There's also just the fact that while it's true that the cost of living in major blue-state cities like SF and NYC eat up those markets' higher wages, this fact is _entirely about the housing market_. It has nothing to do with unions. If super-star cities adopted Matt Yglesias' preferred zoning policies, local real wages would take off like a rocket.
Greer may not have liked what you had to say, but I enjoyed reading your response. I'm not privy to a lot of statistics (I almost made the mistake of using the word *facts*) about labor movement between states and how that relates to Right to Work or unionism or the cost of living, but as a retired GM / Delphi employee and UAW member having lived and worked in Michigan for 50 years, and a veteran of the downsizing in the domestic auto industry that began in the '80s, I can tell you that any opportunities I had to move to another state to retain my employment at GM (there were numerous ones once the union contracts gained provisions making such transfers possible) were rejected out of hand due to my realizing my employment elsewhere would ultimately be just as tenuous and *market driven* as my local situation, union or not. That, and the fact that I was a stubborn s.o.b. determined to make it right where I was.
And I did, surviving layoffs and overcoming other economic hurdles until Delphi - the company into which my local GM plant was spun-off - filed for bankruptcy in '05 and I left soon after to pursue employment in non-union local job shops, knowing I wouldn't be finishing my "working days" at the plant where I'd started to work 34 years earlier.
Having made a living in both union and non-union shops, I'll say plainly being a union member, while I had my share of beefs about some aspects of it, was definitely to my benefit. And I'll be a "union guy" 'till the day I die.
And you can tell that Greer guy to put that in his pipe and smoke it.
I want to see your upcoming story “How I Spent My Autumn Vacation Being Called A Propagandist By A Koch Financed Troll.”
There's also just the fact that while it's true that the cost of living in major blue-state cities like SF and NYC eat up those markets' higher wages, this fact is _entirely about the housing market_. It has nothing to do with unions. If super-star cities adopted Matt Yglesias' preferred zoning policies, local real wages would take off like a rocket.
Greer may not have liked what you had to say, but I enjoyed reading your response. I'm not privy to a lot of statistics (I almost made the mistake of using the word *facts*) about labor movement between states and how that relates to Right to Work or unionism or the cost of living, but as a retired GM / Delphi employee and UAW member having lived and worked in Michigan for 50 years, and a veteran of the downsizing in the domestic auto industry that began in the '80s, I can tell you that any opportunities I had to move to another state to retain my employment at GM (there were numerous ones once the union contracts gained provisions making such transfers possible) were rejected out of hand due to my realizing my employment elsewhere would ultimately be just as tenuous and *market driven* as my local situation, union or not. That, and the fact that I was a stubborn s.o.b. determined to make it right where I was.
And I did, surviving layoffs and overcoming other economic hurdles until Delphi - the company into which my local GM plant was spun-off - filed for bankruptcy in '05 and I left soon after to pursue employment in non-union local job shops, knowing I wouldn't be finishing my "working days" at the plant where I'd started to work 34 years earlier.
Having made a living in both union and non-union shops, I'll say plainly being a union member, while I had my share of beefs about some aspects of it, was definitely to my benefit. And I'll be a "union guy" 'till the day I die.
And you can tell that Greer guy to put that in his pipe and smoke it.