2019

Without further ado, your Idiotville feel-good story of the week: https://www.goerie.com/news/20190919/wabtec-to-close-idaho-plant-move-work-to-erie This week’s feature is unique in our nearly year-long series. Erie is used to being the hunted, but rarely the hunter. We’ve seen manufacturing jobs leave, population stagnate, and properties blight slowly over the past 50 years. Opportunity just hadn’t been expanding here like […]

Union and Wabtec agree on 4-year contract – Something good happened in Erie, 6/13/2019

A beautiful, American-made locomotive. | Photo source unknown. Without further ado, your Idiotville feel-good story of the week: https://www.goerie.com/news/20190612/ue-ratifies-wabtec-contract-in-erie# They did it! The high drama of UE 506 and Wabtec labor negotiations is over for the next four years. World class locomotives will continue production in Idiotville. The UE Local 506 membership ratified the agreement […]

Hey Erie, PA: Bill Maher is Right About Our Middle-American Anger

Hey Erie! I know that you are angry that our best paying jobs are few and far between and don’t seem to be coming back. I get it. I am pissed too. I long for the days before I can remember, the days when regular people worked in manufacturing and were paid a solid middle-class […]

UE Local 506/Wabtec impasse thrusts Erie, unions back into national spotlight

Our city has gotten its fair share of national news attention recently – from former president Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary at Penn State Behrend in 2016, to the New York Times‘ McBride Viaduct article in 2018, to acclaimed author James Fallows prominently including Erie in his book Our Towns a couple months later, to […]