Is the Tacoma union made?

$250 / sqft is pretty much the ball park most of my work falls into

 

I can see that. I don't know this but it it seems, from looking at pics of some your projects over the past several years, a lot of your work is very custom / unique. One off kinda stuff.

It's around but pretty rare to see a home that has much outside the standard fit & size here. If it's not 2"x4" & 4'x8' or can't be bought off the shelf at Lowes and delivered on a flat bed you just don't see it. I guess the advantage is cost and ease but, it sure lacks the cool factor of custom work.

 

Exactly , apples and oranges

The whole " how much does it cost to build a house " is too open ended as there are too many variables . Rancher , 2 story , 2 1/2 story , sloped site , slab on grade , hand frame roof , trusses , clear wood trims or paint grade , $4 / sqft ceramics or $25 / sqft marble etc

 

I would like to toss in a caveat I found in my personal experiences with unions. I am currently a "desk jockey" at a non union company. I have worked in many different industries, UPS being one of them.

I split unions into two different situations.

1 "indoor" unions. Typically indoors, in a manufacturing setting.
2 "field" unions. Work is done at location, outside, or not at the same place every day.

Indoor unions for my have typically been like high school. If you're in the "IN" crowd, you can do no wrong. If not, you wont be there long. There is usually lots of drama, and horse shit that goes on, that has no relevance to the job or company. My experience has been that these employees typically want more compensation for less work. I was told to slow down, as I was working too hard for the money by sweeping up the dirt on the floor so that I didn't fall doing my job. Obviously, if the "FLOOR SWEEPER" wasn't sleeping, and he was actually doing his job, I wouldn't have had to hurry up and sweep up my area.

Outdoor or Field Unions. This category, I have found consists of ACTUAL "skilled" labor. These guys typically do jobs that take years of training be it OJT or schooling. Most, take great pride in the quality of work they do, not necessarily the efficiency, but the quality. (yes, there are bad apples, but there are bad apples at EVERY company, unionized or not....). Typically, they do jobs average joes don't want to do, like cleaning out a wastewater treatment plant in a college town ... (been there, done that, its bad.) Or standing in the median of an interstate laying pipe while cars filled with distracted folks and soccer moms whiz down at 80+ mph. They don't do a job that an average fella can be trained on in a matter of hours...which is typical in a manufacturing facility. (don't worry, been there too...)

These are my experiences. My biggest concern now, is that while in the early 1990's and even 2000's, $20 an hour was a wage that a house could be purchased with, and decent vehicles sat in the garage...that is in fact NOT the case now. The cost of living is rising faster than even union contracts can keep up with. I understand living within your means, and trust me, I could bust open the books and show you that I live WELL under my means...you toss in a couple kids with rising health care costs, and food, and now instead of getting a newer truck, I'm rocking my first gen until it dies.

I digress.

I personally will not seek out a union job, simply due to the high school rhetoric. I'm typically not one who follows the crowd, and I personally don't like to pay someone to be able to work somewhere.


Edit: I would also like to mention that I reside in the Midwest, which is well documented and noted as "union country" and there are debates all.the.damn.time over the topics discussed in this thread. If you look up Connersville, Indiana you will find that it was once called "Little Detroit" and is the home of many companies that no longer exist. Once the Visteon plant left, that was it for unionized employment really. There is one company, and then city employees that remain. Over time, the hard nosed, pro union group have started to realize that if they'd been more productive, and less greedy, that they may still be employed working 40+ hours a week, with a nice home and toys. Now, they are working for minimum wage, because they actually don't possess any true skill or trade. Many moved away. Many also became full time addicts and alcoholics, and some stuck around and became truck drivers or minimum wage employees.

I worked with a former employee of Visteon, and he was a union steward. I asked him what started the down fall. He told me, point blank, that the company came to the employees and the union, and laid it out on the table that if they employees would start to pay $40 a month for family health insurance, that the company would be able to stay in Connersville, and operate at normal capacity. The Union said "no way" and that is the day things started changing. More than likely, that isn't the sole cause, but this, hard line of the two drastic, stark opposite ends of the spectrum typically cant keep a good standing.

 

I remember hearing a story from a friend of mine that does business in Mexico: Somebody like Maytag decided to open a manufacturing plant in Mexico and thought that they would do the right thing and pay them a full U.S. standard wage for the work they were doing. Of course they had no problem getting people to apply. The first payday came and they were ecstatic to get their first check. And then practically none of them came back on Monday. Apparently they made about a years worth of Mexican income in those first two weeks and they decided to take off and enjoy it.

I have no idea of all of the details of the story were exactly accurate, but it does make you think that it might not always be wise or appropriate to apply our working standards to other cultures.

 

Lot of examples of lazy & bad performing employees as a point against organized labor.

I have found that companies, union or not, fail to consistently enforce and follow their own policies. I doubt there's many union contracts that allow sleeping, boozing or doping on the job (I know of some that allow sleeping). IMO, managers need to equally enforce policy (and follow it themselves) to avoid singling out specific individuals. Even at companies I've work at without unions there are employees who have been terminated only to return with back pay because the company had already set a precedent in a previous case. With no specific contract provision allowing an employee to sleep or whatever, shouldn't companies who consistently & equally enforce their policies be able to remove an offending worker? I mean what part of the union contract requires the company to employ a guy who's sleeping, drinking or doping on the job?

 

Stuff I've read show US median income ~$30k & Mexico ~$5k annually.

Cost of living...



I could see retiring sooner.

 

I have a couple of friends living down there right now in a very nice area filled with US and Canadian expats. They are doing quite well and have a very nice golf course that starts about 20 feet on the other side of their swimming pool. Temperature is very mild all year round too.

 

In my neck of the woods Mexican Mennonites, who in just this case are basically ethnic Germans who migrate between working on Canadian farms and Mexican farms depending on the season, often spend as much time in Mexico as possible because of how cheap it is to live there. They then only come to Canada when they need the healthcare or they are about to have a child so that their kids get their passports.

More have been sticking around Canada lately though because, quite often, they return to Mexico to find their house has been burned down and a relative kidnapped. Mexico has some really fucked up issues for the people living there.

 

Don't want that.

 

$51,939

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that: U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939 in 2013 versus $51,759 in 2012, statistically unchanged. In 2013, real median household income was 8.0 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the latest recession.

 

"More Than Half of U.S. Wage Earners Make Under $30,000 a Year, According to a Shocking New Report"

 

Fifty-one percent of working Americans make less than $30,000 a year, new data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) shows.

That’s $2,500 a month before taxes and just over the federal poverty level for a family of five. The new numbers come from the National Wage Index, which SSA updates each year based on reported wages subject to the federal income tax.

In 2014, half of working Americans reported an income at or below $28,851 (the median wage), and 51 percent reported an income of less than $30,000. Forty percent are making less than $20,000. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be impoverished.

 

Leadership is doing such an outstanding job with the U.S. economy.

 

you think this has anything to do with Unions being at an all time low in memberships across the country???

 

low wages.. companies making record profits. wall street killing it the past X amount of years. feel sorry for who you want. 2016 Tacoma... made in mexico... super fricken expensive

 

of course it does. also take a look at corporate profits and wall street figures. the correlation between all these numbers is interesting.

 

X2

 

Fed governments have little control over economies especially in todays globally tied markets

Its funny that people complain about big government and at the same time complain that government isn't doing something about " insert issue here "

 

I was thinking the same thing.