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Tully Mars · 11-21-2008, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyy

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.

I can't do dueling anecdotes with you as that's the one UAW guy I ever spoke with, least that I remember. Maybe he was blowing smoke up my ass. I do know most stories I read talk about the UAW wage agreements and labor contracts providing generous wage and benefits to it's workers.

Like this one-

http://www.eons.com/money/feature/growthenestegg/11309

Quote:

Contracts expire between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three in 2007, and some argue union concessions are the only way the Big Three can compete with Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.

"Because Michigan has such a huge concentration of these unionized auto jobs, they dominate the economy," said Donald Grimes, an economist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations.

"The governor is trying to do a lot of good things, so are foundations, but they're small potatoes, in scale, compared to the auto industry," he said. "Nothing is going to overshadow those auto contract negotiations. ... That determines Michigan's future."

He added, "If people realized how generous the labor agreements were, I think they'd be astounded."

Auto workers, who can make $60,000 a year without overtime, and more than $100,000 with it, "know they're never going to make this kind of money again," said Denise Brooks, who has worked for 13 1/2 years at the Brownstown Ford plant. The money, for a family with only one wage earner, isn't as rich as it sounds, she said, but no auto worker starting a new career from the bottom will be able to match it.

"No matter how dirty, or greasy, or poorly they feel they've been treated, when they drive out of the plant in their brand-new Ford, they're a citizen of the world," she said. "They've got a good credit rating. They're used to buying what they want for their children and not having to worry about it."

Brooks, 50, took a package that will give her half her pay, health insurance and up to $15,000 tuition reimbursement for four years while she gets a Ph.D. in psychology.

She went to a retirement party a couple weeks ago, looked around, and started to cry. The current generation of workers, the ones with cottages up north, boats, annual hunting trips, would be the last, she realized.

"It was a retirement party for a whole way of life," she said.

The UAW's critics say union work rules make it nearly impossible to fire a bad worker. A 2 1/2 hour lunch for a union worker at one of the bars near a plant wasn't unheard of. And union workers didn't pay a penny for health insurance until last year; now a family pays only $700 a year, Grimes said.

Now this article doesn't talk about anyone making 225k a year. But I'd think you could take a trip to Hawaii, if you wanted, on 60K a year. You clearly wouldn't have to vacation on your porch unless you preferred your porch.

And 4 years of 1/2 your pay, health ins and 15K a year for school sounds pretty good to me, though it doesn't sound Ivy League good. I'd also like to know where you get a Ph.D. in 4 years. I can only guess the person in question already has some paper hanging on the wall.

And 2 1/2 hrs. lunches?

The article also speaks to some of the down side as well-

Quote:

Auto workers counter that it's punishing work.

Cynthia Allison was a single mother raising a daughter, Donielle, and getting welfare before she got a job at Ford's Dearborn Truck plant. A cousin working for Ford in Illinois got her on a waiting list for a job; she waited two years to get it. Nothing had prepared her for how physically punishing it would be.

Her first day, "I kept saying, 'The money, Cindy, the money. A future for you and for Donny.' When I got off that 4 a.m. shift, each step I took, my head said, 'Boom. Boom. Boom.'"

She's stayed at Ford 12 more years. Auto plant equipment is designed to be ergonomically correct, but Allison is 5'2" and it's not ergonomically correct for her.

She comes home with bruises and has no idea how she got them. She's popped her knee, she's popped her back, she cut herself, she got hit in the head with a Mustang. She's on a first-name basis with the plant's nurse, Kathleen, who gets her through some shifts by giving her Biofreeze gel for sore muscles. Allison, 41, describes it as "the street version of Bengay."

Allison, who also raised one of her nieces, is taking the $100,000 buyout.

As I said in my first post on the issue I know I don't know regarding a solution. Personally I'd like good paying jobs for everyone. I think it would be great if well paying jobs were plentiful. I'd like to see more US workers able to take regular vacations and send their kids to college. I just don't think that possible if the companies they work for are losing money by trying to sell products that people don't want. I really don't think it's up to the tax payers to bail them out of the hole they dug. And I think management and the labor unions both had hands on the shovel.