Most steel in Pennsylvania is produced in union shop electric-arc furnace "mini-mills". The largest are at AK Steel-Butler, ISG-Coatesville, ISG-Steelton, Allegheny Ludlum-Natrona, Allegheny Ludlum-Brackenridge, and Allegheny Ludlum-Midland. The Unions don't "hate" mini-mills. They work at them. Lets not drag union bashing in where it is not needed.
There's no need for an anti-union diatribe here.
HermCher, you will find some of the most vile anti-union postings you've EVER seen on these 'econ' threads.
...and unions only represent 14% of workers, with about 1/2 of them being GUMMINT workers!
Everybody seems to forget that somebody GAVE the unions their wages and benefits--which also accrued to the 'management' team which negotiated the contracts in the first place.
One thing is perfectly clear - this issue is clear as mud. I'm still having a hard time finding last year's numbers for import export, so if you know of a link just post it to this thread.
As to the statement about import-export, I'll amend that to reflect rising import rather than majority sales for the time being, and weave in another caveat regarding the veracity of Dick Durbin's statement. That should bring the article up to speed before it "goes live". Please check the updated article on the website:
http://johnkerryquestionfairy.blogspot.com/
http://johnkerryquestionfairy.blogspot.com/2004/12/manufacturing-news-why-we-dont-have_09.html
I'm also going to put a link to this thread in an update. There's too many smart ideas on here, and this debate should open a lot of eyes. My daughter is in the military, (stateside) and I just want them to have the best equipment available. In the short term that means "get'em equipped NOW". In the long term, that means that we better find some better solutions than we have now, because this problem is only going to compound itself...