolized by only a few companies and one big fat union, provided, of course, it is hard for competitors to enter these industries. Steel and Rubber used to be like this, but union power in these industries has gone down the tubes. Autos are going down the tubes slowly.

Union jobs are way less secure, and are lost at a far higher rate than union-free jobs. Not because of outsourcing. Not because they pay less. The Union jobs are less productive because of the ridiculous stifling work rules which increase costs. Typical union rules: Everyone has a narrow job function and thus has to goof off most of the time. You can't give the job to the best guy. Only the most senior. So it goes.

The Union itself must create maximum strife between itself and the company. Otherwise there is no purpose for the union.

A friend of mine, a United Auto Worker member, reports to a Chrysler plant every day and sits in the cafeteria. He thinks there will never be any more of his work in the plant. A nearby Chrysler plant has his type of worker on overtime. He used to sign in and step out to go fishing, but now they make him sit all day.

Such sickening waste, fraud, and abuse. I'll buy a Toyota, thank you, because they better embody American values. Protection of the inept, rewarding the incompetent, ganging up with big companies to charge consumers twice the price of fair wages, and threatening to beat up working people in the night--these union activities have no place in 21st century America.

AJ300Mag, you're treading awful close to the edge here if you're saying what I think you're saying.



Your "training" as being the same as a mechanical engineer doesn't really qualify you for very much, if anything, unless you have real world experience behind it and a demand for your product.
You may not like it, but electricians, plumbers, and other trade work are as skilled, and maybe more so than about 90 percent of the jobs in any market and yet, semi-skilled laborers in auto factories can make as much or more than us just because of their unions and the demand for their product.

I've had buddies with great college educations, but in fields with little demand, whine to me that I was overpaid because I was an electrician without a college diploma? The fact is, while these guys were off goofing off at college at their parents' expense (for the most part), I was working my ass off and learning a skill which I will never perfect due to the changing nature of my trade. Such is the world I choose, and continue to live in with few complaints. No union is going to change that, even though I've been on both sides of that fence and seen the good and bad of both sides of the union fraternity. I've been through strikes, work slowdowns, and other union frivolity- never again. With all the games the unions play these days just to survive and justify their existence, it is a wonder they haven't been outlawed by the RICO act.

As Stick so eloquently has stated several times, if you're unhappy with your lot, it really isn't all that hard to get some training and gain some skills in a field more to your liking and with a demand that will take care of your financial problems in time. Whining about needing this or that is just another excuse used by those who aren't willing to sacrifice in the short term to gain some happiness in the long term. I know what I'm talking about- 2 of my 3 kids were born while I was an apprentice electrician and things were damned tight. But now I can hardly remember what was so bad about those days.
Looks like you're in for a long haul if you're already unhappy with the way things are going now. Only you can change that perspective- your union won't do diddly to raise your happiness quotient.- Sheister

May well be that way at Chrysler, At GM we've been evolving away from that for years now. We've eliminated production classifications down to one. In some plants skilled trades classifications have pared down to two, machine technicians and electricians. In my plant, welders, pipefitters, tinsmiths, hydralic repair, flask repair have all been combined into a millwright classification. Production wise, all employees in a given work group must be able to preform all task covered by that group. The days of being a "single purpose operator" are long gone. Problem is you never hear that in the news media. The only thing seniority is used for is determining shift preference, vacation time and layoff. All job assignments are made by management, seniority has no bearing. So again my friend, your information is flawed. Things have changed in the past ten years, where have you been <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Geeze Tom, you must practice fuzzy math. Get out your calculator and I'll try to explain it to you. With wages and benifits GM figures I cost them $46.00 an hour. For job quoting I must use $60.00 and hour flat fee to produce a part. If it takes me 2 hours to do the part it cost GM $92.00, but to satify their requirement $120.00 goes into the computer. An outside enity will produce this same part in 2 hours, charge GM $120.00, and pay their employee $28.00. So who's the dumb one? We've had blind studies done on us, that at the time we weren't aware of, and proven we are competive with the outside world.

Now your ingnorance is really showing. Toyota's wages and benifits are comparable to the big three. Guess what else, their mark-up per vehicle is also in the 50% range. Of course you'll never get them to open their books and admit to that fact, it's a carefully guarded industry secret.

Sheister,

You touch upon a notion,I weigh heavily.

Being happy,is not to be taken lightly. I don't do stress or nonsense,though of course I'll never be rich either.

A man only lives once,so he mighta as well cut to the chase and get the goody out of the ride. Perspective is everything and I tend to look on the bright side. Meaning,I'd not boot up for an outfit that rubbed me wrong.

Stress is women's work....................(grin)

Sheister, I served an apprentiship as a Toolmaker. I worked for a machine building company. I worked with the engineers from concept to building a working machine. If needed we'd build prototypes to test a theory. We'd bring in raw steel and manufacture the parts of the machine, assemble it, run and de-bug it's operation. I'm required to have the working knowlege of the electrical controls, I install the hydralic systems (pipefitters plumb them), and do all mechanical assembly. Metalurgy, strength of materials, fit and finish all play a part. I've built sparkplug assembly machines, torque converter testing machines, oil and air filter paper folding machines. We built keyboard assembly machine that used 2 high speed robots to place the keys for Apple Computer. We also built a machine that would slam aircraft tires (to simulate high impact landings) until they would explode. Guess you could say that I have the necessary skills to demand a fair wage.

Stick, where did the part that I'm unhappy with my job come from? I enjoy what I do, the wages are icing on the cake! You ought to see the parts I whip out on my spare time <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

That commentary wasn't directed at/towards you.

More of a broad based generalization. Point being,before I'd bitch,I'd bunch it......................

my math is fine. you are the one that said you doubled your pay by going to a union shop. or don't you remember what you said. Is there a union rule against memory? And BTW I know all about GM I have done enough work on systems that are run for them. tom

Tom I remember what I said, your the one twisting the facts. Yes I doubled my wage at the time, but no, we've proven that the cost of parts are the same irregardless of whom produces them. In all reality, purchasing must go thru a single source. They don't manufacture the parts, they outsource it to a job shop, ship it us marking up the price for their troubles! The union has nothing to do with this process, it's dictated by the bean counters in the crystal palace.