How Much Do UAW Workers Really Make?

[rdgdawg]

Does anyone REALLY know????

http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos...U4NGNhNWI5MjI=

How Much Do UAW Workers Really Make?

New York Times business columnist David Leonhardt tackles the question today and concludes that the oft-cited figure of $73 per hour is misleading:

The calculations show, accurately enough, that for every hour a unionized worker puts in, one of the Big Three really does spend about $73 on compensation. So the number isn’t made up. But it is the combination of three very different categories.

The first category is simply cash payments, which is what many people imagine when they hear the word “compensation.” It includes wages, overtime and vacation pay, and comes to about $40 an hour. (The numbers vary a bit by company and year. That’s why $73 is sometimes $70 or $77.)

The second category is fringe benefits, like health insurance and pensions. These benefits have real value, even if they don’t show up on a weekly paycheck. At the Big Three, the benefits amount to $15 an hour or so.

Add the two together, and you get the true hourly compensation of Detroit’s unionized work force: roughly $55 an hour. It’s a little more than twice as much as the typical American worker makes, benefits included. The more relevant comparison, though, is probably to Honda’s or Toyota’s (nonunionized) workers. They make in the neighborhood of $45 an hour, and most of the gap stems from their less generous benefits.

The third category is the cost of benefits for retirees. These are essentially fixed costs that have no relation to how many vehicles the companies make. But they are a real cost, so the companies add them into the mix — dividing those costs by the total hours of the current work force, to get a figure of $15 or so — and end up at roughly $70 an hour.

The crucial point, though, is this $15 isn’t mainly a reflection of how generous the retiree benefits are. It’s a reflection of how many retirees there are. [emp. added] The Big Three built up a huge pool of retirees long before Honda and Toyota opened plants in this country. You’d never know this by looking at the graphic behind Wolf Blitzer on CNN last week, contrasting the “$73/hour” pay of Detroit’s workers with the “up to $48/hour” pay of workers at the Japanese companies.

But Heritage analyst James Sherk says this just isn't true:

The hourly benefit figures the Detroit automakers report covers the cost of current and future benefits earned by actively working employees. It does not include the cost of paying health benefits and pensions to current retirees. [emp. added]

To back this up, Sherk points out that:

The Detroit automakers pay similar wages at each company despite having very different numbers of retirees to provide for... General Motors has far more retirees per active worker than Ford or Chrysler. For each active worker at GM, there were 3.8 retirees or dependants in 2006. At Chrysler this ratio was half as much: two retirees for each worker. At Ford there were only 1.6 retirees per worker. If the hourly labor costs included retiree benefits, hourly wages at GM would be much higher than at either Ford or Chrysler.

But this is not the case. General Motors did not have the highest hourly labor costs despite having more retirees. Chrysler paid $2.60 an hour more in labor costs in 2006 than GM did. Ford paid only $2.75 an hour less than GM did, despite having half as many retirees relative to workers to provide for. All three automakers had roughly the same hourly labor costs despite having very different numbers of retirees to provide for. Hourly labor costs account for the expense of providing wages and benefits to current workers but do not include legacy costs.

Sherk makes a strong case, but maybe I'm missing something. Who's right?

[ffpowerLN]

It includes wages, overtime and vacation pay, and comes to about $40 an hour.

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.

[meowCat]

Hell... I'll take that job. I'll do it for $30/ hr building cars. I pay attention to details and am very neat. I can do quality work. Gimme money.


.

[whoster]

either way, they get paid WAY TOO MUCH.

UAW is going to drown the American car industry.

[rominl]

if they think 40 bucks an hour is cheap for a labor building cars, they are smoking.

[PhilipMSPT]

People with Master's degrees; such as Physician Assistants, Registered Nurses, and Physical Therapists; on average make $40/hr. These are people that save lives, and are under stress to do so.

What makes labor in car production more valuable?

[whoster]

Originally Posted by rominl

if they think 40 bucks an hour is cheap for a labor building cars, they are smoking.

I want in on whatever they're smoking.....

[DASHOCKER]

Bus drivers in NYC make the same money to start.. If you ain't making the cash start looking for something that pays... Like the auto industry lol.. Welcome to 2008.

[Caoboy]

Originally Posted by whoster

UAW is going to drown the American car industry.

IS GOING TO?

[whoster]

Originally Posted by Caoboy

IS GOING TO?

you're right...


that was a pretty gargantuan understatement...

[Lexmex]

The other thing is that it's not like one auto worker assembles the whole car by themselves, (if they did that I'd give $40/hr at least, but definitely more). They do one specific task over and over again. I watched a documentary not too long ago about auto production and they were showing a worker doing a task, and then the worker was showing the interviewer how to do the task and the interviewer did it relatively easy. Do we really need to chunk out $40/hr for something like that. Also, whatever happened to more robotics in the industry keeping costs down? It's not like building cars when my parents grew up.

[DASHOCKER]

How about the guys and gals that pick up garbage in NYC vs. the autoworker.. The same ballpark folks..l..

The current starting salary of a Sanitation Worker is $31,200 per year. The current labor agreement provides for periodic increases to a maximum of $67,141 after 5 1/2 yearsIn addition to the basic annual wages, Sanitation Workers may also earn differential payments based on their specific assignment and overtime.

http://nyc.gov/html/dsny/html/jobs/jobs.shtml#otherpos

[ffpowerLN]

Originally Posted by Lexmex

They do one specific task over and over again.

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...

[Lexmex]

It's just simply amazing.

I think back to my Uncle Antonio in Mexico who works as a self-employed mechanic with his own garage and how little he earns and all the things he's got to do on a variety of cars of all different makes and then a single person doing a single task as mentioned above in auto construction ends up earning roughly about 8x more than he does.

[Allen K]

Originally Posted by DASHOCKER

How about the guys and gals that pick up garbage in NYC vs. the autoworker.. The same ballpark folks..l..

http://nyc.gov/html/dsny/html/jobs/jobs.shtml#otherpos

True, but sanitation is generally a harder sell compared to autoworker. I remember watching an episode of Dirty Jobs when he followed some garbage workers and they really have to hustle.