One of the most corrosive effects of unions is the need of the business they've extorted to make a profit now that the wages are higher and the sale price of the good is inelastic.
That means you can't just raise prices for you SEIU members.
You can't lower wages, the union has seen to that.
But what if you can get the union worker to make more units in the same time frame?
So you engineer things to be easier to assemble and automate the assembly of as many parts as you can.
I got laughed at for pointing this out, but a bot can make a circuit board with embedded relays on it for lot less than paying a UAW worker to install relays in a fuse box.
Thus, we end up with a $500 part we need to replace because a relay failed rather than a $5 relay.
It's why we have to buy assemblies and cannot buy parts.
I am retired Air Force and 65 years old. I was Commo in the AF and I had the High Reliability Soldering class. My last job I was putting together circuit boards. After a month of putting together circuit cards, I contacted a company that would make the boards for a quarter of what I could. I was unemployed not long after.
ReplyDeleteThe assemblies can also be made elsewhere, which is not subject to union labor rates. The equivalent portion of the machine might cost $500, but it probably costs only $50 to have it made in China and shipped over. Even if you subcontract locally, the lower labor cost might reduce the price down to $300.
ReplyDeleteThe upshot being is that it HAS to be a removable, self-contained subassembly now. And that the main business won't stock parts, just subassemblies. While they probably know what those parts are, they don't have vendors and supply chains set up for them.
I'll make an exception to unsigned comment to reply to it.
DeleteThe infuriating part is the service manual explains how to disassemble and repair several of these assemblies.
Someone intended for them to be serviced. Somewhere there's a part number for the sub-components.
But the dealer doesn't want to pay the fix the part rate. The part has to come out anyways and replacing the entire assembly takes less mechanic time. Note: They are not charging the customer less to replace a complete AC compressor when the, serviceable, clutch dies. More jobs for the same money, which comes back to piece rate...
Ah crap, sorry about that. Tis me.
DeleteDaosus
Another problem is when the union is taken over by bad guys. Our friend Angela (remember her?) told me about the time her dad's plant went on strike---and stayed out a lot longer than they needed to because the union's leadership was paid a lot more while they were on strike than while they were working. She had never forgiven them. And do NOT get me started on what happens when the Mob gets into a union---it becomes a shakedown, pure and simple.
ReplyDelete