Debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker

[navarth]

Source: The New Republic

Assembly Line
by Jonathan Cohn
Published November 21, 2008

If you've been following the auto industry's crisis, then you've probably read or heard a lot about overpaid American autoworkers--in particular, the fact that the average hourly employee of the Big Three makes $70 per hour.

That's an awful lot of money. Seventy dollars an hour in wages works out to almost $150,000 a year in gross income, if you assume a forty-hour work week. Is it any wonder the Big Three are in trouble? And with auto workers making so much, why should taxpayers--many of whom make far less--finance a plan to bail them out?

Well, here's one reason: The figure is wildly misleading.

Let's start with the fact that it's not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research--who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read--average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income--hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.

Read more: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1026e955-541c-4aa6-bcf2-56dfc3323682

[LisaM]

1. Why were the Japanese auto companies given this competitive edge?

Reagonomics at its finest, I guess.

I've argued with people about this until I am blue in the face. They simply don't care.

[navarth]

2. They don't care until it hits them, I guess...

The Human Condition.

[Hippo_Tron]

8. Universal health care

They have it and we don't.

[shraby]

3. How come if the auto workers are making so much

money, they are still considered middle class???? :sarcasm:

[KillCapitalism]

4. Yep, it is a myth.

A neighbor of mine is a GM worker & he says he makes $26 an hour.

[pinto]

5. Good catch. Looks as if they factored in *retiree* benefits, as well, then

ascribed those costs to current workers wages, not the pension funds that manage the money.

[democracy1st]

6. K & R

[Phred42]

7. Olbermann debunked this in less that 2 mins tonight

Hopefully someone will post the segment