If you’re making $30/hr now, and you could join a trade union and make $65/hr as a journeyman, you’d do it, no question. But if you first have to take a 5 year apprenticeship where you’re only making $15/hr, that’s a hard sell. Eventually it will work out, but you’re making good enough money now and you don’t want to go through 5 years of hardship.
It’s actually even worse than that, they would have made more money by industrialization if they adopted it. They are just always slow to adopt shit.
While I was in school, “hyuck hyuck, lookuhtem queers in ‘em pipe paynts. Geigh as hay-uhl! Hyuck hyuck.”
The next year, pipe pants with big belt buckles were in fashion. Jnco cowboys. Not practical for goat roping at all.
If you’re making $30/hr now, and you could join a trade union and make $65/hr as a journeyman, you’d do it, no question. But if you first have to take a 5 year apprenticeship where you’re only making $15/hr, that’s a hard sell. Eventually it will work out, but you’re making good enough money now and you don’t want to go through 5 years of hardship.
Retooling an entire economy isn’t easy.