Pros
For the region, the salary you can earn without a college degree is pretty good. There is usually a good sense of camaraderie within your own group, good people that want to help the company succeed.
Cons
For years now the benefits package for salaried employees has been slowly eroding. Aside from the 401k match of 6%, union employee benefits are far better. Better insurance with lower premiums, bigger bonuses, more vacation time, better overtime pay to name a few. A salaried position used to be something to aspire to but no more. General dynamics knows that they can steal benefits with impunity so they do just that. As a result they’ve been losing the best and brightest who can take their skills elsewhere. One example - as a salaried employee exempt from overtime you could work 12 hours on a given day, 4 of which would be uncompensated, but if you punched in 1 second past the start of your “core hours” you would have to use 1/10 hour of sick time or vacation time to cover it. Actually typing that out makes it sound even more ludicrous.