Saving the auto industry
Why do I hear right wingers saying again and again that our union labor is paid way too much and that all we need to do is get those wages competitive with China to prosper? How is making $100 bucks a month prospering? What about the thought that we could nationalize healthcare as this reduces the labor costs? Or even requiring that nations we trade with regulation their pollution and work standards or put tariffs on their products that would cost them the same amount as providing those social services to their citizens.
About Those Auto Worker Wages...
by DHinMI
Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 12:20:04 PM PST
http://www.dailykos.com/
A couple of days ago Think Progress had a sampling of conservative opposition to an auto bailout based on the BS premise that the problem is the United Auto Workers union and its contracts with the American auto companies:
Sen. Jim DeMint: "Some auto manufacturers are struggling because of a bad business structure with high unionized labor costs and burdensome federal regulations. Taxpayers did not create these problems and they should not be forced to pay for them."
Sen. Jon Kyl: "For years they’ve been sick. They have a bad business model. They have contracts negotiated with the United Auto Workers that impose huge costs.The average hourly cost per worker in this country is about $28.48. For these auto makers, it’s $73. And for the Japanese auto companies working here in the United States, it’s $48."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: "You know, if you pay the auto workers or the benefits and all of those things, are maybe too high. ... We have, like, in America, you sell a car, and you have $2,000 of each car just goes to benefits. So I think that there’s a way of reducing all of that, make them more fiscally responsible."
DeMint's statement is ridiculously stupid. The problems aren't just with the US auto companies. The entire global auto industry is currently a mess because the credit crisis has caused cars sales to plunge, especially in the US, including imports:
Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.
For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.
And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.
[...]
In the 150-acre terminal where Toyotas are unloaded, there is a sea of Corollas, Camrys and RAV4s...
Kurt Golledge, 48, was one of just two truckers loading his green, 75-foot-long hauler with cars last week. Mr. Golledge said eight of his colleagues were laid off this month because Toyota dealers did not want more deliveries.
"I was dropping cars in Henderson, Nev., about a month ago and the dealer told me: ‘Take ’em somewhere else and dump ’em,’ " said Mr. Golledge, who works for a company called Allied Systems. "All the dealers are telling us the same thing."
[...]
"The ships keep coming, but there’s nowhere for the cars to go," Mr. Golledge said. He said he believed the vehicles he was loading would be his last before he was laid off, and he was already considering where he might find a new job.
As for Schwarzenegger--who claims the problem is that workers get too generous a benefits package--he may want to ruminate on this fact: only cars built in the US have built-in health insurance costs, because other cars are built in places like Japan or Germany that provide health insurance to all citizens, or they're built in places like Mexico or Brazil where the workforces are non-union and don't receive health care.
Which brings us to Kyl's lie. DKos diarist Inky99 was on this bs the other day, and discovered this debunking of Kyl's $73 per hour claim:
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.
The reason the US and Japanese companies have different total costs for their American workers? The US companies have been employing American workers for almost a hundred years. They have a lot of retirees. Most of the Japanese auto plants in the US are less than 20 years old. They have almost no retirees, so their costs are only for active workers.
So, why is this pernicious falsehood about inflated wages bouncing around the public discourse on the auto industry? Several reasons.
First, it demonizes unions and their members as greedy and not interested in the long-term health and profitability of the corporations with which they sign contracts. It also ignores the fact that in 2007 the UAW signed a landmark contract in which they assumed future responsibility for healthcare for their members employed by the Big Three. The auto companies paid in to a fund, which will be administered by the UAW. Over the long haul, this is expected to radically decrease the auto companies' legacy costs (although the best way to help company and union is to pass national health care).
Making false claims inflating the earnings of unionized workers is also part of the Republicans' long-held practice of class warfare. It's intended to gin up envy and disgust at people making a good hourly wage. Few people would be unsympathetic to an auto worker for making $58,000 per year. But more would feel unsympathetic if they thought that same auto worker made $73 per hour, which over the course of a year is over $150,000.
Finally, harping on imaginary and inflated wages for workers is a way to distract from one of the big problems with the US auto companies (and most US corporations in any sector): executive compensation. For instance, in 2007 General Motors CEO Rick Waggoner made close to $20 million in total compensation.
