As the Senate prepares to debate the proposed $25 billion bailout bill for the Big Three Detroit automakers, it’s worth pointing out — as many times as possible — just what this money might be going to pay for. First, as Larry Kudlow, points out, there are uncompetitive salaries.
Here’s a stat from my friend, blogger Mark Perry: 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.
Yet that’s not all. As The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Ingrassia notes, Detroit doesn’t need more money, but radical change, including getting rid of union contracts, which, as he noted on NPR this week, include burdensome work rules. Here’s one example he cites in his Journal op ed:
A few years ago the UAW even waged a spirited fight to protect the “right” of workers to smoke on the assembly line, something that simply isn’t allowed at, say, Honda’s U.S. factories. Aside from the obvious health risk, what about cigarette ashes falling onto those fine leather seats being bolted into the cars? Why was this even an issue?
In what other industry would this even be tolerated?
Yet even that is not all — then there is the UAW “Jobs Bank,” which keeps allegedly laid-off auto workers on at full salary and not working. This is beyond Soviet. In the former Communist bloc, people had a saying: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” Not even pretending to work and getting paid for real beats that every time.
If Detroit deserves anything, it’s a Lada plant.
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Those numbers for employee wages are wrong. I found out today who was making those up and it was not only the WSJ, but also the New York Times who was recently bought out by a rich mexican whose vested interest in oppressing and replacing American workers with illegal mexicans are obvious, just crunched those numbers together adding the retirees and their benefits and so these employees wages is nowhere NEAR 73 dollars. Obviously the NYT will never be trusted again since they now work for the mexican gov. and their current intentions to invade the United States, and wouldn't it be icing on the cake if they took advantage of our current economic crisis? Could we load our rifles then?
The economy has definitely created financial chaos particularly to the employees. Many people lose their job because of the global financial crisis that we are experiencing nowadays. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or a plumber; you are going to feel some of the economic tension one way or another. Even two major Detroit newspapers, The News and the Free Press, are in need of extra cash and have significantly cut back on their daily home delivery. Just like any other business, the newspaper industry is dependent on the economy and advertising dollars. However, we are all aware of the importance of newspapers. Therefore, there must be away to keep the industry above water.