so lets take $38 to include benefits...
$38 * 40hrs/week * 52 weeks = $79000 / year.

I went to college get a BS degree. I have 13 years experience in my field and I'm making quite a bit less than that. Now I see that an uneducated Joe is making more than me and complaining about it. I think the UAW can go fuck themselves and the horse they rode in on. The UAW is seriously out of touch with the times. Here is a couple of videos where the UAW goes to Congress and complains that they are only making $45/hour ($94000/year).

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-162123
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-162125

The UAW needs to come to terms that they needs to take some serious pay cuts for the American auto industry to be competitive. I seriously hope the auto industry declares bankruptcy so they can dump this outrageously stupid union contract.

^ 1st - you're off by $10. The average is $28/hr, including the "highly skilled" non-manual-labor, technical jobs.

So, even $28 is wrong.

My brother is a foreman at Ford, for nine years now, and he would laugh in your face if you told him he made $79k per year!

Get. Fucking. Real.

Go ask someone who works at one of these factories how much they make. They don't live in shitty tract-homes in crappy parts of town because they want to.

If you're bitching about $38 an hour being too much, you aren't paying attention. People are already slaving away for nothing in this country. It's disgraceful. It's always the working class that has to take it up the ass.

We don't need fewer unions in this country; we need more of them.

@Chaucer:

The problem isn't that they're being paid too much - it's that you (and me) are being paid too little. Get over your bitterness.

Some of these comments sound a lot like the workers arguments prior to the October Revolution....

$28.00 / hr with benefits? Where do I sign up?

>> ^Trancecoach:
$28.00 / hr with benefits? Where do I sign up?


That's an average. Starting salaries begin at $14.00/hr, as of a 2005 negotiation between big-3 and UAW.

This is so sad how much it's being twisted. The heads of the "Right To Work" lobbying firms and corporations colluding with the Southern GOP senators is pitting every-day-citizens against eachother, and it's working. They've been able to teach citizens to hate workers.

Anyone buying this $71(3?4?)/an hour shit should be embarassed.

The rest of us are being paid too little? Do you have any clue what people are being paid in other countries?

Hint: It's less than us.

So how exactly are we supposed to be competitive in the global economy?

Those manufacturing jobs keep leaving the US because we refuse to work for less money. Clue phone! It's for you!

I'm constantly surprised that there are still any manufacturers in this country at all.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Clue phone! It's for you!


I was about to say the same thing to you. Worker pay has decreased as CEO pay has skyrocketed. Where there once was a 5-to-1 gap in worker vs exectuive pay, there is now a 200-to-1 gap.

I think your phone is ringing.

>> ^MaxWilder:
The rest of us are being paid too little? Do you have any clue what people are being paid in other countries?
Hint: It's less than us.
So how exactly are we supposed to be competitive in the global economy?
Those manufacturing jobs keep leaving the US because we refuse to work for less money. Clue phone! It's for you!
I'm constantly surprised that there are still any manufacturers in this country at all.


Clue phone: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/12/12/145922/81

Maybe we should try and do something rather than saying "bend over and try to enjoy it".

Here you go:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621


"In 1965, U.S. CEOs in major companies earned 24 times more than an average worker.

CEO pay has exploded and by 2005 the average CEO was paid $10,982,000 a year, or 262 times that of an average worker. The ratio surged in the 1990s and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000."

The New York Times article was correct and straightforward. Olbermann is wrong. Olbermann claims the NYT claimed $73/hour wages. They never did. They correctly said $73 was the average compensation per worker, and Olbermann doesn't refute that. These gigantic health and pension and survivor benefits should rightfully be included in the compensation.

I'm a Ph.D. research student, basically a professional scientist, and I get paid about $25,000 a year. Zero benefits. No health care, no maternity leave, no retirement, nothing. If I'm lucky I'll be compensated as much as a UAW assembly line worker when I graduate after 10 years of impoverished higher education.

Economic conservatives have always hated unions - either because unions interfere with the god-like operation of the free market, or because they cut into the bottom line. Of course they're going to try to put the blame on the unions.

However, I think the union-haters may be partly right. While unions are great for protecting worker's interests, unfortunately they also create a great deal of rigidity. The fact is that the money to pay these workers doesn't rain down like manna from heaven. It comes from consumers. When you have a bunch of workers and give them good wages during the economic good times, when there is a lot of consumer demand for your product, everything works well enough. But when consumer demand goes slack, you have to cut your costs. Profits in the car industry weren't so great that they could take the cut instead. And while the figure of $70/hour may have been misleading, it does tell you something important : basically for every productive worker the company pays, it has to pay the same amount to a non-productive worker. That's like tieing anchors around both your feet. The auto industry cannot cut it costs, when it desperately needs to.

