FOX News yesterday proclaimed on the web:
The new GM deal would raise labor costs from $55 to $60 an hour, a 9 percent hike, according to a study of the deals from Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automotive Research and Art Schwartz, a former GM labor executive and president of Labor and Economic Associates. The union contract at Ford also reached the $60 hourly rate over the next four years, a 5 percent increase from its current rate of $57. Those hikes pale in comparison with Chrysler, where average hourly wages will spike nearly 20 percent from $47 to $56.
Imagine “average hourly wages of $56” at Chrysler and equally high “labor costs” at GM and Ford. That $56 an hour times 40 hours times 52 weeks, equals $116,480 a year! What a great job – fantastic pay!
The turkeys at FOX News consider this the reason cars cost so much and will cost even more. They even printed (and so authorized by moderation) this comment on the website story:
Well, here comes the NEXT set of lost Manufacturing Jobs in America. Either it will come by NON-USA cars being made overseas because of the price or More Robots will be doing their job.
I have watched these Assembly lines making cars on TV – – Not sure it takes a $124,800 (no overtime) person to do it (plus the best Insurance and benefits, probably puts it over $150,000) to do what I saw.
I am happy for them but everyone must be realistic – – you can price yourself out of a job if you get too greedy. This sounds a bit greedy. Not sure it takes a Master degree in engineering to do this job, and I know lots of Engineers that would love to make this much.
And this gem:
Democrat definition of a living wage. Making $60/hour to do a job that a trained monkey could do, soon to be replaced by robots.
And this one:
Union workers are remarkably stupid. History is going to repeat itself here. Unions priced workers right out of work before and are well on their way to doing it again. But union bosses keep raking it in, don’t they? Union workers will get what they deserve.
However, the article is a big lie….
The Kristin Dziczek quoted by FOX News explains what the corporate shills are up to in promoting jealousy of auto worker wages and Club for Growth calls for right to work states:
According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automotive Research, which tracks these things, the typical hourly wage for union employees at the Big Three is about $28 an hour. Wages at the nonunion transplant companies range from $14.60 to $28 an hour, she said. Wages vary even among different plants of the same companies, depending on regional wage standards. For example, Toyota pays $27 to $30 an hour at its plant in Kentucky, but just $20 an hour at a Mississippi plant.
So, where does the $60 an hour originate:
Dziczek explained that in addition to making about $28 an hour, Big Three autoworkers gets benefits worth about $23. Add in overtime, vacation pay shift bonuses, health insurance, pension payments and other compensation, and it comes to about $62 an hour in labor cost per active employee. The cost for wages and benefits at transplant companies is about $40 to $55 an hour.
While FOX News talks about “hourly wages of $56”, they are fabricating a lie, because the real number is about $28-$30. The $56 is not hourly wage; it’s wage plus the value put on benefits like sick days, vacations and bathroom breaks. In addition, the hourly rate includes the benefits paid to retirees, divided as costs to current workers.
Auto workers were forced in 2008 to allow the companies to hire new workers at $14 an hour (below the proposed new minimum wage), instead of $28 for current workers, a two tier system which has been eliminated in the new contracts.
The FOX corporate-adjusted news is that $14 or $28 equals $56 or $60. Not even Madison Avenue would try to get away with a lie that large, but with a bought news source you can often fool most of the people. And it never ends. Witness this old screen capture with an argument based on the same misleading statistics.
You can fool nearly all the people... 