Posted on 02/22/2010 7:11:49 AM PST by GL of Sector 2814
JANESVILLE, Wis. – In the early dawn, after another week building cars, Michael Hanley leaves his job in Kansas. He quickly zips into Missouri, then heads up a ribbon of highway past grain silos and grazing deer, across the frozen fields of Iowa, over the Mississippi River and into the rolling hills of Wisconsin. Finally, he pulls into his driveway — 530 miles later.
It's one heck of a haul: more than 1,000 miles roundtrip, 16-plus hours of driving, every week.
"I like to say I gave up an eight-minute commute for an eight-hour commute," he says wearily, running a hand though salt-and-pepper hair as he watches his two sons play basketball for the first time this season.
After the aging General Motors plant where he worked for 23 years was idled about a year ago, Hanley faced a Hobson's choice: Stay with his family and search for an autoworker's salary ($28 an hour) in a county where more than 40 percent of its manufacturing jobs disappeared from 2006 to 2009. Or hang on to his GM paycheck and health insurance and follow the job, no matter where it leads.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I have been driving from West Texas to Venice La (803 miles, 1 way) every 2 weeks. Work offshore for 2 weeks and drive home. Thats 14 hours 1 way. I love my job and I don’t mind the drive.
I’m confused. He only works one day a month?
Simple solution: don’t make the commute every week.
He drives 500 miles, works for a week, then drives 500 miles back to spend the weekend with his family.
Sounds like he commutes back to see his family each weekend.
Reading all these items, it seems there’s an opportunity or two for handymen or other household helpers in Janesville. Commuting stinks, but not as much as being unemployed. Seems also there should be some car/van pooling going on.
Not unlike the Migratory Herd of Itinerant Engineers.
What an idiotic article about an idiotic person. He can’t move? Or can’t he just get a different job? I suppose as an autoworker, he’ll never find anything that pays half as much for doing so little, but what rule says that you next job has to pay as much as the current one?
Sometimes you just have to follow the job.
Kansas City is a nice place to live. Just move there. If you prefer rural areas, there are some just 15 minutes from the Kansas City, KS plant.
My dad does a week in Idaho, a week in North Dakota, and a week in Seattle. Home is in Boise. He flies though, doesn’t drive.
Do they expect me to feel sympathy for their plight, when they’re going to get a lifetime pension and medical benefits, things I’ll never have for myself, and which I’ll be subsidizing for them as a taxpayer as long as I live, all if they can just hang on to their union jobs a few more months or years? Sorry, go somewhere else for a shoulder to cry on. Or man up and require your family to make their own sacrifices and move to where you are. If GM’s such a “good company”, you should have nothing to worry about.
They’re not moving because his kids are involved at their school and his wife likes her job.
That’s really dumb. Good to know that daily fatherly involvement in the kids’ lives is less important than their school.
However, at least he took a new job instead of whining about not having an jobs in his town.
Quoting the article:
Hanley didn't want to lose his health insurance while his wife, Laura, was receiving costly chemotherapy treatments for a blood disease that will likely lead to cancer. The medical bills last year, she says, were in the tens of thousands of dollars.
"There's no way I could possibly go through one treatment without him having insurance," she says.
Not exactly an "idiotic" reason, hm?
Sounds like a good gig IMO. Keep the insurance and job, and hope of a buyout in a year or two. HIS CHOICE to not move the family. I had the same choice, after BEING LAID OFF, and chose to move the family and take the loss on the house, and I had no chance of the early retirement. ...
Happens all the time in all kinds of jobs. Had a guy commute 350 miles from St.George Utah to Dugway. One guy that worked for me drove 120 miles each way every day. I lived as close to my work site as was possible, and my commute was 50 miles each way. Sorry, it might make for a great story back east somewhere, but out west it is common.
.....Bob
Ahhhh
Only once did I find a hint, in this article, that the UAW even exists; then, it's attached to one of the spotlighted characters in the story.
Logically, then, this article was spoon fed to the press by union agents. All of the commuting men, in order to have any job at all, must be union, have high seniority, and be prominent in their local. I have great respect for these men and their commitment to family, but I feel the UAW had a great deal of influence in their current predicament.
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