Autoworkers do NOT make $70 an hour. Why can’t anyone tell the truth?
Union autoworkers are being flayed this week, for supposedly making $70 an hour. They are, of course, blamed for the downfall of our three automakers.
Problem is: its not true. They make $41 an hour, at most, and that is not CASH. That includes health care costs and retirement costs.
The auto companies played with their numbers and added in the value of future retirement costs of current workers and health insurance and retirement benefits for retired workers:
The New York Times publishes an incendiary accusation, blaming workers for the failure of automakers, with no correction. The automakers, who could have righted their ships a long time ago by simply listening to peak oil analysts and global warming scientists, decided to stay their unsustainable course, building HUGE gas guzzlers, while their executives flew private jets to Congress, asking to be relieved of the pain of ‘high wages of line workers’.
Where is the leadership?
On the November 20 edition of Hardball, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow James Gattuso stated, “I think that there’s no reason that a UAW worker should get total compensation of $70 an hour when the average American only makes about $25 an hour in total compensation.” Matthews responded, in part: “They negotiate for their salaries, and they’re getting 70 bucks. So that’s how the free market works.” While speaking about the “unskilled, high-school graduate workers” in U.S. auto plants on his November 19 radio show, Larson said, “When you’re paying $73.73 an hour to those people with salary and benefits and your competition is paying $48 to its workers, you’re going to get your butt kicked in the marketplace unfortunately.”
The autoworkers might actually NEED their unions, to protect them from the lies and false blame of their employers…
They’ve been unfairly hung out to dry by automakers who took jobs out of the US, destroyed communities, refused to be sustainable and now want the US taxpayer to clean up after their bullying, blame-dodging behavior.
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