[Transcend]

Most of the jobs over $40 an hour at least require a GED/high school diploma.

 

[loco-gringo]

Most of the jobs over $40 an hour at least require a GED/high school diploma.

That doesn't change the extremely inflated rate of labor for the job. Level of education doesn't have the slightest bit of importance in cost of goods sold.

 

[Defenestrated]

Yall are right, they should cut their wages and redirect the money straight to the executive level.

 

[loco-gringo]

Yall are right, they should cut their wages and redirect the money straight to the executive level.

I never said that. I think there should be an executive cap with no bonus compensation until they resurrect this steaming pile. Then it should have limits. All that is if the govt steps in. If our money saves them, they should adhere to new guidelines.

 

[Transcend]

Yall are right, they should cut their wages and redirect the money straight to the executive level.

You're a moron if you think someone who pushes buttons for a living deserves $40+ an hour and doesn't even have a basic high school education. Then refuses to take a pay cut and bitches and moans for gov't money while they watch their employer go belly up.

Awesome logic.

 

[Transcend]

That doesn't change the extremely inflated rate of labor for the job. Level of education doesn't have the slightest bit of importance in cost of goods sold.

Where exactly did I say it did?

 

[loco-gringo]

Where exactly did I say it did?

You didn't. I was just saying that it shouldn't have any importance. It's a broken industry where a business was held captive by bullies and now it's all a muck. No matter how much complaining we do, or how many solutions we offer, until the union is not involved and the corporate greed is gone, they will continue to go down the pooper. It's sad to see part of America's largest industries go down in flames. Not that they don't deserve to, but it's still sad. Ebb and flow I guess.

 

[Samirol]

Then refuses to take a pay cut and bitches and moans for gov't money while they watch their employer go belly up.

http://www.freep.com/article/20081120/BUSINESS01/311200023

No they don't, they are giving things up so the big three stay alive

You can't have a large businesses without corporate greed, and the only groups that can fight it are unions and the government.

 

[loco-gringo]

http://www.freep.com/article/20081120/BUSINESS01/311200023

No they don't, they are giving things up so the big three stay alive

You can't have a large businesses without corporate greed, and the only groups that can fight it are unions and the government.

You mean they are willing to forego the dumbest thing the automakers ever let them get hoodwinked into??? Wow - they are willing to make concessions.

 

[Samirol]

You mean they are willing to forego the dumbest thing the automakers ever let them get hoodwinked into??? Wow - they are willing to make concessions.

did you just read the title, then start frothing at the mouth about unions, or did you actually read the article

 

[Defenestrated]

Capitalism: Don't make better cars, pay the workers less!

No amount of pay cuts will make up for the fact that no one is buying their ****ty cars, so all the UAW scapegoating is laughably irrelevant anyway.

Maybe if the disposable income of middle and lower class American families had been increasing over the past few decades instead of evaporating, people might have some money to throw at crap American cars.

But that's all been trickling up.

 

[Transcend]

Capitalism: Don't make better cars, pay the workers less!

No amount of pay cuts will make up for the fact that no one is buying their ****ty cars, so all the UAW scapegoating is laughably irrelevant anyway.

Do you even understand how businesses run? Do you understand that the costs of paying the workers ridiculous salaries and benefits is what is killing them?

if you are as self entitled as the UAW workers, I pity you. You do not deserve $40+ an hour to press buttons. It is unskilled labour, along the lines of taco bell, mcdonalds & migrant farm hands. It should be paid similarly.

 

[Transcend]

http://www.freep.com/article/20081120/BUSINESS01/311200023

No they don't, they are giving things up so the big three stay alive

You can't have a large businesses without corporate greed, and the only groups that can fight it are unions and the government.

According to union reps last week, they would NOT make concessions. This article is new info then. Also, give up their ridiculous salaries and they can talk.

 

[blue]

Do you even understand how businesses run? Do you understand that the costs of paying the workers ridiculous salaries and benefits is what is killing them?

if you are as self entitled as the UAW workers, I pity you. You do not deserve $40+ an hour to press buttons. It is unskilled labour, along the lines of taco bell, mcdonalds & migrant farm hands. It should be paid similarly.

