How Much Do UAW Workers Really Make?
#16
Super Moderator
#18
Lexus Champion
iTrader: (1)
$1 in Detroit = $1.60 in NYC (Queens)
$1 in Detroit = $2.24 in NYC (Manhattan)
In other words, those UAW workers are having it good...
Source: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc...18.75557087294
#19
Lexus Fanatic
iTrader: (2)
$1 in Detroit = $1.54 in LA
$1 in Detroit = $1.60 in NYC (Queens)
$1 in Detroit = $2.24 in NYC (Manhattan)
In other words, those UAW workers are having it good...
Source: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc...18.75557087294
$1 in Detroit = $1.60 in NYC (Queens)
$1 in Detroit = $2.24 in NYC (Manhattan)
In other words, those UAW workers are having it good...
Source: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc...18.75557087294
#20
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...5/918gvijq.asp
The southern auto belt from South Carolina to Texas, home to eight German, Japanese, or Korean plants (plus three more under construction), is right-to-work country. In these states, workers can't be compelled to join a union or pay dues, and not many are inclined to sign a union card anyway. The result: The UAW has failed miserably to organize workers. No Mercedes, VW, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai (KIA's parent), BMW, or Nissan plant in the South is unionized.
There's a simple explanation. It's what I call the progressive anti-unionism of the transplants. It consists of one factor: They pay well. Workers not only make far more than the prevailing wage in the rural areas where most plants are located but also considerably more than every state's average wage. With overtime, they can earn $70,000 or more a year at some plants. Average pay and benefits: roughly $45 an hour.
Unlike the timid auto executives, politicians in the right-to-work states are quite candid in crediting the enormous appeal of their non-union status. "If you don't have right-to-work laws, you end up like those guys [the Big 3] are today" in Detroit, Corker says. "Right to work," says another top state official, "is a huge issue."
"We don't have a culture that values union organizing," says Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi who persuaded Toyota to locate a Prius plant in Blue Springs in northern Mississippi. "Our workers like overtime and pay for performance. They feel like they get a better deal without the union."
The UAW, of course, is partly responsible for lofty non-union wages, though the threat of a successful UAW organizing drive is remote. A union workforce doesn't fit the business model pursued by the transplants. They dislike inflexible union work rules, grievances, an adversarial relationship between management and labor, indeed any intermediary between plant managers and workers at all. And they especially hate strikes.
Michigan, though a union state, made an aggressive bid for the Volkswagen plant that wound up in Tennessee. It was one of three finalists. But when a VW site selection team made its final visit in May, a UAW local in Michigan was striking against a Big 3 supplier. "Fear of the UAW probably drove the final decision," a local business leader told the Detroit Free Press.
In truth, the transplants don't have much to worry about from organized labor. The UAW has been able to force only three elections at the foreign-owned plants. The union lost overwhelmingly at Nissan's Tennessee plant in 1989, failed in another election there, and lost at the Mercedes plant in Alabama. The UAW might fare better if "card check" is approved by Congress next year, allowing organizers to succeed without the need to win a secret ballot election. But the transplants should still have little trouble thwarting UAW organizers.
The UAW's problem is that it has little to offer. High pay? The workers have that. "If you're making $50 an hour, what do you need a union for?" says Randle. Job security? Workers tend to rate a successful company as a better security bet than a union whose members are losing jobs by the tens of thousands. A voice on the assembly line? Transplant workers have that, just not through a third-party like the UAW.
So the UAW is left with a handful of weak arguments about on-the-job accidents, overworked employees, and sweatshop conditions. "Why would a worker in Alabama or Texas making far and away the best wages he ever could want to join the UAW?" says Washington attorney Richard Wyatt, who specializes in labor issues. "The UAW has no story to tell these people that makes any sense."
There's a simple explanation. It's what I call the progressive anti-unionism of the transplants. It consists of one factor: They pay well. Workers not only make far more than the prevailing wage in the rural areas where most plants are located but also considerably more than every state's average wage. With overtime, they can earn $70,000 or more a year at some plants. Average pay and benefits: roughly $45 an hour.
Unlike the timid auto executives, politicians in the right-to-work states are quite candid in crediting the enormous appeal of their non-union status. "If you don't have right-to-work laws, you end up like those guys [the Big 3] are today" in Detroit, Corker says. "Right to work," says another top state official, "is a huge issue."
