Economic and, more importantly political, forces are strongly aligned against the belated desire to improve domestic supply chains. Outside of a major war I don’t think those are surmountable. Consumers don’t want to spend more money than they have to.
Yeah, jobs like that have always been around. Door-to-door salesman, shoe shiner, independent insurance agent. Decades ago when I was new to the job market I tried my hands at jobs like that and they were awful. I learned quickly that it was not the kind of job for me.
Aside: Obviously the first two suck. Not sure about the third, but man, being a dedicated agent for a major company like State Farm is a cash cow! Once you’ve built up a clientele, it becomes a goddam annuity business where the cash just rolls in without the agent having to lift a finger. And even after the agent goes off into a very comfortable retirement like my last guy did, his client base riches are redistributed to new agents who need do nothing more than snooze in their chairs and count their money. I know whereof I speak as a good friend of mine was a State Farm executive until he retired. He was well paid and got a generous retirement package, but always felt he’d have been a lot richer (and a lot less stressed) had he been one of their agents instead of an employee.
I think there is a large excluded middle between ‘union labor’ and ‘underpaid workers in possibly unsafe job conditions’. Given that union workers make up only 9.9% of American workers, that excluded middle includes the other 89.9% of the American work force.
And trying to staff trillions in infrastructure projects from 9.9% of the population, who are already near full employment, should be interesting.
At a time of 3.5% unemployment, demanding union-only labor for infrastructure projects will drive up the cost, slow down the projects, and poach valuable workers from the private econpmy.
That’s a good reason to make sure strategic materials are not located in adversarial countries. Biden’s policies are going in the opposite direction. The ‘green transition’ moves the entire energy supply chain to Asia, where about 90% of the solar panels, cobalt, lithium and other strategic materials come from. In the meantime, the rising cost of energy will push more manufacturing to countries who are burning coal. Asia again.
Strengthening the supply chain would be best accomplished with a North American free trade zone. No ocean shipping, and Canada is a stable democracy and the largest trading partner of the US. Cutting us out of the infrastructure loop will just make it harder and more expensive to build infrastructure in the US, and make the supply chain even more brittle by removing diversity.
And also, Canada is fully capable of retaliating. You get an awful lot of strategic material from us. Trade wars don’t help anyone, but Biden is asking for one.
Silicon valley is cutting because the money is about to dry up. Higher interest rates divert capital away from high-risk investment. I was just listening to the ‘All-in’ podcast, hosting by four Silicon Valley money men. They said that the last rounds of easy money is over, and that companies who were spending like crazy on the assumption that the money would keep flowing are realizing that they are onloy a year or two away from bankruptcy. Their valuations have dropped 50% or more across the valley, which lowers the amout of funding you can get. So they are all trying to switch to a leaner model that will keep their businesses alive.
Tesla stock, however, has doubled since its low when Elon bought Twitter.
Realistically, benefits are equivalent to a reduced pay stub. There’s nothing to stop you from taking the extra money and buying an insurance product with the extra take-home.
Now, yes, the argument would be that the company has more leverage to get a reduced cost insurance package since the insurance companies will get several thousand customers all at once by signing on a full corporation. But, likewise, there’s nothing to stop the drivers from talking to each other and nominating a negotiator to go and negotiate on the behalf of all of the drivers to get a similarly priced package.
Likewise, there’s nothing to stop the drivers from forming a vehicle maintenance service that drivers can chip into and take out of.
Nitpick: It’s actually 10.1% as of 2022, and over 33% of public sector workers.
But there’s a major point here that isn’t a nitpick. Unions exist where they’re historically most needed, frequently for the protection of workers in labour-intensive industries in the interests of both collective bargaining and workplace safety, and not so much where there’s less need for them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [PDF] low rates of unionization occur in industries like insurance, finance, and professional and technical services, not the kinds of labour-intensive industries that would be heavily involved in infrastructure projects.
To the extent that professional and technical services are largely not unionized because they don’t need to be, I’d happily make an exception on the unionization mandate for any industry that is not commonly or typically unionized. Incidentally, the above-cited BLS report also states that non-union workers had median weekly earnings that were 85 percent of earnings for workers who were union members, and there’s lots of other evidence for exploitation and workplace safety issues for labour-intenstive non-union shops. It’s a demonstrable moral issue, and one in which government has a legitimate role, even if it’s just a very tepid role in setting requirements for government contractors.
Unionization is something we aren’t going to agree on. I am not anti-union, I’m anti-closed shop.
In Alberta, we have union and non-union tradesmen working side by side. Employers are free to hire whoever they want, so the unions had to learn to provide value to the employer. So in return for higher pay and benefits, the union takes on the responsibility for safety training HR, and can provide large numbers of workers on short notice. It’s a win-win situation.
I have a big problem with an employer being forced to hire union, and a tradesman being forced to join a union in order to work. This is especially so when the union uses the employee dues to support candidates and issues the employees may mot agree with.
But this is a political difference we aren’t going to solve or argue each other into or out of, so lets just say we disagree and leave it at that.
OK, and just FTR, I’m not unconditionally pro-union, either. Some of my rants against CUPE and CUPW, for example, might have characterized me as maybe the most anti-union dude in existence – like my rants about some of the disgraceful and even violent CUPE tactics during the Toronto garbage strike or non-faculty CUPE staffers pretty much shutting down York University.