And we have reached the division between capitalism and marxism.

 

[Defenestrated]

If the UAW was broken up by the government tonight, American's would not be buying GM cars tomorrow.

Unless you can somehow convince me otherwise.

EDIT: and yeah, what blue said.

 

[loco-gringo]

did you just read the title, then start frothing at the mouth about unions, or did you actually read the article

I read it and then put it on a bumper sticker.

 

[loco-gringo]

If the UAW was broken up by the government tonight, American's would not be buying GM cars tomorrow.

Unless you can somehow convince me otherwise.

EDIT: and yeah, what blue said.

If you have reached your capital capacity in labor, there is no way that production can ever be worth a sh*t. Try again.

 

[Defenestrated]

 

[Samirol]

If you have reached your capital capacity in labor, there is no way that production can ever be worth a sh*t. Try again.

GM spends 5.6 billion a year on healthcare alone, and 8.7 billion on payroll for assembly workers.

 

[Transcend]

If the UAW was broken up by the government tonight, American's would not be buying GM cars tomorrow.

Unless you can somehow convince me otherwise.

EDIT: and yeah, what blue said.

You are right, they would not. However, GM, Ford and Chrysler would have much more money to survive and restructure off of in the near future.

 

[Defenestrated]

Nationalizing health care would give GM more money than slashing wages beyond 50%..........

 

[blue]

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1026e955-541c-4aa6-bcf2-56dfc3323682

The New Republic
Assembly Line by Jonathan Cohn
Debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker.
Post Date Friday, November 21, 2008


If you've been following the auto industry's crisis, then you've probably read or heard a lot about overpaid American autoworkers--in particular, the fact that the average hourly employee of the Big Three makes $70 per hour.

That's an awful lot of money. Seventy dollars an hour in wages works out to almost $150,000 a year in gross income, if you assume a forty-hour work week. Is it any wonder the Big Three are in trouble? And with auto workers making so much, why should taxpayers--many of whom make far less--finance a plan to bail them out?

Well, here's one reason: The figure is wildly misleading.

Let's start with the fact that it's not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research--who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read--average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income--hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.

So the "wage gap," per se, has been a lot smaller than you've heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants' factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Except ... notice something weird about this calculation? It's not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that--probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."

Of course, the cost of benefits for those retirees--you may have heard people refer to them as "legacy costs"--do represent an extra cost burden that only the Big Three shoulder. And, yes, it makes it difficult for the Big Three to compete with foreign-owned automakers that don't have to pay the same costs. But don't forget why those costs are so high. While the transplants don't offer the same kind of benefits that the Big Three do, the main reason for their present cost advantage is that they just don't have many retirees.

The first foreign-owned plants didn't start up here until the 1980s; many of the existing ones came well after that. As of a year ago, Toyota's entire U.S. operation had less than 1,000 retirees. Compare that to a company like General Motors, which has been around for more than a century and which supports literally hundreds of thousands of former workers and spouses. As you might expect, many of these have the sorts of advanced medical problems you expect from people to develop in old age. And, it should go without saying, those conditions cost a ton of money to treat.

To be sure, we've known about these demographics for a while. Management and labor in Detroit should have figured out a solution it long ago. But while the Big Three were late in addressing this problem, they did address it eventually.

Notice how, in this article, I've constantly referred to 2007 figures? There's a good reason. In 2007, the Big Three signed a breakthrough contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW) designed, once and for all, to eliminate the compensation gap between domestic and foreign automakers in the U.S.

The agreement sought to do so, first, by creating a private trust for financing future retiree benefits--effectively removing that burden from the companies' books. The auto companies agreed to deposit start-up money in the fund; after that, however, it would be up to the unions to manage the money. And it was widely understood that, given the realities of investment returns and health care economics, over time retiree health benefits would likely become less generous.

In addition, management and labor agreed to change health benefits for all workers, active or retired, so that the coverage looked more like the policies most people have today, complete with co-payments and deductibles. The new UAW agreement also changed the salary structure, by creating a two-tiered wage system. Under this new arrangement, the salary scale for newly hired workers would be lower than the salary scale for existing workers.