"We don't have a culture that values union organizing," says Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi who persuaded Toyota to locate a Prius plant in Blue Springs in northern Mississippi. "Our workers like overtime and pay for performance. They feel like they get a better deal without the union."
The UAW, of course, is partly responsible for lofty non-union wages, though the threat of a successful UAW organizing drive is remote. A union workforce doesn't fit the business model pursued by the transplants. They dislike inflexible union work rules, grievances, an adversarial relationship between management and labor, indeed any intermediary between plant managers and workers at all. And they especially hate strikes.
Michigan, though a union state, made an aggressive bid for the Volkswagen plant that wound up in Tennessee. It was one of three finalists. But when a VW site selection team made its final visit in May, a UAW local in Michigan was striking against a Big 3 supplier. "Fear of the UAW probably drove the final decision," a local business leader told the Detroit Free Press.
In truth, the transplants don't have much to worry about from organized labor. The UAW has been able to force only three elections at the foreign-owned plants. The union lost overwhelmingly at Nissan's Tennessee plant in 1989, failed in another election there, and lost at the Mercedes plant in Alabama. The UAW might fare better if "card check" is approved by Congress next year, allowing organizers to succeed without the need to win a secret ballot election. But the transplants should still have little trouble thwarting UAW organizers.
The UAW's problem is that it has little to offer. High pay? The workers have that. "If you're making $50 an hour, what do you need a union for?" says Randle. Job security? Workers tend to rate a successful company as a better security bet than a union whose members are losing jobs by the tens of thousands. A voice on the assembly line? Transplant workers have that, just not through a third-party like the UAW.
So the UAW is left with a handful of weak arguments about on-the-job accidents, overworked employees, and sweatshop conditions. "Why would a worker in Alabama or Texas making far and away the best wages he ever could want to join the UAW?" says Washington attorney Richard Wyatt, who specializes in labor issues. "The UAW has no story to tell these people that makes any sense."
#21
Racer
I guess it all depends on where you live. 67K in DC is not going to get you much. You will probably still be living in a nice apt. Not DC but in Md.
I don’t blame the union for anything it’s there job to get a better deal for there members. I blame the CEO he should have found a way to cut workers and use more machines. Poor management, if you can't afford the workers why keeping them.
I don’t blame the union for anything it’s there job to get a better deal for there members. I blame the CEO he should have found a way to cut workers and use more machines. Poor management, if you can't afford the workers why keeping them.
#22
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There isn't any component of expense that a customer doesn't pay from retirement benefits to corporate jets. When the company can no longer price its product to cover the costs, the party is over. But for the union to survive, they have to give ground as slowly as possible. Maybe there is enough time. Maybe there isn't.
I don't think you have to be a genius to see that W has been working on prepackaged bankruptcy for at least ChryCo and GM for the bailout. The chief union thug still has a chance to keep the party going with W's help but if the company's aren't restructured to be cost competitive we are only delaying the final bankruptcy. And next time it probably will be liquidation. Unless we place such value on the UAW retiree golden parachutes that we are willing to have the taxpayer subsidize every GFC car leaving the plant.
#24
Super Moderator
I guess it all depends on where you live. 67K in DC is not going to get you much. You will probably still be living in a nice apt. Not DC but in Md.
I don’t blame the union for anything it’s there job to get a better deal for there members. I blame the CEO he should have found a way to cut workers and use more machines. Poor management, if you can't afford the workers why keeping them.
I don’t blame the union for anything it’s there job to get a better deal for there members. I blame the CEO he should have found a way to cut workers and use more machines. Poor management, if you can't afford the workers why keeping them.
#25
Lexus Fanatic
Fine, so let's say the average pay of UAW workers is $40/hr for monkey-see-monkey-do jobs. Just to put this in perspective:
An aerospace engineer with a master's in aerospace engineering from a tier-1 national university with 2 years of working experience under the belt who works for the nation's 4th largest defense company in Los Angeles, CA makes...
$37.625/hr (including health benefit and vacation pay)
So if you are telling me that UAW workers aren't overpaid then I say HAFU.
An aerospace engineer with a master's in aerospace engineering from a tier-1 national university with 2 years of working experience under the belt who works for the nation's 4th largest defense company in Los Angeles, CA makes...
$37.625/hr (including health benefit and vacation pay)
So if you are telling me that UAW workers aren't overpaid then I say HAFU.
