Quote:
Originally Posted by Tully Mars
Several years ago, I'm guessing 12, I met a guy standing in a pool in Hawaii. Nice guy, I remember him well. He had a stutter and he and his wife had just bought their fourth week at the time share I was staying in. I asked him what he did and he told me he worked for (insert some big 3 auto co. here because I can't remember which one) as fender guy. In talking with him over several drinks he told me he work "the floor" installing new fender on trucks. He said with overtime each year he had no problem bringing in 225K+ a year. I asked if he was management and he said "God, no those guys make real money." At the time I made 1/2 that but worked two jobs to do it. Not long ago I read a story where one of the major car makers bought out some workers. In that story several were going to use their buy out money to take a few years off and attend Ivy league schools to "retrain for another career."
I have no problem with people who make good money, more power to them. But if they're simply being paid good money by companies that lose money then turn to the tax payers to prop them up... This whole thing smells bad to me. Why do more of my tax dollars have to go to keep people in jobs making money for companies that lose money?
Look at the chart Mr. Craven posted. How come Toyota can make a better car for less? Do the people working at Toyota get paid like Wal-Mart greeters? I'm guessing not. Chances are most, maybe not all but most, people on here would be more then happy with the average Toyota factory salary.
If the US economy keeps tanking many of us may be more then happy with that Wal-Mart greeter pay.
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One of our neighbours worked at GM in Janesville for many years. He made nowhere near 225K. He vacationed on his porch, not in Hawai'i and never went to Harvard or Yale. He and his wife even had the grace to die young so that GM would not pay out much in pensions or health care. So there. Dueling anecdotes.
First off, the chart is deceptive because it breaks down labour costs for Toyota but not for Detroit. By all accounts, Japan is more egalitarian than the US (Gini coefficients: US > 40 Japan: low thirties). What are corporate bureaucrats in Detroit making? We don't know. (And why is that not an issue?) What part of Detroit's costs are corporate welfare costs? In Japan, workers and ex-workers are more likely to be covered by the public system.
Secondly, everyone knows that today "cost-cutting" means offshore outsourcing & automation. Through outsourcing (much of it to China, a big fave of cheap labour conservaties) and automation, Toyota have eliminated about 30,000 jobs since the 1970s. The Big 3 could do something similar, but the net effect for everyone other than Big 3 management & stockholders would be negative. If "cost-cutting" is a pre-condition of gov. aid, that means gov. aid is for GM & Ford stockholders & Cerebrus. Basically, you're arguing for another bank bailout type arrangement whereby the gov. throws money at people who make even more money than you do.
Toyota keeps cost low by squeezing workers & suppliers in classical and creative fashions. Toyota is a shitty place to work. (See Kamata Satoshi's _Japan in the passing lane_. It's old, but the basic strategies have not changed.) Norms are raised, jobs eliminated, the line quickened until people dropped out. The idea is not to have people hang around. And they don't. If you can churn the work force, you don't have the workers on corporate welfare, you're not paying the bonuses, and they don't accrue seniority. Welfare costs can be offloaded onto the public systems. That's not such a big deal in my book, but in the US, there are serious gaps in the public system.
Of course the dilemma is that you do need some of those pesky & parasitic beings known as workers. This is thorny problem has given Toyota an opportunity for innovation. These days Toyota hire "trainees" from Brazil, Vietnam, the Phillipines and other places through a loophole in Japanese immigration law. In 2006 "Trainees" were making about JPY650/hr. Trainees can't even quit and go home because their passports are taken when they arrive in Japan. Maybe you folks can encourage your employers to develop similar programmes in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency.