Wabtec is willing to keep the existing workers at the current average of $35 per hour — a modest income that would allow someone to support a family — but wants to create a second pay tier for new workers, with wages of $16.75 to $25 per hour. That two-tier trend has led the average production worker to now earn less than the average American worker (right where Wabtec hopes to put its future Erie work force). Manufacturing wages have grown at just 1.4 percent per year, nearly half the rate of an average American worker, and less than the cost of living. While manufacturing workers, many of whom don’t have four-year college degrees, still earn 13 percent more than they would at a job in, for example, the retail sector, that wage premium has eroded since the 1980s by one-fourth.

These wage cuts and two-tier contracts were common after the Great Recession in 2007, but we are in the midst of strong economic growth. Wabtec made $256 million profit through the third quarter of 2018, and its chief executive and a handful of top executives are receiving almost $60 million in salary. The company’s position is that it is demanding lower wages because it can, a fact that was evident in a Wabtec spokeswoman’s explanation that the company’s current pay scale “is exceptional for that region.” It is perhaps no coincidence that when the merger is complete , the C.E.O. will get a roughly $16 million bonus — almost the exact amount of the likely impact of the proposed wage reductions for the workers.

By proposing to lower future workers’ pay, companies like Wabtec may halt a broader manufacturing resurgence. Deloitte just predicted that manufacturing companies may be short 2.4 million skilled workers over the next 10 years, in large part because nearly 2.7 million retirements are expected in one of the nation’s oldest work forces.

When it comes to young people, manufacturers already have to overcome an outdated idea that today’s factories, which are actually high-tech, remain dirty and dangerous. It’s hard to imagine industrial companies recruiting a new generation into manufacturing at the pedestrian and downward-trending pay sought by Wabtec. Unable to consistently recruit workers to the industry because of low pay, factories now rely on temporary staffing agencies to recruit workers for less-skilled front-line jobs and hold on to their most skilled workers well into their 60s.

It’s a formula that won’t work much longer. The unions are offering Wabtec and the rest of manufacturing a different and more promising path: Rebuild the wage premium in manufacturing as a way to retain and attract the next generation of skilled manufacturing workers.