Sure, the management of these companies is not free from blame. They probably could have prepared for this crisis better. But they could not be expected to predict the current economic crisis and the credit crunch, which prevents them from just borrowing to tide them over bad times. So yes, a significant portion of the blame should fall on the unions. They're pretty much the reason why the auto companies had to go to the government to beg for help, and why taxpayers will probably end up footing the bill. Essentially, all of us have to pay for the privilege of a few to keep their jobs.

To sum up, while unions do good things to protect workers and help make decent jobs possible, they need to recognize that the capitalist system is dynamic, and the ability to fire workers or cut their pay if necessary is a requirement for the smooth running of that system. Liberals are right to question the motives of conservatives whose first response is to blame the unions. However, they should not unthinkingly react with the opposite conclusion, that unions are innocent. Lets consider the facts, okay?

>> ^rychan:
The New York Times article was correct and straightforward. Olbermann is wrong. Olbermann claims the NYT claimed $73/hour wages. They never did. They correctly said $73 was the average compensation per worker, and Olbermann doesn't refute that. These gigantic health and pension and survivor benefits should rightfully be included in the compensation.

Sequence of events is out of kilter. There was an earlier article (11/18) where they said:

At G.M., as of 2007, the average worker was paid about $70 an hour, including health care and pension costs.

I'm more worried about the progress of humanity so I don't just follow dollars. Why else would anyone possibly be a scientist? The women? The prestige from the science loving nation and Bush administration?

I have to buy my health care. It's illegal for the university to provide me health care, because the grants that fund us can only be used to pay a student's stipend.

Of course my salary expectation will go up when I graduate, if I can find a job. And if I'm lucky enough to find one, my compensation will be comparable to an auto worker.

I wasn't actually arguing for a conservative economics, or even against unions in general. Although I think the UAW is bad for the country and so are teacher's unions.

But there are few things a government can invest in that give a better return on tax dollars than science. Compare the meager National Science Foundation budget which almost single handedly trains all of our scientists to the tax revenue generated from high tech industry. The effect is completely causal. No NSF money given to Stanford, no CS education for Larry Page and Sergei Brin. And there's a thousand other similar stories.

Even the updated NYT article above lists an actual average wage @ $40/hr.

Which is still a ridiculously inflated, unrealistic wage. (Especially if you live in Michigan, where costs of living are quite low)

I could see $25/hr, maybe even $30/hr, after working at the job for many years and proving that you are just "too good to lose." But I'm not sure if that's how the system works.

What part of the word "AVERAGE" do you people not understand?

The 1st NYT article was a LIE, using outdated and massively inflated numbers. They later debunked their own article, but still are completely inaccurate.

The average includes everyone from the highest paid tech and researchers, to the guys sweeping the floor. You think the floor sweepers make $40 an hour? Puhhhhhlease!. This figure also includes "legacy" costs, meaning paying for retirees. The workers don't get this money, the pensioners do. So to calculate legacy costs in with a workers "earnings" is dishonest.

The foreign auto companies here in the US barely have any retirees to pay for. Since they only came here in the late 80's, it's almost negligable. But, the Big-3 have two generations of retirees now. So comparing the two is just a joke.


So far we've had one "scientist" and one "BS" here who don't understand even basic math, arguing to kill the unions. Meh...

"Sure, the management of these companies is not free from blame. They probably could have prepared for this crisis better. But they could not be expected to predict the current economic crisis and the credit crunch, which prevents them from just borrowing to tide them over bad times.

BULLSHIT. I am just a graphic designer from the UK and I predicted the fucking credit crunch, it was fucking obvious for two reasons:

1) people were encouraged to take out credit they couldn't afford. this has been a news story for about 5 years. The existence of websites with names like easycredit123.com should ring alarm bells in every finance department in the world.

2) ever heard of boom/bust?

If these economic conditions were so hard for the largest companies in america to comprehend, i have a simple solution... give me $1,000,000,000 and I will tell you when the next crisis is coming.

>> ^rychan:
The New York Times article was correct and straightforward. Olbermann is wrong. Olbermann claims the NYT claimed $73/hour wages. They never did. They correctly said $73 was the average compensation per worker, and Olbermann doesn't refute that. These gigantic health and pension and survivor benefits should rightfully be included in the compensation.
I'm a Ph.D. research student, basically a professional scientist, and I get paid about $25,000 a year. Zero benefits. No health care, no maternity leave, no retirement, nothing. If I'm lucky I'll be compensated as much as a UAW assembly line worker when I graduate after 10 years of impoverished higher education.


