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A good friend of mine works for a large construction firm that has bid on some of the California high speed rail jobs. He said that for much of the work (parti
by hardtke 5y ago
A good friend of mine works for a large construction firm that has bid on some of the California high speed rail jobs. He said that for much of the work (particularly moving existing utility infrastructure) there are no firms bidding, or at most one firm. They therefore know they can jack up the price to 2-3X normal costs. The work needs to happen in places where there are literally no construction workers, and crews don't want to go to where the work needs to be done since there is other work close to their house.
- wolverine876 5y agoWhere I live, which has a large African-American population, construction workers that I see are overwhelmingly white and many of the unions are notoriously racist (and I don't know about the others). Just notice the people working those jobs around you. How much is that racism costing the US economically? Of course it costs the targets of racism the most: I don't have high-speed rail; they don't have jobs, health care, etc.
- coredog64 5y agoBroad generalization: Unions that existed when segregation was still a thing generally have a less diverse membership than newer unions. I’ve mentioned it before here, but this historical holdover is one reason why US unions are dysfunctional relative to those in other countries.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]