The 70 per-hour-lie

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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/21/145754/25/353/664759

The $70-Per-Hour Lie
by brownsox
Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 06:45:04 PM PST

Have you heard the one about the union autoworker making more than $70 per hour, forcing American auto companies into bankruptcy?

There are two very small problems with that. First, there's something wrong with workers making a good living? As wrong for a blue-collar worker to make $70 as for a CEO to make $11,000?

Second, it's not true. Average wages for Big Three workers are around $28 per hour.
 
Watermark said:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/21/145754/25/353/664759

The $70-Per-Hour Lie
by brownsox
Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 06:45:04 PM PST

Have you heard the one about the union autoworker making more than $70 per hour, forcing American auto companies into bankruptcy?

There are two very small problems with that. First, there's something wrong with workers making a good living? As wrong for a blue-collar worker to make $70 as for a CEO to make $11,000?

Second, it's not true. Average wages for Big Three workers are around $28 per hour.
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$28/hours is probably about median taxable pay. Throw in the cost of benefits and payroll taxes and the average cost to employ an auto worker is probably not to far off $50/hr.

My sister works for Ford, has about 12 years in. Makes about $32/hr in wages and has really nice benefits. So the $70/hr cost per worker is not to far off.

You're main point though is correct. The caliber of the workers at a manufacturer at Ford is critical to making a quality product and to the bottom line. Ford skilled workers are some of the most productive workers in the world and for the most part earn their pay.

I think it's also fair that before any CEO making $40 million per year ask his workers to take a pay cut, that he or she needs to set the example first.
 
Mottleydude said:
$28/hours is probably about median taxable pay. Throw in the cost of benefits and payroll taxes and the average cost to employ an auto worker is probably not to far off $50/hr.

My sister works for Ford, has about 12 years in. Makes about $32/hr in wages and has really nice benefits. So the $70/hr cost per worker is not to far off.

You're main point though is correct. The caliber of the workers at a manufacturer at Ford is critical to making a quality product and to the bottom line. Ford skilled workers are some of the most productive workers in the world and for the most part earn their pay.

I think it's also fair that before any CEO making $40 million per year ask his workers to take a pay cut, that he or she needs to set the example first.
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Actually, the $70 per hour claim is quite far off. It includes the legacy costs that the companies pays to its retirees, a group that is twice as large as its current workforce. Here:

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Except ... notice something weird about this calculation? It's not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that--probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."

Of course, the cost of benefits for those retirees--you may have heard people refer to them as "legacy costs"--do represent an extra cost burden that only the Big Three shoulder. And, yes, it makes it difficult for the Big Three to compete with foreign-owned automakers that don't have to pay the same costs. But don't forget why those costs are so high. While the transplants don't offer the same kind of benefits that the Big Three do, the main reason for their present cost advantage is that they just don't have many retirees.
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http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1026e955-541c-4aa6-bcf2-56dfc3323682
 
Our corporate community is infected with the anti-human management techniques embodied in Scientific Management or Taylorism.

The precepts are laid out below, from wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorism


1.Develop a standard method for performing each job
2.Select workers with appropriate abilities for each job
3.Train workers in the standard method previously developed
4.Support workers by planning their work and eliminating interruptions.
5.Provide wage incentives to workers for increased output
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They seem innocuous at first glance, but they are actually a paradigm for a culture of tyranny, and in globalization where corporate culture is the ruling global force, a defacto implementation of global tyranny.

Oh and #5 above was abandoned right off the bat, basically, except for execs who run companies into the ground with fraud and corruption.
 
Further down. Same wiki page.

Elements
Labor is defined and authority/responsibility is legitimised/official
Positions placed in hierarchy and under authority of higher level
Selection is based upon technical competence, training or experience
Actions and decisions are recorded to allow continuity and memory
Management is different from ownership of the organization
Managers follow rules/procedures to enable reliable/predictable behaviour
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It's a totalitarian hierarchy where the role of individual thought is eliminated.

A workers insight into his own work is discounted and the opinions of mba's who have never done that actual work is inserted, based on a generally hostile attitude toward workers and a desire to dehumanize them. Denying a person input into the planning his own actions is dehumanization, because, in our natural state, we are not bound to such external control. This is morally skeptical, not enlightened management.
 
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So most anti-WTO ers are not communists, we're against subjugating normal morality and decent human relations to the profit process.
 
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