Sounds like you picked the wrong degree.

I cant accurately judge this situation because im from LA and my extreme bias and dislike for the out of touch selfish greedy ass guilds here in fabulous Hollywood has made me a little jaded in this economic time of dread. All I know is i have 2 degrees and took everything i had not to get laid off this xmas and i am only getting paid $13 and hour with no benefits. So you can see I cant have sympathy for people claiming they are getting screwed over when we all are. Now is it selfish of me not to fight for someone elses cause when no one is fighting for mine, sure. That is why I try my best to stay out of this.

I agree that it is misleading to imply that the workers are earning $70 an hour.

But the bottom line is when you factor in wages and benefits these companies are spending $70 an hour per working employee (which is not the same as paying each employee $70 an hour). With these businesses losing billions and billions of dollars this is something that has to be looked at and addressed as well as CEO salaries.

Regardless of whether these workers make $70 or $20 an hour, it's still cheaper to employ someone in a 2nd or 3rd world country to do manual labour. Manufacturing jobs cannot exist in the developed world anymore.

The solution is innovation, plain and simple. Educate your population to be inventors, and not just cogs in the wheel.

>> ^Grimm:
But the bottom line is when you factor in wages and benefits these companies are spending $70 an hour per working employee

But that is simply not true. Your math is all wrong.

A lot of that money is spent on current retirees benefits and wages, as well as their spouses. They are not a "working employee", they are retired. That money is factored in to the average.

ps: I talked with my brother last night who's a foreman at Ford (for nine years). He makes $29/hr, has two children, one with MS, and a wife who works at Target as a cashier. Yeah, their life is all limousines and champagne...uggh.

Is anybody asking why Americans aren't buying American cars?

And what exactly is the purpose of a union?

And what does a CEO do that merits their earnings of millions a year?

What I think we need is a group of CEOs willing to forego their pay for a few years in order to prove that they want their companies to succeed. And they need to stop making inefficient monstrosities.

Natural selection in the economic sector. Manufacturing isn't profitable anymore. Every American has to eat at McDonalds, get lipo and get consumer-related occupations from now on. It's the way of the western world. I say lean back and enjoy the ride to eventual ruin. It will be fun while it lasts.

>> ^thinker247:
Is anybody asking why Americans aren't buying American cars?

Yes and no. US car sales aren't as horrible as people make it out to be, as far as I can tell. I personally don't like modern US cars, but a lot of people forget there's been US hybrid trucks for about eight years now. Plus, we sell a lot of cargo trucks too:

"The F-150 attracted 473,933 buyers this year, making it the No. 1-selling vehicle for 2008--it's been the best-selling vehicle in America for 27 years running. Another 431,725 buyers drove off Chevrolet lots in a Silverado."


Here's a list of the top 10 selling cars in the US: (from Bloomberg)

1 - Ford F-150
2 - Chevrolet Silverado
3 - Toyota Camry
4 - Honda Civic
5 - Honda Accord
6 - Toyota Matrix
7 - Nissan Altima
8 - Chevy Impala
9 - Dodge Ram
10 - Ford Focus

So that's five of the top ten, with numbers 1 and 2 being American cars.

Honda, Toyota and Nissan have all received massive federal funding and tax incentives in the last 15 years. We're talking $500million+ for each company. Talk about "socialism". It's OK to give them cash, but not our own?


>> ^thinker247:
And what is the purpose of a union?

Wow, really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States


It's an incredibly dark, fucked up story. Once read, you'll understand why they're not just purposeful, but also required due to humanities dark nature to enslave eachother.

>> ^volumptuous:
>> ^Grimm:
But the bottom line is when you factor in wages and benefits these companies are spending $70 an hour per working employee
But that is simply not true. Your math is all wrong.
A lot of that money is spent on current retirees benefits and wages, as well as their spouses. They are not a "working employee", they are retired. That money is factored in to the average.

This is why people are confusing the two.

Employees are NOT getting paid $70 an hour.

BUT it is costing the companies $70 an hour per employee for all wages and benefits including those that don't work there anymore.

You can't just say "it's not fair to count pensions etc" because those are real costs to the company. If I have 100 employees that I pay $25 an hour to work and I have another 100 retirees that I pay $25 an hour then my cost in wages and benefits is $50 an hour per employee. I'm not paying my employees $50 an hour but that's what it's costing me.

