A decade or so ago, GM was looking to control costs, in particular the benefits, things like the crazy generous health insurance.

The UAW eventually agreed to create two classes of workers - the more senior union people would have their pay and benefits kept intact (mostly), and then it would be the new hires that would see lower wages and reduced benefits.

What they are arguing for now is to bring the new workers up to the level of the senior workers.

During the last negotiations, the UAW agreed to a two-tiered structure where new workers were considered a lower-class than veterans and received much lower pay and benefits.

> But in 2007, as the Detroit automakers were starting to bleed cash, UAW leaders agreed to create two classes of workers – in effect, protecting current members at the expense of future ones. Those hired after 2007 would be paid as much as 45 percent less and have less generous benefits as well as limited transfer rights.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-usa-families/for-ua...

The tiers are large. New hires make $17 per hour, the next tier starts at $28.

That's a big gap for people doing the same work.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/0...

It's that the veteran workers got their pay hikes during earlier collective bargaining agreements. Recently, things like the crash in 2008 have caused newer workers to have different wage growth. They want to bring those wages closer to where they would have been if it had not been for the financial issues caused by the banking crisis and the renegotiated contracts.

>...so there's less benefit to being a veteran worker than there would be as a "knowledge worker?"

There can still be benefits for the company to having an experienced workforce - and it comes down to the company and union culture. I've worked in union shops as in industrial engineer. Your experienced press operator can help troubleshoot problems better and faster than a newbie, and they can tell you all the ways a plan you have is wrong before you implement it. Whether they do or not varies. Some individuals have an attitude of "I do what I'm told and go home at the end of the day", some are more than willing to help and collaborate, some hate their job but are holding out for a pension, some literally work harder at not working than if they just did their job.

I had many internships before starting full time. Some places you'd never guess were union - mostly in a good way. Factory #1 I could go out on the line and talk with anyone, and largely everyone was helpful in trying to make the work more efficient, improve the bad parts of their jobs, etc. It felt wrong, but my first day on the job I went to the R&D manufacturing area with my coworkers, they made small talk with the union machinist, then started machining some parts. I was taken aback, and they then explained the union only really cares about normal production.

Also factory #1, as I was making standard work, one worker was 10' and up a ladder from his toolbox when he realized he had the wrong size socket. He'd messed up a few other times for the same kind of thing and was tired of going up and down. He asked me to hand him the right size socket. I "took work from union labor" when I did that, though that factory had the attitude of "if you're making my life easier, it's okay".

Factory #2: I've also worked places where the union workforce pushes for wage increases for every tiny thing that changes. You took added a monitor to the computer they run a machine with, you moved a few buttons on the interface, you change the process to greatly reduce the safety risks and also reduced labor required by a marginal amount. All of those have been brought up as reasons they deserve a raise.

Factory #3: experienced downtime due to a mouse running into a 2' pit on the production line. The workers exited and refused to return to work until they saw the dead mouse come out. Not directly relevant to the conversation, but a fun story to tell.

They’re referring to two tier wage scales [1].

Workers hired after a certain date have worse pay and benefits, and it takes longer to earn benefits.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tier_system?wprov=sfti1

There are good factory workers, and bad factory workers. On one side you have those that do the absolute minimum (just like any job), while on the other you have people that know how to work more machines and are more helpful in diagnosing production issues etc.

The flaw here is that the only thing that matters is how long you've been hired. Not how good you are. Similar to teachers. Higher pay, shift preference, vacation scheduling, overtime availability, it all goes to the senior employees.

My union shop has two pay schedules. It's a grid of classification x seniority. If you're level 1, you make $8/hr. If you're level 6, you make $24/hr. There are yearly pay increases until you hit the end of the grid, then it's just COL increases.

There's a cutoff date where everyone before is on one schedule, and everyone after is on a different, lower-paying one. It's a concession the union made when the employer was less profitable that it had been. It's always been a dealbreaker that the two-tier system goes away, even though they could afford it.

Of course, management is doing their damnedest to make sure they don't hire anyone who could possibly join the union.

How do you prevent someone from joining a union?

non-full-time employees. Or being in a state with a Right To Work law.

Which is actually worse, because non-union employees are required to be ~represented by the union without paying for that representation~ treated as though they are represented by the union when in fact they are not. So the employee reaps the reward of the union without contributing.

dammit I want to strikeout something and I can't find the correct markup for HN. I know I've done it before.