One can debate the propriety and wisdom of these steps; two-tiered wage structures, in particular, raise various ethical concerns. But one thing is certain: It was a radical change that promised to make Detroit far more competitive. If carried out as planned, by 2010--the final year of this existing contract--total compensation for the average UAW worker would actually be less than total compensation for the average non-unionized worker at a transplant factory. The only problem is that it will be several years before these gains show up on the bottom line--years the industry probably won't have if it doesn't get financial assistance from the government.

Make no mistake: The argument over a proposed rescue package is complicated, in no small part because over the years both management and labor made some truly awful decisions while postponing the inevitable reckoning with economic reality. And even if the government does provide money, it's a tough call whether restructuring should proceed with or without a formal bankruptcy filing. Either way, yet more downsizing is inevitable.

But the next time you hear somebody say the unions have to make serious salary and benefit concessions, keep in mind that they already have--enough to keep the companies competitive, if only they can survive this crisis.

Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic.

Quick summary - legacy costs (you know, social services the government SHOULD be taking care of) are what's killing the Big 3, not exorbitantly high wages instigated by the boogieman UAW.

The UAW hating is almost as bad as Reagan's Cadillac Queen of the 80s but without the racism.

Neoliberal capitalism is evil, bitches.

 

[Defenestrated]

Blue, you made one mistake, UAW hate is not based in fact, or reality.

Then again, it is just what the capitalists want, scapegoat labor and undermine the position of unions in America, and someday, every industry will be free to work off of the Walmart business model.

 

[blue]

Then again, it is just what the capitalists want, scapegoat labor/poor people/brown people/women

fixed.

 

[valve bouncer]

Holdens have been big sellers in NZ since the late 50's.

You had one of these, didn't ya Davo? Don't lie to me now ya Kiwi flogger.

 

[dan-o]

Defrenstrated/Samirol, would you mind revealing what you do for a living?
I'm just curious given your views regarding labor.

FYI, i'm a self-employed contractor.

 

[Samirol]

I work part time at a grocery store, and attend a local community college full time (California has a great transfer system, so it saves a lot of money going this route).

The only reason that I'm not getting paid just above minimum wage is because of union representation. The UFCW is corrupt and weak, but it is a hell of a lot better than nothing.

 

[loco-gringo]

And how old are these guys??? I know blue is a kid that has never been involved in business, so I disregard anything he says. I have been in manufacturing and seen all of the books. I have been involved in process improvements and union talks. The union is stupid. Period. If people are worth having, most employers will take care of them. Sure there is silly greed sometimes, but you will also find realistic business as well. The US automakers just fall into the deepest realms of the worst business practices.

 

[Samirol]

If people are worth having, most employers will take care of them.

Sure, if they are skilled labor, then there is an interest to keep them around. However, unskilled labor can be easily replaced.

Excuse me if I don't really lend much credit to your argument when you just state that you dislike the UAW without backing it up with examples, evidence from other sources, or anything else besides your anecdotal experience.

edit: I say this because it is the internet, and you can just be talking out your ass. Which is why referencing articles and other sources is preferred.

 

[loco-gringo]

Sure, if they are skilled labor, then there is an interest to keep them around. However, unskilled labor can be easily replaced.

Excuse me if I don't really lend much credit to your argument when you just state that you dislike the UAW without backing it up with examples, evidence from other sources, or anything else besides your anecdotal experience.

I don't have an issue with them per say, it's all unions that suck IMO.

Reliability is as important as skill. Good employers know that. Trust me. I spent several years watching unskilled hands perform jobs for decent unskilled wages, with good health benefits.

 

[Samirol]

I don't have an issue with them per say, it's all unions that suck IMO.

Reliability is as important as skill. Good employers know that. Trust me. I spent several years watching unskilled hands perform jobs for decent unskilled wages, with good health benefits.

Unionized jobs give better benefits, better pay, and better safety than non-unionized jobs, the only downside is that management doesn't get to do whatever the hell they want.

 

[loco-gringo]

Unionized jobs give better benefits, better pay, and better safety than non-unionized jobs, the only downside is that management doesn't get to do whatever the hell they want.

