Comment What They Don't Tell You (Score 3) 367
My Ex's sister - Yes, Sister, you can break out your "Flashdance" jokes now - was a master welder in Europe. She worked contract assignments all over Germany, Sweden - wherever steel was going up. She was doing very, very well for herself.
She went back to university and completed a long-abanded degree. When asked why she was quitting her welding career, she said simply that being on a job site at 6 in the morning when it's below freezing and you have to crouch over a piece of frozen steel for 11 hours, it's not much fun. It's like military interrogation "stress positioning" for a living. She also indicated that there was some recent (mid 2000s) research in Europe that the gasses released during the welding process were suspected as having a causal relationship with highly increased odds of developing Parkinsons disease.
She crushed university and got a lower paying but still comfortable professional job riding an office chair 8-5.
I have an old friend in Ohio who's brother in-law owns a successful machine shop. He told me over dinner a few months ago that some of his competitors will order large project pieces from China. It's literally cheaper to have men fabricate a large part - A 25' long, 3' diameter steel stack for example - truck the thing to a dock, ship it across the pacific ocean, truck it to Northeast Ohio, then have one or two of their guys fix nearly ALL the fucked up Chinese welds, THEN deliver the part to the customer - than it is to fabricate and weld the damn thing on site.
This WSJ article is full of smoke written by a journalist who's probably never pulled a splinter out of his hand, swung a hammer or broken a sweat without wearing fluorescent trainers on his feet.