But yes, there’s much about unions where I’m sure we’re on opposite sides, but it’s not relevant here, so I agree – let’s drop this hijack.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Ah, you are serious? I personally find that delusional. We have people in McJobs, we don’t freaking have much of anything in industry left. Hell, even mrAru who does manual work [he does quality assurance for a company making hydrogen fuel cells and assorted stuff the equipment uses, his previous industrial QAI job was working for a company that repairs/renovates chopper parts for Sikorsky] was getting pretty grumpy at the selection of jobs. [to keep money coming in after retiring from the military he had even worked call in customer service for the big red check phone company, for the snoopy health insurance company and whatever temp stuff the 3 temp agencies he was registered with - he hates paperwork, he likes manual labor]
I had 4 jobs outsourced out from under me by the time my health deteriorated enough for me to say screw trying to work. The jobs available to me in eastern CT were convenience stores, gas stations, fast food, mall stores. If I wanted anything more customer servicy, I had to drive the 50 miles into Hartford [or 75 miles to Cheshire, I really liked the call center I was working in there until it got closed down. Sigh.]
McJobs are likely the future. Anything repetitive can and will be automated until the point where the only jobs are decision making and one-off design work. I’d expect the latter to be where the majority of the workforce goes and current signs are that it’s often going to be by contract or by gig.
At the moment, working as an Etsy artisan, making custom products by hand, might be an occupation with some longevity - if you want to do something in the realm of manual labor.
But, in general, physical work is going to continue to go from an occupation to a hobby. Tesla’s failure to fully roboticize offers some hope for manual labor, for a while but, in general, you should look at it like people who ride horses. In this day and age, a very small few can still get paid to do it but, in general, house riding is a hobby and a passion, not a career.
If you enjoy manual labor, no one’s stopping you from blacksmithing on the weekends.
Please. If we didn’t go Full Trade War when Trump was declaring us a threat to US national security, we’re not going to do it while Biden is trying to shore up US manufacturing in the face of a recalcitrant GOP who refuse to do anything sensible.
And while we’re at it, worrying that “There aren’t enough people in unions to be able to fulfill the ‘union’ requirement!” is predicated on the assumption that no one will ever create a new union, or recruit new union members.
In today’s climate, most employers are incredibly anti-union, but if they have to have a union to be able to bid on these jobs, that puts pressure on them to not interfere with unionization efforts. The Status Quo isn’t some immutable fact of nature that we’re stuck with; we can change it if enough of us choose to change it.
Is there actually a union requirement? From the articles/press releases I’ve read there isn’t mention of one.
Manual labor is not the same as repetitive tasks. 
I’m sure you’re generally correct on factory jobs, where splitting the work into repetitive tasks done in a fixed location has been going on for well over a century.
But I seriously doubt electricians, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, etc. are all going to be replaced by robots. Heck, it’s my understanding (I watch a lot of This Old House though I’m not handy) that these well-paid and skilled trades are begging for labor because of the bias for college and white-collar work over trade school and blue-collar work even if well-paid.
Nor, do I think, are robots going to be going around factories repairing the manufacturing robots. I’m also not sure there’s going to be more automation than there’s already been in infrastructure construction (paving, track laying, forming concrete for everything from sidewalks to dams). Roads and railways aren’t laid, nor buildings and large structures built, by squads of men with hand tools as in decades and centuries past but they’re still ultimately built by people at the controls of machines.
Until robots are as versatile both physically and “mentally” as Star Wars droids, I don’t think we’ll see houses built or finally-assembled entirely without human workers, for instance.
I concur. But this is a large percentage and the percentage that we’re discussing here.
That said, I won’t be surprised to see plumbing robots, carpet laying robots, etc. in another two decades
As an aside to the Unions requirement question (which I would like to know as as well), why put in a requirement for unionized labor in the first place (assuming it’s there)? Is there some inherent reason using unionized labor is better than non? Or is it plainly a political move to garner voting support from unions?
See the above statistic. Using union labor will generally ensure that more of the government money goes to the workers, and not the company profits. Biden’s whole plan is “build from the bottom up and the middle out”, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he wants the workers to get as much of the money as they can.
In the USA, you don’t have to join a union, but you are forced to pay the portion of union dues that the union determines supports the administration of the union, which omits political spending. These are called agency fees.
Of course, in right-to-work states, you don’t even have to pay the agency fees, which is the only real difference between right-to-work states (which has never caused a single union to collapse, by the way).
I think Canada is a medium country that punches above its weight. We rely on trade and are right to be concerned about too much protectionism. However, I don’t think this is significantly affected by mere talk of “Buy American”. Trade panels have addressed some areas as needed, and revision of trade under Trump was one of the few things handled very well by Trudeau with rare support from his provincial counterparts. Local supply lines are complex, but I think big industries are unlikely to change them much apart from greater use of Mexico. Canada would do well to seriously address its internal trade barriers…
If you mean this sort of thing, I completely agree:
I believe the dairy cartel still imposes protectionist tariffs on US imports. Which the US has long objected to, and I don’t blame them.
My general position is that I favour maximizing the free flow of goods across the Canada-US border with an absolute minimum of tariffs, ideally none at all. I think Canada should be vigilant about protecting its sovereignty, values, and culture, but economic integration of such similar economies with vast resources on both sides is beneficial to both Canada and the US.