[mabelkitty]

This is precisely why the unions have lost their purpose. They can no longer promise wealth in collectively bargaining, so what is the purpose?

We have OSHA, so they aren't even needed for that.

Keep your eyes on the state worker and teacher pensions, as well as the Big Three auto makers. This shouldn't be a suprise to anybody.

[gogeo]

It seems there's a lot more heat than light on this issue.

At the end of the day, if a company cannot be profitable given its costs, it will go out of business.

BTW...the costs per ton ($13) were at Nucor, which is not an integrated steel company. They build mini mills and buy/melt scrap, which is the least labor intensive method. They are also non-union. They are not a representative example of labor costs.

Finally...there is no possible way that 12,000 employees can be productive enough to cover the health benefits for 95,000 retirees. This is not just a problem in steel, but in autos also.

Pensions in the steel industry have been underfunded for at least 20 years. It was a major issue in the 1970s and 80s.

[bvw]

These long-term, guarenteed-benfit "contracts" are loans, gambling. As a class They have other very SCARY aspects and effects -- best to outlaw them, for being gambling, at least. As loans they put the burden on the future. The company and the union, typically in the businesses peak years, magically entitle themselves in an absolute fantasy of a contract to perpetual continuation of those benefits.

The Union Bosses at the time get both respect and money, the Company Bigwigs at the time get production and their own golden parachutes soon enough after, the workers, enjoy the then current high-level of benfits, and feel a serenity (a folly, that) that they have provided for the future. Someone else has promised to take care of it.

And -- this is vile and mean -- the workers tolerate greater risks to limb and health than would otherwise be accepted, because, hey, well, they are covered, their widows and orphans will be covered! Putting up with dangers, risk, noxious, broiling work envoronments, they *pride* each other in their folly.

Now the piper of time and truth is playing his tune -- those fools who sold their futures too cheaply, who worked like brutes and not like men, and put their future and legacies in weak hands for the sake of a fool's promise. They are crying foul.

Mercy should not be slack to the old, the poor, the widow and the orphan -- even to the folly of fools. Yet see it for what it is, and not as some DUE for *heroic* work efforts.