Are you surprised that conservatives are playing with math to come up with the false figure of $73 per hour for UAW members working at the Big Three, while saying nothing about a Big Three CEO making $9,500.00 per hour?
Me neither.
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* Discuss (108 comments)
About Those Auto Worker Wages...
by DHinMI
Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 12:20:04 PM PST
http://www.dailykos.com/
A couple of days ago Think Progress had a sampling of conservative opposition to an auto bailout based on the BS premise that the problem is the United Auto Workers union and its contracts with the American auto companies:
Sen. Jim DeMint: "Some auto manufacturers are struggling because of a bad business structure with high unionized labor costs and burdensome federal regulations. Taxpayers did not create these problems and they should not be forced to pay for them."
Sen. Jon Kyl: "For years they’ve been sick. They have a bad business model. They have contracts negotiated with the United Auto Workers that impose huge costs.The average hourly cost per worker in this country is about $28.48. For these auto makers, it’s $73. And for the Japanese auto companies working here in the United States, it’s $48."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: "You know, if you pay the auto workers or the benefits and all of those things, are maybe too high. ... We have, like, in America, you sell a car, and you have $2,000 of each car just goes to benefits. So I think that there’s a way of reducing all of that, make them more fiscally responsible."
DeMint's statement is ridiculously stupid. The problems aren't just with the US auto companies. The entire global auto industry is currently a mess because the credit crisis has caused cars sales to plunge, especially in the US, including imports:
Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.
For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.
And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.
[...]
In the 150-acre terminal where Toyotas are unloaded, there is a sea of Corollas, Camrys and RAV4s...
Kurt Golledge, 48, was one of just two truckers loading his green, 75-foot-long hauler with cars last week. Mr. Golledge said eight of his colleagues were laid off this month because Toyota dealers did not want more deliveries.
"I was dropping cars in Henderson, Nev., about a month ago and the dealer told me: ‘Take ’em somewhere else and dump ’em,’ " said Mr. Golledge, who works for a company called Allied Systems. "All the dealers are telling us the same thing."
[...]
"The ships keep coming, but there’s nowhere for the cars to go," Mr. Golledge said. He said he believed the vehicles he was loading would be his last before he was laid off, and he was already considering where he might find a new job.
As for Schwarzenegger--who claims the problem is that workers get too generous a benefits package--he may want to ruminate on this fact: only cars built in the US have built-in health insurance costs, because other cars are built in places like Japan or Germany that provide health insurance to all citizens, or they're built in places like Mexico or Brazil where the workforces are non-union and don't receive health care.
Which brings us to Kyl's lie. DKos diarist Inky99 was on this bs the other day, and discovered this debunking of Kyl's $73 per hour claim:
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.
The reason the US and Japanese companies have different total costs for their American workers? The US companies have been employing American workers for almost a hundred years. They have a lot of retirees. Most of the Japanese auto plants in the US are less than 20 years old. They have almost no retirees, so their costs are only for active workers.
So, why is this pernicious falsehood about inflated wages bouncing around the public discourse on the auto industry? Several reasons.
First, it demonizes unions and their members as greedy and not interested in the long-term health and profitability of the corporations with which they sign contracts. It also ignores the fact that in 2007 the UAW signed a landmark contract in which they assumed future responsibility for healthcare for their members employed by the Big Three. The auto companies paid in to a fund, which will be administered by the UAW. Over the long haul, this is expected to radically decrease the auto companies' legacy costs (although the best way to help company and union is to pass national health care).
Making false claims inflating the earnings of unionized workers is also part of the Republicans' long-held practice of class warfare. It's intended to gin up envy and disgust at people making a good hourly wage. Few people would be unsympathetic to an auto worker for making $58,000 per year. But more would feel unsympathetic if they thought that same auto worker made $73 per hour, which over the course of a year is over $150,000.
Finally, harping on imaginary and inflated wages for workers is a way to distract from one of the big problems with the US auto companies (and most US corporations in any sector): executive compensation. For instance, in 2007 General Motors CEO Rick Waggoner made close to $20 million in total compensation.
Are you surprised that conservatives are playing with math to come up with the false figure of $73 per hour for UAW members working at the Big Three, while saying nothing about a Big Three CEO making $9,500.00 per hour?
Me neither.
* Permalink ::
* Discuss (108 comments)