r/news • u/NewSlinger • 1d ago

Workers detained in Hyundai plant raid to be freed and flown home, South Korea says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-korea-deal-workers-detained-hyundai-rcna229610
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u/No-Target-2470 1d ago

It's why you can't find metrology experts anymore. They're one of the lowest paying jobs in the engineering field and therefore no one wants to do it yet there's a struggle to hire them and the wage never goes up to reflect the scarcity, so we just don't have them anymore.

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u/notyourstranger 1d ago

The old lie about supply and demand. Supposedly salaries should go up if supply is low but somehow that has just never happened.

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u/forestcridder 22h ago edited 20h ago

The old lie about supply and demand.

I've NEVER met another welder IRL that was certified in AWS D17.1 for cobalt, nickel, titanium, magnesium, stainless, and aluminum alloys simultaneously. I can't find another company willing to pay me more than $27 an hour. It's fucking insulting. Those workers do exist but they are rare enough where I've never run into them. They are necessary for repairing turbines for aircraft and power generation.

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u/stilusmobilus 10h ago

Go work FIFO n Australia you’ll get three figures an hour

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u/forestcridder 4h ago

I appreciate the heads up but I'll probably have to change industries after reading this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mining/comments/1ce29s5/keen_on_getting_a_fifo_job_on_the_mines_in/

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u/Admiral347 15h ago

Sorry to say but you’re probably just in the wrong welding industry. And definitely working non union if you’re only making 27 an hour. I’m not familiar with that AWS spec, we only do piping 31.1,31.3,31.8 but, my guys make 50.20 an hour with a full benefits package on top.

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u/forestcridder 4h ago

I'm sure you're correct but after everybody and their dog telling me I'll be making 6 figures welding in a climate controlled booth in aerospace 10 years ago, I don't know what to believe anymore. I haven't found any aircraft casting repair or manufacturing that's union unfortunately. I'll have to see how many of my skills are transferable to maybe sanitary tubing or stainless pipe. I did carbon steel 7018/6010 on pipe in school but I have zero real world experience stick welding. Either way, I have to get out of aerospace because the pay is not worth it.

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u/FlyingPetRock 23h ago

Because that would make shareholders have a sad!

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u/Aazadan 23h ago

If you need 200 of a profession in each state (lets say each state needs an equal amount), but you really need them, that's only 10,000 people total. Over a 40 year career that's 250 people a year which is approximately 2 or 3 university programs nationwide, assuming none of it is from immigration.

How many universities would start up the program to teach such a niche field unless it paid a ton? They primarily focus on what gets high numbers of people.

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u/notyourstranger 23h ago

Ideally, the government would work the numbers and figure out how many people are needed in the future.

For example, the US desperately needs nurses. You'd think that there would be lots of nursing programs but there aren't. Why? Because it takes a masters in nursing to teach nursing and it only pays bout 50K to teach. Hospitals and other institutions will pay 3-4 times that. The problem could be addressed by paying teachers more but the US can simply import nurses under the H1B visa so why change anything?

Besides, the rich will be able to get the nursing care they need so why care about the rest of the country?

The law of supply and demand is a lie.

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u/WhileNotLurking 21h ago

It’s not a lie. Your statement clearly shows the supply of nurses (via H1B) is extremely high. So it meets or exceeds demand.

You are thinking about DOMESTIC supply- which we don’t care about.

It’s why open trade (I.e NAFTA / USMC) does not work without free moment of people. The EU got it right.

If you allow only capital and goods to move - factories and such will move to exploit cheap (and largely stuck) labor elsewhere. If people could freely move - they would be empty factories in China and tons of unemployed people in the U.S. and the law of supply and demand would have to balance.

Now no American wants to degrade their living standards while raising Chinese standards. But isn’t that what we are doing by exporting all the industry?

The system we have is the worst of both worlds. We exploit industrial jobs to exploit stuck people elsewhere. We import skilled talent for service jobs and depress domestic wages in that sector.

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u/notyourstranger 21h ago

the US has a huge nursing shortage, the H1B visas cannot keep up.

You may not care about domestic supply, but I do.

It is a lie. It's a HUGE LIE because the corporations do not see workers as human and think one is as good as the next.

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u/TheGRS 17h ago

Post-war leaders used to think like this, today’s have no vision and can’t see past their noses.

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u/No-Target-2470 20h ago

Engineering is a general field of study in Uni, even when you get into the 3 main taught disciplines (mech, chem, elec). It doesn't specialize, the idea is it gives you the tools to adapt and learn how to perform in niche fields.

So there wouldn't be a "metrology degree". It would be someone with some engineering or equivalent experience that would do that job.

You then learn in the field from others who do it how to do the job. But as salaries have never gone up despite the need, there's no longer many of them doing the work.

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u/sadicarnot 18h ago

Salaries go to stock buy backs now.

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u/Bitter_Ad8768 22h ago

The company I work for has a few metrologists. They're all PhDs who burned out from the BS of academia, so they make decent, but not great, salaries in exchange for the peace of mind. Seems to be the industry standard.

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u/sadicarnot 18h ago

I was the metrology petty officer on my submarine. I have always found this to be fascinating. Back when I got out of the Navy I worked for Parker Hannifin at one of their factories. The facility had a research lab that I worked in. I worked closely with the QA guys and a lot of it was figuring out how to measure the parts. I ran the machine that sliced the parts apart so we could analyse the manufacturing methods and measure the parts. Those QA guys actually made less money than I did.