We'd need to know their economic package amount in 1954. It would be cool if somebody did come up with this, though. Back in the day, wages were generally "living" wages. That is.....most jobs paid enough to keep the little lady at home with the kids. My guess is that in spite of the breathtaking increases under the UAW contract, their buying power is not significantly in excess of what it was in 1954. That's the macro-problem here in America. The "Middle Class" is evaporating.

Here's a data point.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111308A

Total compensation per hour for the big-three carmakers is $73.20. That's a 52 percent differential from Toyota's (Detroit South) $48 compensation (wages + health and retirement benefits). In fact, the oversized UAW-driven pay package for Detroit is 132 percent higher than that of the entire manufacturing sector of the U.S., which comes in at $31.59.

Thanks Rearden. I'm sure it's in the link but GM is in the worst position of the three at close to $80 an hour. Don't tell Sup :D

In my construction industry, wages are in that same ballpark. $35. Some are $26-$28. Some are $45 or a little more. But $35 is a representative number.

Benefits are between $9 and about $17 per hour. For that money, benefits administrators pay medical insurance and pensions, among other things. These figures are enough to underwrite the pension programs. So.....I am still curious as to how those funds could have been mismanaged enough in the past that three times that amount is required for UAW workers.

so your saying ..
you believe $ was mismanaged by the Union,
and if a rescue..
what would you ..suggest to the current Union

Rika

I wonder how Toyota gets away with so much less in the way of compensation. Their whole package is worth just a wee bit more than just the "Big Three"'s benefits.

Assuming the costs for medical services are about the same for all of us, here does Toyota save on benefits? I would guess on less than full coverage medical plans and lower pensions. So, with less value in those plans for workers, do those workers settle for substandard care and retirements? Or are we somehow taking up the slack somewhere else?

This is where I am going with this: My wife is a nurse by profession, but works in the managerial end of the biz these days. Most of her patients come in with inadequate coverage for the care they need. Patients that work full time for big companies with benefit packages. Companies that are probably much like Toyota. So who pays the difference? We do. Through public health and assistance programs. The money has to come from somewhere.

Wal-Mart is probably the most extreme, infamous example of what I am trying to illustrate. They provide no benefits whatsoever. They actually train their employees with regards to how to take best advantage of public assistance programs. So the rest of us foot the bill for medical coverage on their employees.

Where does Toyota land on this spectrum, between that of "full coverage" (I am assuming the UAW still gets that, what with the cost of their benefit package) and no coverage, ala Wal Mart? Has Toyota simply kept their benefit costs in check by sloughing some off on the public, on the taxpayer? If so, would we rather the Big Three do that?

Me again.

As posted before by me, we are a supplier to most of the GM/Delphi plants in Saginaw/Lansing/Grand Rapids.

The shops were all closed today for Veteran's Day. What, VD was last Tuesday? Well, not if you work in the UAW. You get to have today off so you can go deer hunting.

Like I've said before, most of the new workers coming into the Delphi plant I deal with are hard working and eager to learn. The older crowd that was more adversarial is gone on the ealry retirements. Alot of the stories you have heard about sleeping/leaving early/drug use/drinking on the j ob, etc. are true. I have seen it myself.

In dealing with the UAW, you have to have a totally different mindset versus a non-union or even just a non UAW union shop. I deal with machinists, dock workers, retail, and service unions.

The sense of entitlement that the UAW has bestowed on their membership is unbelievable.
They get a cost of living raise each year, even if the company makes no profit. Add those COLA allowances up for the bad years and you can get a sense of why GMM is in this spot.

That said, you must hold the managers accountable as well for the cars they have produced. The UAW didn't tell GM what vehicles to build, they just made it less profitable. A good manager should be able to manage a workforce and still make budget.
closed today for Veteran's Day.

I wish everyone were as smart, reasonable and responsible as Jeff Higgins.

I was disappointed that in the last presidential debate, neither candidate explained the health care problem. The problem is that we're not managing the payment part of the industry. The billing part. The organizations that are the most influential in those decisions are the medical insurance companies. The organization that seems to get last choice is the federal government.

In the upcoming economic recession, we will need to make some hard and important choices. I wonder if we should gather good information for that. I wonder if we should take a look at costs, how they are managed, what the true costs really are, and then decide.

Just a data point:

Little ditty on CNN today about this and the comparison was $17 an hour (foreign mfgr non-union on US soil ala Toyota, etc.) vs. $40 an hour, UAW.

Off that for a moment, my Ford dealer service department charges $115 an hour shop rate. My independent Porsche mechanic is $95/hr.

BTW-had my Dad decided to be a shop rat back in 1960 I probably would have been one as well. Glad he chose another option although insurance didn't have the same bennies and security, he was happy doing it.

Both of my Grandfathers worked in the shop. One as an engineer at AC Spark Plug. He was also a pilot who built his own plane as well as having a passion for a little German car. ;)






Ok, it was VW's but I'm told he liked Porsche but couldn't afford one with 7 kids.


In fact, the office that he occupied at AC was just torn down this past week as they are leveling the entire site now that Delphi has sold off those lines.




Oh, one other thing, I'm surrounded by retirees from GM/Delphi. Literally, the gal next door, the guy behind us, the lady across the street, and the wierd guy down the block all used the 30 and out option.

My other one was a shop rat, working on the line. I didn't know him as he passed long before I was born.

I read an interesting article some years ago regarding health care and retirement in America. My memory ain't what it used to be, so cut me some slack as I cover this at about a "30,000 foot flyover" level.

The article stated that back in the early '50's, America had come to a crossroads. In health care and retirement. The Federal Government wanted to socialize both - yes, way back when, they wanted state health care and adequate retirement. They were going to tax corporate America to pay for it. Sound familiar?

