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Comment by mchristoff | Hacker News Reader

huh?? in the last 15 years gm has closed dozens of plants. yes, certainly the union fought to get the best deal collectively for their workers, but you have to have rocks in your head if you think people like my father felt entitled. they felt lucky to have a job.

as for finding another job... you highlight my point! it's pretty fucking difficult to find another job when after 20 years the only thing you're qualified to do is work in a general motors factory, particularly when your supporting a family. if my dad had the luxury of "finding another job", don't you think he would?

again, im not defending gm, the uaw, or any of the system as whole, i'm simply highlighting the fact that maybe the situation is a bit more nuanced than you understand.

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"it's pretty fucking difficult to find another job when after 20 years the only thing you're qualified to do is work in a general motors factory"

I've always had a problem with this argument. If you work 40 hours a week, you've easily got time in 20 years to do anything you'd like to do -- including becoming a brain surgeon.

I'm honestly not trying to be cold about it, but the rest of us live in a world, especially in IT, where you have to keep learning new skills in order to survive. I'm very sad that people thought that GM would last forever and that they could simply get trained in one skill and have it last a lifetime. But those days are over. They've been over for a long, long time.

Lots of great comments here, but not this one: you cannot work 40 hrs/week, have a family, and become a brain surgeon in your spare time. I have 5 doctors in my immediate family and know a bunch more in medical school, and you have no idea what you're talking about.

That being said, I'm with you about needing to learn new skills. The days of the company man are over, and in our new world you need to have a set of skills and competencies that you can take where needed. But can you imagine how hard and scary it would be for someone who has worked in the same job for 40 years to try and do something new?

We're all free agents. It's a lot of fun.

I know someone who decided to became a Doctor at 30 (no kids or wife). He did not go to a top med school but he graduated without debt and works in the ER. Now he has a wife, but no kids and works part time so he could become a brain surgeon. It's cheep to live a lower middle class existence and working full time in the summer you can make a lot of money to live off of the rest of the year. The idea that you need to go to a top med school and then as soon as you become a doctor you start driving a BMW is why most of his coworkers are poor and he has a nice savings.

My brother was the first person (ever) to go an offshore med school and then do his residency at Mass General (the Harvard hospital). So yeah, definitely don't need a top med school. And doing that at 30 (or 25 or 40) is awesome.

But a family is the biggest commitment/obligation you can have - [almost] impossible to deal with wife/kids/work/med school concurrently.

You're right, it is difficult. But where your Dad is at (the same place my Dad was at) is nothing more than the product of their own decisions. Is it anyone's fault but your Dad's that he's only qualified to work in a factory? Is it anyone's fault but my Dad's that he didn't learn about computers even though he saw them appearing everywhere?

My Dad was able to learn some new skills and eventually land on his feet after being unemployed for quite some time. Hopefully your Dad is able to do the same.

sure, no one is entitled to a job. that's not my point at all. things change and jobs change. what I was trying to explain is why my dad would travel 100mi to get to work. yeah sure, he could have went to med school or something, but he had a family to support and nearing retirement that was his best option. i feel it's pretty arrogant to even make a statement, "why did he just find another job". sure he could have, but i think just as my dad did, most people make rational choices given their situation.

to clear things up also, this is past tense. my dad retired. the greatest concern to me is GM not living up to their commitment to him in retirement benefits.

Look, 25$/hour + Free heath care + Vacation + Retirement is way better than most Americans get today. I knew someone supporting a wife and 2 kids making 7.25$/hour + a lot of overtime working as a cook at Denny's and going to collage at the same time. That's America, sure he worked all the time and had no life but now he has a good job and if he was in a dieing industry he would do it again.

Unions have done great things to bring heath care and a living wage to most americans but they kept pushing and over time they have distroyed many companies. Management was doing the same thing and they shorted the pension program etc but these companies are dieing and assuming they are going to keep just as many people employed long term is stupid. Capitalism creates efficiency by destroying jobs, when one welder can do the work of 4 you lay off the redundant people and move on.

PS: Saying they pay 2k per car in pension benefits is silly, if they made twice as many cars their pension benefits don't go up. Yes, they have huge unfunded liabilities but if they made coffee they would still have that same costs. Fixing pension cost's is all about growth not cutting benefits.

I understand. But again the situation is just what he created for himself (and what my Dad created for himself). Everything - the wife, the kids, the car, the house (if applicable) - those were his decisions and my Dad's decisions.

People need to be accountable for their actions and realize that your current state is no one's fault (or achievement) but your own.

Part of the problem is, that the higher you force the wage, the fewer employees a company can employ. So, when unions push wages (and pensions) too high, it prevents the companies from hiring as many employees. In the case of UAW and GM, it went so far that GM was forced to close down factories and many UAW workers lost their jobs as a result.

A better way to improve wages and income for workers is to improve their productivity, that is, their subjective worth in relation to the employer, as wages tend to naturally approach this value. Tis is best done by increasing the quantity and quality available to the workers. Effectively this means increasing innovation, which GM and Ford have not been able to provide for years. UAW is part of the problem here as well.

Not that unions are all bad, workers should have a negotiating body in order to prevent abuse by employers, but I think that in this case they are part of the problem.

I'm in my mid-40s and in IT and have the same feeling. Good luck finding something in this economy no matter what industry.

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