vette

Most of the large companies are moving to OVER SEAS LOCATIONS. This will not help our workers here at home. Also we cannot hardly buy USA anymore because it has to come from OVER SEAS. That is exactly where GM is going!!!!! They will also do it on BAILOUT MONEY. What about paying people to not work???? Is that a lie ????? READ THIS



The Return of the $70 Per Hour Meme
You might expect it from right-leaning commentators like Will Wilkinson. You wouldn't expect it from someone like Mark Perry, who lives in Flint, Michigan. And you certainly wouldn't expect to see it in the New York Times, from the likes of Andrew Ross Sorkin. But all of them are perpetuating the meme that the average GM worker costs more than $70 an hour, once you include health and pension costs.

It's not true.

The average GM assembly-line worker makes about $28 per hour in wages, and I can assure you that GM is not paying $42 an hour in health insurance and pension plan contributions. Rather, the $70 per hour figure (or $73 an hour, or whatever) is a ridiculous number obtained by adding up GM's total labor, health, and pension costs, and then dividing by the total number of hours worked. In other words, it includes all the healthcare and retirement costs of retired workers.

Now that GM's healthcare obligations are being moved to a UAW-run trust, even that fictitious number is going to fall sharply. But anybody who uses it as a rhetorical device suggesting that US car companies are run inefficiently is being disingenuous. As of 2007, the UAW represented 180,681 members at Chrysler, Ford and General Motors; it also represented 419,621 retired members and 120,723 surviving spouses. If you take the costs associated with 721,025 individuals and then divide those costs by the hours worked by 180,681 individuals, you're going to end up with a very large hourly rate. But it won't mean anything, unless you're trying to be deceptive.

THE UNION HELPED GET THIS SETUP.....This shows where the high pay number come from

chupr0kabra

iTrader: (10)

Your thinking would work if everyone was a "car person". They're not. Most people see a car as a means of transportation, and as long as it has a cupholder for their double shot espresso mocha latte, they don't care what it runs in the quarter.

I stand by what I've said before. GM (in the US, at least) needs to be Chevrolet and Cadillac. Sell or shutter everything else. Re-tool the factories to make Silverados OR Sierras (as an example), but not both. If they can prove they can make a profit, THEN they can look into bringing back some of the other badges.


-Mike

slayer_taunu

iTrader: (3)

of course not... and if you only make $15/hr, then you should have the intelligence and responsibility to not have kids that you cant afford to have. its like when people argue that the minimum wage should be increased to a 'living wage'... well who the F makes minimum wage? high school kids working at supermarkets or at the mall folding clothes or flipping burgers. if you are 30 years old and making minimum wage, then something is wrong with you.

i'm going to ditto nine ball on this one... assembly line workers are not skilled laborers and certainly shouldnt be paid as such.

the unions may have been needed way back in the day to fix all the unsafe factory conditions and whatnot, but now they serve little purpose than to strongarm the corporations. My father works a labor job (runs a landscaping company) and most of his friends are laborers as well. he first hand knows union employees that worked on "The Big Dig" tunnel project in boston. He personally knows multiple people that made over $30/hr to sit in a truck all day and fill a diesel generator twice a day, or make two trips a day in a dumptruck that they sit around in, waiting for it to get filled. its total BS and that big dig debacle cost the tax payers over $14Billion more than it should have.

I aint saying that corporations arent to blame, but allowing the unions to strong arm them over the years is definitely a business decisions that i do blame them for.

Scoggin Dickey

iTrader: (34)

You HAVE to include the pension/retirement costs as part of what it costs to employ somebody. It's not being deceptive, it's a labor cost that has to be taken into account.

2002C5COUPE

iTrader: (3)

Unions are still needed. They set the bar for all non union work places too. There's no "strong arming". Whats so wrong with a group of workers setting up a set of rules and guidelines to go by with the employer? They only intervene when one of those rules, which the employer agreed on, were broken.

$14,000,000,000.00 over budget because some workers were making a few dollars more an hour than you think they should?

$14,000,000,000.00/($15/hr. "overpaid")= close to 1,000,000,000 man hours It seems like there was more going on there than some "unskilled, untrained dumptruck driver strong arming a corporation".

Try and see the whole picture not just what the heads of the companies want you to see.

Doomsday

iTrader: (8)

Remember the Alamo

calongo_SS

iTrader: (7)

There are thousands of people that go to work for GM and Ford everyday that no longer have jobs. They sit in cafeterias for 8 hours a day doing absolutely nothing while receiving their full wages. Their jobs no longer exist (plant closings) but the union will not cut jobs. Unions used to have a place. Now they are not allowing these American icons to change to adapt to the times.

You ask how I know? I grew up near Detroit and I know tons of people who work for / used to work for the big 3 in both union and union jobs. The power of the UAW in Detroit is nothing like any union in Texas.

slayer_taunu

iTrader: (3)

your right, there was more going on... its not just the wages. the project also took years longer than it was supposed to, and they had to redo a bunch of stuff due to **** ups.

MEZA TA

iTrader: (5)

Union is outdated. People at the plant need to be paid according to their task. $30/hour to install a windshield all day is wayyyyy too much. Yes health insurance is high....everyone I know has to pay so why should union workers get it for damn near free??