Untrue. That is not always the case. If workers were capable of making decisions to run business, they would be management. Unions are brokers to f*ck most business and to be bullies. They are legalized criminals. They suck.

 

[IH8Rice]

so how old did you say you were?
are you going off of experience or just reading articles online?
cause someone working minumum wage at shop rite probably doesnt know anything about real life experience w/ unions.

...but thats just my $.02

 

[Samirol]

Untrue. That is not always the case. If workers were capable of making decisions to run business, they would be management. Unions are brokers to f*ck most business and to be bullies. They are legalized criminals. They suck.

Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the typical union worker's pay and benefits are ~30% higher than what non-union workers get. Wages and salaries for union workers average 16% higher than for nonunion workers. Union workers are often better trained on health and safety rules and union workplaces are more likely to enforce Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. (source: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/component/option,com_issues/Itemid,366/view,issue/id,12/)

I guess it depends which perspective you are looking from, whether unions are bullies to screw over businesses or if they help the workers get better pay, better working environments, and better benefits, and that hurts the company's profit margins.

so how old did you say you were?
are you going off of experience or just reading articles online?
cause someone working minumum wage at shop rite probably doesnt know anything about real life experience w/ unions.

...but thats just my $.02

I'm 18. Experience with my union, and comparing my experience with those working in a non-unionized environment. I said the only reason that I'm not getting near minimum wage is because of union representation, although it is a pretty crap union.

I would say that being a part of a union in a work environment counts as real life experience, even if my experiences don't match up with yours.

 

[jimmydean]

Unionized jobs give better benefits, better pay, and better safety than non-unionized jobs, the only downside is that management doesn't get to do whatever the hell they want.

Except in a union, the scrubs bring it down for the skilled. If you are good at what you do, you will get paid for it, union or otherwise. If as an employer I have to pay EVERYONE a union minimum, then there is no incentive for me to award performance. So you as a top performer suffer because Bob the Jackass knows he gets paid to slack and if he is fired, the union gets pissed.

I have been a software engineer (no such union) for over 10 years. I get paid very well based on my contribution to the team and my individual performance. My pay isn't based on a minimum, nor do I see it that way.

If you only care about how little you will make, you will never make much. unions have a max, too and that sucks (no ceiling for my income potential).

 

[SkaredShtles]

<snip>
I'm 18. Experience with my union, and comparing my experience with those working in a non-unionized environment. I said the only reason that I'm not getting near minimum wage is because of union representation, although it is a pretty crap union.

I would say that being a part of a union in a work environment counts as real life experience, even if my experiences don't match up with yours.

You're taking a debate class in your Community College, aren't you?

Just out of curiosity - do you believe your work at the grocery store is WORTH more than minimum wage?

 

[Samirol]

I have been a software engineer (no such union) for over 10 years. I get paid very well based on my contribution to the team and my individual performance. My pay isn't based on a minimum, nor do I see it that way.

Again, because your job is skilled labor, you have inherent bargaining power, while unskilled labor has very little.

Why shouldn't I worry about making considerably less money in a work environment where the motto is put up or shut up? Wal-Mart, for example, is despicable in what they do, they pay far less even if you advance.

There are of course downsides, but they are minor when compared to the massive benefits of working in a non-unionized setting.

You're taking a debate class in your Community College, aren't you?

Just out of curiosity - do you believe your work at the grocery store is WORTH more than minimum wage?

No.
Yes. All labor is worth more than minimum wage.

 

[Defenestrated]

ex. Bicycle Mechanic

Fall 09 semester at what is likely to be Cal Poly for mechanical engineering.

Guaranteed whatever job I get around there will be un-unionized as well, but I don't see the point really, I'm not concerned about myself.

@skared, "worth" is an awfully arbitrary way to go about determining wages. Wages should be based on a percentage of said grocery store's income.

 

[IH8Rice]

I have been a software engineer (no such union)

yes there is.

youre called geeks.
jk

 

[SkaredShtles]

<snip>
Yes. All labor is worth more than minimum wage.

And how is it that you have determined this?