So the bottom line is I only have 100 employees and when I factor in what is paid in wages and benefits it's all costing me about $50 an hour per employee.

The reason it is important to look at it this way is to understand what your costs in wages and benefits is compared to your "productive employees" the employees that produce something.

>> ^Grimm:
This is why people are confusing the two.
Employees are NOT getting paid $70 an hour.



I know this. My brother (read above) is being paid $29/hr as a foreman.

The $70/hr claim is one giant lie, no matter what you factor into that. I am writing up a post to sifttalk with loads and loads of information, and I will post it later tonight.

>> ^rychan:
I'm a Ph.D. research student, basically a professional scientist, and I get paid about $25,000 a year. Zero benefits. No health care, no maternity leave, no retirement, nothing. If I'm lucky I'll be compensated as much as a UAW assembly line worker when I graduate after 10 years of impoverished higher education.


La dee freeekin daaaa...

First, being a grad student is a choice, no one is forcing you to get a Ph.D.

It is also against the law for a University to not provide health for graduate students. By federal regulation, you are technically an employee of the state, and discounted rates are made available for you to purchase. They are not included in your stipend because many students are still covered by their parents or are covered by their sposes. You can receive health care benefits by paying a small monthly or large yearly fee for benefits, just like any other employee. I recommend you ask the graduate student secretary.

Moreover, if and when you do graduate you will be making upwards of 70K. In physics the number is around 90K, biology it is a little less. In 3-5 year you could make as much as 100-200K. This is in industry of course. So you are trading short term income for long term higher wages. Think of it as an investment in your future.

Grad student stipends vary from 20K to 30K. But I agree that if the US wants to stay competitive in the global market we should be giving State Universities and National Labs federal funding to attract both better talent and stimulate the economy.

Start studying for that qualifier... it is gonna be a bitch.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Monday, December 15th, 2008 4:13pm PST - promote requested by MycroftHomlz.

I made $27 in 3 nights once, the HARD way... a quarter at a time

>> ^volumptuous:
>> ^Grimm:
This is why people are confusing the two.
Employees are NOT getting paid $70 an hour.


I know this. My brother (read above) is being paid $29/hr as a foreman.
The $70/hr claim is one giant lie, no matter what you factor into that. I am writing up a post to sifttalk with loads and loads of information, and I will post it later tonight.


Just because your brother doesn't get paid $70 an hour does not mean the company isn't spending $70 an hour per employee on all wages and all benefits.

There is money spent on employees that are currently working. There is money spent on employees that are no longer working. It's deceiving to say they only pay $29 an hour and ignore what their costs in benefits are and to ignore what their costs in employees who no longer work there.

Why would you need to combine the two and then divide it by just the employees that are still there? Because they are the only ones producing income for the company. So on average each employee needs to produce $70 an hour just to cover all of the costs of wages and benefits for employees past and present.

That's not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing....it just is what it is and is something that needs to be looked at when a company is bleeding by the billions.

Look, Olybloon and F(r)iends can spin this all they want; fact remains, there is no free lunch.

Unions are free to negotiate with their companies. If both sides agree to unsustainable wages or a business model destined to fail, then that's their problem.

Bail 'em out and they have no incentive to change.

I really wish statistics would distinguish between the median and the mean average. It looks like the NY Times used the mean average, when they probably should have used the median.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:
>>
La dee freeekin daaaa...
First, being a grad student is a choice, no one is forcing you to get a Ph.D.


Where did I imply otherwise?


It is also against the law for a University to not provide health for graduate students. By federal regulation, you are technically an employee of the state,


Well, maybe where you live, but that's absolutely not the case here. All grad students here (and at my previous university) are explicitly NOT an employee of the university. They are students. We have to send a statement to the IRS every year re-affirming that we aren't employees and that our stipend is not being rendered for our services but rather covering living expenses.

See the last section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_School
It says fellowship recipients are not typically employees of the university.


Moreover, if and when you do graduate you will be making upwards of 70K. In physics the number is around 90K, biology it is a little less. In 3-5 year you could make as much as 100-200K. This is in industry of course. So you are trading short term income for long term higher wages. Think of it as an investment in your future.

There's nothing short term about Ph.D. wages. You have to go to university for a decade, often at considerable expense for the first 4 years, and near break-even for the next 5 to 6. That's why people aren't in it for the money. If you wanted money you'd do something with a faster turn-around like a law degree which also has higher expected income.