GM auto workers hourly pay that is seen in their paychecks is around $28-$31 hr before taxes and around 60-70K a year depending on shift, overtime, time in. That salary is not too out of line with other auto factory worker pay and Europeans generally make significantly more then UAW workers yet they are not in any kind of dire crisis. Auto companies generally make alot of money every year because it is a big money making business and the workers who build those cars should see some of that and be paid fairly.
There is no real opportunity either for factory workers to advance to higher pay scales in auto plants like in white collar jobs, most engineers I know make 90K and over which is significantly more then a autoworker who has been working 25 years at the plant would make unless they worked a ton of overtime. Those $45-70hr figures for autoworkers include benefits, pension, other workers pensions, etc and the workers don't see anything close to that in their paychecks. I do agree the benefits cost the big 3 way too much and I think they should just get a few bucks more an hour and be able to get their own health insurance as what they currently have is way over the top and it would save the big 3 tons of money, the pension with all the retirees is also too much and is eating into their profit margin. It is not their take home pay that is the issue because it is not that much more then a import factory worker, it is all the benefits, pensions, retirement and other that is costing them so much. I have no problem with autoworkers or blue collar workers like autoworkers making 28 or 30some dollars or more an hour because it is a tough job doing day in and day out and a business that generates alot of money that affords to pay the workers a decent wage when done right.
#26
Lexus Fanatic
Worst yet, due to some ultra stupid union contract, the company is NOT ALLOWED to assign a different task to a worker who is assigned to a specific task. For example, if the worker's assignment is to put the doors on then the company cannot make that person to install the dashboards. That inflexibility also cost the companies a lot of money.
Stupid union...
Stupid union...
#27
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The people with ideological problems with unions made their position very clear: They are willing to let these companies falter (i.e. the manufacture base of the entire economy, the industry that created the middle class in the first place) to see the unions be crushed. The "they only deserve $20/hr" nonsense shows how many people do not have a clue to what created the middle class in this country, much less the affects to consumption spending (you know, the largest component of GDP) when households don't have money to spend. That increased divisional stratification between the rich and the poor will only accelerate at a feverish pace once every unionized industry is crushed, as is the ill-conceived "dream" being thrown around in this thread.
The article posted above makes it perfectly clear that even the presense of unions in a given industry has clear incentives for non-unionized companies to pay thier workers marginally more to fend off a union at their organization. Something for the overwhelming union-bashers here to bite on.
Oh, and how about we discuss why it's ok for German and Japanese auto workers, who are heavily unionized, to make more than any auto maker could even wish to make in the United States? Is the United States, the South in particular, a dumping ground for the rest of the G7 countries to come here and "rape" our workers? You honestly think these transplants would pay their workers the wages they do if there was no threat of unionization from the UAW? It's time to take a step back and look at the facts in this highly complex case. It's not some zero sum, cut and dry, "the unions are evil and caused everything wrong at these companies", type of situation. There needs to be clearly thought out policy analysis to any given proposal, independent of the "Let's crush the unions at any cost" bias/mentality.
The article posted above makes it perfectly clear that even the presense of unions in a given industry has clear incentives for non-unionized companies to pay thier workers marginally more to fend off a union at their organization. Something for the overwhelming union-bashers here to bite on.
Oh, and how about we discuss why it's ok for German and Japanese auto workers, who are heavily unionized, to make more than any auto maker could even wish to make in the United States? Is the United States, the South in particular, a dumping ground for the rest of the G7 countries to come here and "rape" our workers? You honestly think these transplants would pay their workers the wages they do if there was no threat of unionization from the UAW? It's time to take a step back and look at the facts in this highly complex case. It's not some zero sum, cut and dry, "the unions are evil and caused everything wrong at these companies", type of situation. There needs to be clearly thought out policy analysis to any given proposal, independent of the "Let's crush the unions at any cost" bias/mentality.
#28
Lexus Fanatic
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#29
Lexus Champion
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Well...it could be now that the 'bailout' is the straw that will break the camel's back....They seem too worried on anything else but this.
Then again...if the automakers decide they need to really scale back the union wages/benefits/pension and what not...and the union doesn't budge, and the bailout doesn't go through or work, then the union will be *** out in a sandstorm when the car companies go bankrupt....seems it would be smarter for them to work with the companies to try and help get through these times... or else these jobs will be gone.
No workers=no unions. Someone could then take over and 'rebuild' the big three, with no unions. Who knows, it may work out for the best in any case.