Those Union Contracts

The New York Times reports:

RICK DOTY is a 30-year veteran of Caterpillar, the big tractor and earth-moving equipment manufacturer. He is paid $23.51 an hour as a machinist, and he receives additional benefits worth almost as much. That sets him far above newly hired workers consigned to a much lower wage scale.

To these fellow workers, Mr. Doty, who is also a local union leader, struggles to justify an inequality that he helped to negotiate.

"I remind them they are making more now than they were before they came to Cat," said Mr. Doty, who spends part of his day at the one-story union hall of United Automobile Workers Local 974 arguing that $12 to $13 an hour is good pay here. "And I assure them that five years down the road, when the present contract expires, we in the union are going to improve their lot in life."

You'll want to read the whole article.