^ I'm trying to figure out what the point is that you're trying to make. Are you trying to say that because you're highly educated, and working in the field of science, you should automatically be guaranteed higher pay and benefits than a factory worker?

Is it just to say that the situation is unfair, and the unfairness is being caused by unions?

Now, let me say, I generally agree that the situation seems backwards. Our society should value the services of people doing pure research more, and by that I mean more funding for the research itself, as well as better pay/benefits for the workers.

But unions don't create that problem. In a capitalist economy, everything has to show a return on investment. Pure research usually doesn't produce results that can bring a monetary return that exceeds the money spent to produce the result.

Under the market paradigm, this means we should spend fewer resources on pure research, because they're something of a long shot investment -- you might discover something really useful, like a transistor, or you might just figure out that bisphenol A causes medical problems over long periods of exposure, which just means the government is going to make you spend a lot of money for no reason.

Organizations that unify people around the cause of improving the societal valuation of pure research don't hurt. It might even help improve pay & benefits for your type of work.

Don't call it a union though, because then they'd be subject to a lot of animosity for no apparent reason.

What congress should do is abolish exclusive contracts that prohibit an employer from hiring anyone outside the union.

It's the same thing as Microsoft's old contracts with vendors that prevented them from selling Linux.

>>Now, let me say, I generally agree that the situation seems backwards. Our society should value the services of people doing pure research more, and by that I mean more funding for the research itself, as well as better pay/benefits for the workers.

I wouldn't say it's "unfair" because that's a loaded term. I would agree with what you said above. I don't really have a point.

I knew we were hosed when I saw a credit card machine in a McDonald's. Sez I, "Ruh roh!" We have had an ongoing paradigm shift in terms of economics/finance/communication/transportation/regulation over the past twenty years. We won't know how to get through it until we get through it (if we do). Since everything is in a state of flux, one of the concepts I believe we have to rethink is the top-down management/ownership/governance ideology. The internet is showing us the value of bottom-up organization and generation. What we sorely need is education of a rigorous, persistent and emancipating fashion, to see human populations as incubators of entrepreneurship, innovation, progressive ideas. As biological evolution seems to show, smaller, smarter, more agile is the way to go for organisms; perhaps that is the way to go with human organization in industry, education, finance, governance. Seems counterintuitive, doesn't it?

I'm 32, my experience with union has always taken one of three forms:

1. Join our union or we'll make life difficult for you
2. You can't move that TV to your truck because this is a Union hall. A union member will move the TV when he's good and ready, and not a minute sooner. I don't care if you desperately need to get out of here and the only thing stopping you is a 25LB TV set... put the TV down or we will call the police or simply continue to threaten you.
3. Don't work so hard, you are making the union look bad

So FUCK OFF UNIONS

Nah you need unions but they can be counterproductive.

I think the US would do well to nationalize health care and take that burden off the companies, like in pretty much ever other industrialized nation.

The trouble with those exclusive contracts that prohibit employers from hiring nonunion employees is that the if the employees become unsatisfied with the union they can't quit it to form a different union without losing their jobs. It's a monopoly. So the union can be as corrupt and inefficient as it wants and the employees in the industry can't divest from the union without moving to a different industry where they have no experience.

Nationalize healthcare by having the government directly hire doctors and build its own hospitals, which will care for anyone who presents, no questions asked. No secretaries for billing paperwork, no insurance filing overhead, etc. Then cease all government subsidies and regulations of private sector health care (let it sink or swim on the free market). Most of the insurance industry would go under, as it should, since they're useless middlemen like the RIAA. The amount of man-hours required to deal with the insurance paperwork usually exceeds the amount of man-hours required for the actual operation or treatment.

>> ^Trancecoach:
$28.00 / hr with benefits? Where do I sign up?


Yeah, seriously. That's more than most college graduates make.

The UAW guy in the video admits to making $47 an hour with benefits. That's like 100k a year. That's more than double what it takes to live very comfortably in detroit. That's more than 5 times what grad students make, including benefits.

If you want to solve the predatory lending problem, make a law that each change in the interest rate of a loan requires a separate and contemporaneous act of consent by the borrower.

>> ^jwray:
The trouble with those exclusive contracts that prohibit employers from hiring nonunion employees is that the if the employees become unsatisfied with the union they can't quit it to form a different union without losing their jobs. It's a monopoly. So the union can be as corrupt and inefficient as it wants and the employees in the industry can't divest from the union without moving to a different industry where they have no experience.

That's a change to unions I could agree with, though I'd probably want the EFCA to be wrapped in with that, so it's trivially easy to form a new union.