General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We romanticize manufacturing jobs when what we really miss are unions. [View all]NickB79
(19,233 posts)Making dairy products like cheese, yogurt and sour cream isn't sexy or cool; it's hot, smells bad much of the time, you work with caustic cleaning chemicals a lot, and it requires a lot of attention to detail and cleanliness since you have a facility that is accepting raw milk (and all the associated dangerous bacteria it may carry) on one end and spitting out clean, quality food on the other end. You have to be able to work fast to keep up with demand, follow directions well, and not cut corners or you'll junk a $10,000 vat of yogurt and get your ass fired.
But on the other hand, the fact that we're unionized means that I get paid better than almost all of my friends I went to college with, even those who went on to get their master's degrees. Hell, guys on the production floor with nothing more than a HS diploma start at $40K a year, with a $2700/yr deductible on a family health care plan ($900 per spouse and $900 for the kids, then 80/20 split after that), a 401K and a pension plan. Overtime is relatively easy to come by, so most guys make $50K a year or more; I've known guys there who worked 6 days a week, 12-hr shifts, and broke $100K in a year!
For all the bitching that goes on about how poor our union is (and plenty of people there bitch about it), no one ever suggests we get out of the union because we all realize deep down how much worse our lives would be without it.