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Comment by ipaddr | Hacker News Reader

Why would the qualified people who desire to work in that location and have better options suddenly work for the government. If the idea is to train non-experienced people that's what Boeing did. What is going to prevent them for leaving for other local work that pays better once they have some experience.

What the government should have done is reduce their pay for missing deadlines by having milestones in the contract. At that point paying more makes economic sense and wages would rise.

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Because government jobs are secure, Boeing subcontractor jobs where you are a cheap disposal cog are not. If you don’t see the value in security to someone making $20-$40/hr who needs healthcare benefits, you might start there.

A union fixes this in the long term, but that will take time. Government can employ rapidly. Something, quickly, needs to change before we forget how to build because MBAs, accountants, and lawyers burned the place down for shareholder value. There are two astronauts stuck in space very publicly demonstrating this.

A welder making double outside of the government would take a chance the more experience they have. Similiar to how many people here would rather get a job at Amazon vs the government. Chances are you are out in a year or two compared to a government job where you can survive longer for half of the pay.

Remember we are talking about experienced aircraft welders. They are not available for 20 an hour when industry is paying so much more.

Collins Aerospace is offering $19/hr for third shift welding work on aircraft. It was referred to me by someone in the labor community, and I spoke with HR under the guise of a prospective candidate to confirm. They do $26B/year in revenue.

This should be a top level comment - it kind of reinforces the point of the whole article. I understand that 15/hr is the (planned) US minimum wage?

People have been talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 for so long now (the "Fight for 15" movement started in 2012) that the inflation-adjusted value of that would now have to be almost $21/hr. However, the minimum wage is still $7.25 and seems to be likely to remain so.

The federal minimum wage has zero chance of increasing unless we get a supermajority of Democrats in both wings of congress and the presidency. Republicans, voters included, largely do not want the minimum wage to go up.

To put into perspective how abysmal 19 an hour is, I used to make 22 an hour working at a gas station. Second shift, not third. And I'm not in a high COL area.

excuse me but what is third shift welding? is this the security lvl of the welding job?thank you

Third shift is the overnight shift at a 24-hour workplace. Usually that means midnight to 8 AM.

The US has already forgotten how to build. This process has happened for 30 years, a full generation.

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