Well, as it turned out, the captains of industry looked at the bottom line, as they well should. In doing so, they determined it was cheaper to just pay for those items themselves. So they lobbied hard (much of it "backroom" lobbying) to assume the costs themselves to avoid the taxation required to support a public program. This was, in essence, our first swipe at socialized health care and retirement. Corporate America took the then cheaper route.

No one in that day could possibly have foretold the enormous increases in both health care costs and retired worker lifespan. They have to pay exponentially more for health care for employees and retirees, and pay for retirees longer than ever. In light of that, they (corporate America) now wants out of the deal. They can't afford the decision they made back in the '50's.

So, today, they are effectively inching out bit by bit, by simply not providing adequate coverage. Most folks do not have any way to fight this; we are stuck with the health plans our employers offer. The unions do, however, have the capacity and gumption to fight it. They want industry to continue to hold up their end of the bargain. In the face of that, corporate America has engaged in one of the biggest propoganda campaigns in the history of our country: they have convinced working Americans that Corporate America does not, in fact, owe them health care. Or retirement.

So who is going to scream the loudest when this whole house of cards comes crashing down? Granted, the folks with compromised health care are screaming already. For socialized health care. Eventually, they will win. Then who will be screaming the loudest? The corporations that get taxed to pay for it, exactly as proposed over 60 years ago.

It's coming full circle. The UAW only appears to be a pariah on this because they expect the Big Three to hold up their end of the bargain, made oh so many years ago. The rest of us no longer expect them to hold it up. The propoganda campaign has been that successfull...

I'm not an expert in computating health care costs, but I believe I know a fair amount about entitlement culture. To me, that is the core issue. What was once a benefit has now become an entitlement, and how dare anyone question an entitlement. While the UAW fairly negotiated retirement and health care plans, no one, on either side, factored the ultimate cost of those benefits. Once in contract law, those plans become entitlements and are therefore sacrosanct. just as SS or Medicare, they become "the cost of doing business". G.M., Ford, and Chrysler are the U.S. in microcosm - the "promises" cannot be kept without bankrupting the parent corporation. A bailout only prolongs the agony.

"Corporate America" (at least the automakers) aren't trying to convince anyone they don't owe health care or retirement obligations. That would be silly. These are written obligations, they cannot be denied.

But as you say, given the costs, they simply cannot afford it. Period. They would, I'm sure, love to be in a position to hold up their end of the bargain. But they are not. Can't get blood from a turnip.

There is no propaganda campaign necessary. They have fulfilled their obligations to the point of driving them out of business. They will continue to keep paying out all the UAW obligations until they are bankrupt.

That is crazy if workers are getting $35/hr to bolt parts on.

I work for a union shop where straight time is around $32/hr, but I don't give a second thought to handing the guys a drawing and a $5mil turbine and letting them loose. Not the same ballpark as snapping on a door panel.

I've been on both sides of the fence. A union local President sitting in contract talks and going thru binding arbitration. In later years, an administrator sitting on the other side of the table.

There is certainly a place for unions, but they've gone too far when they run their companies broke. It's not just the UAW, it happens everywhere. My wife just retired from a large grocery warehouse and has a Teamster retirement. That union ran the company bankrupt and she was lucky there was a buyout just months before she retired.

In the very county Jeff H. resides, some gov't workers only show up for work on 178 days per year out of 245 days scheduled. Couple that with low productivity, expensive benefit packages, overtime to pay for the no-shows and it's a wonder any company can survive....That doesn't even count the hours spend surfing PELICAN on the job!!!!!!

If Blogger Mark says it's true, it must be :confused:

That's why I referred to it as a data point.

But since you brought it up, "Blogger Mark" is a professor of economics and finance at University of Michigan, Flint. The source of his data is here:

http://chryslerlabortalks07.com/Economic_Data.rtf

and

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

Hmm... where to start - you missed my entire point.

Yes, where contracts are involved, these are "written obligations". Those contracts come up for renewal periodically, and the companies try (and here at Boeing) succeed in taking away some of the health care and retirement package. That is precisely why our IAM workers went on strike - the company made an offer that had substantially lowered benefits in these areas.

The local ad (propaganda) campaign from the company went to great lengths to point out that union workers were getting more than the average bear, and were getting greedy about it. They harped on about offering "the best package in the industry", which they actually were. That is not, however, a reflection on the comprehensiveness of their offer, but rather on the degradation of similar compensation packages elsewhere. Workers have been losing ground. I see it myself. And corporate America has been successful at painting the worker as the greedy villain.

The company went as far as to propose no pension whatsoever for anyone hired from here on. That is why the IAM strikes here - the company continually endeavors to remove more and more from their compensation plan, insinuating that it is "extra" on top of their wages. And insinuating no such deal was struck in the early '50's. Companies like this neither want to pay for employee medical and retirement nor be taxed so that the gubmint can step in. They want to have their cake and eat it, too.

And no, one cannot get blood from a turnip. This one has long since been bled dry. The handwriting has been on the wall for a long, long time however. Corporate America has had plenty of time to negotiate its way out of this bargain with the American people. But, alas, their version of "socialized health care" and a meaningful alternative to Social Security has always been taxpayer citizen funded, not corporate funded. Pushing the costs back to the public, without increased compensation to make up for. Ultimately, no taxes out of Corporate America's pockets to pay for any of this, via their own plans or public programs. Like I said, they will have their cake and eat it, too.

This thread makes me depressed, seriously.

What is it you want these companies to do, profit more or promise less? What am I missing?

Clearly and succinctly stated; this seems so obvious to me, how is it not to so many others?

The big three could get out from under this obligation via bankruptcy, something the UAW might want to consider.