OK I’ll bite. Just how many times have you toured an auto factory?
No degree, but for 15 years a car maker paid me a very good salary to (among other things) observe skilled technicians at work, and make judgments as to to their abilities, and if they met certain standards. I have done this for thousands and thousands of hours. So in my many tours of auto factories, I can’t help but do some comparisons. I have also purchased coffee drinks and observed the person making the drink. Again I have made comparisons.
And your qualifications are?
Why does he need an Industrial Engineering degree to say that one job requires more skills than another? This is something that someone with industry experience can observe and comment on (And FTR I have an Industrial Engineering degree, unless you went to GMI it’s not a degree in building cars.)
I think the cost of living in Detroit is probably higher than where I live, but I make $14 an hour and I live pretty darned well. (Granted, I’m a single guy with no kids.)
The wages of many autoworkers are remarkably high. Given that they also get generous benefits and pensions, I just don’t think $30 or so is justified for the work they do. Of course, it doesn’t have to be justified - they’ve convinced the company to pay them that, so more power to them. But in the big picture it makes more economic sense for the automakers to pay closer to the $14 an hour range. And I’m not surprised that many people are eager for jobs in that pay range.
One contrary note - a barista may have a more complex job, but she has very little chance of repetetive stress injuries, lower back injuries, joint fatigue from standing on concrete floors all day, potential hearing loss, and other hazards of factory work. There are more factors than mere simplicity at work.
Maybe changes have to be made, but why doesn’t it start at the top, like cancelling management bonuses and reducing upperr management salaries by 1/3? Because they’d quit? Do you think there are no middle management types who would like to fill those vacated shoes?
The median household income for Detroit is $29,526. $14 hours at 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year is $29,120. Obviously this is before taxes, but one person has the potential to make almost as much as the median income for a household in Detroit. Not terrible, I’d say, especially with benefits.
I suppose it’s because I work in IT, but I’ve never understood the distinction between “managers” and “workers”. In the old days anyone who wore a suit and worked in the office was a “manager” and anyone who wore coveralls and worked on the factory floor was a “worker”. But that distinction is as obsolete as the feudal system in every job I’ve ever had.
It’s not obsolete if someone is making 15x the other’s salary. Getting rid of one empty suit manager saves the job of 10 others. Not to say that the empty suits don’t get fired but in my experience they’re the last to go; they should be the first.
And there is always, always overtime ($21/hr) and holiday time ($28/hr). And UAW benefits are out-of-this-world. Copay is $5 for everything - sometimes less. When I had to pay COBRA prices for mine it cost me over $500/mo as a single person.
My dad started working at Ford in 1968 and he’ll be the first to tell you that he was one lucky SOB to be able to come in off the street with no education and make what he made for 38 years. True we all suffered through layoffs, and he did work hard, but it was a sweet deal all around. He’ll also freely admit that it’s extremely hard to find such a position today. And that his retirement is costing Ford a pretty penny. It’s no huge secret.
Getting in to a UAW job, at least around here, is very hard. It’s mostly children of existing workers who get in to our two local Ford and Chrysler plants. People will indeed be lining up to make $14 an hour and to get UAW benefits. If I lost my job right now I’d be right there with them.
:smack: You’ve gone and confused a manager with an Executive.
When you become an Executive you get a corner office, a golden parachute, and a paycheck that will clear the average mortgage.[li] When I got Manager added to my job description it just meant I wasn’t eligible for overtime any more.[/li][*] Unless the Executive is at the end of your job title instead of at the beginning. Then it usually means you’ve got a shit job with some tinsel on it.
I do considerably more than tour automotive factories. They’re my life blood. I make/justify manpower decisions. Previously I supervised hourly trades positions, and “coached” the production (non-skilled) work teams.
Incidentally, to whoever said American cars don’t sell overseas because of their production costs - it’s got nothing to do with that. In most countries, in fact, American cars are roughly 3/4 of the cost of an equivalent German, British or Japanese model.
They can’t compete because they’re not good.
People outside the US didn’t want what American buyers do - cars that go quickly in a straight line, ride well, but can’t go around corners or fit into parking spaces smaller than, say, a cruise liner’s dry dock.
Well, Bathisar, I have no beef with you. I offered an opinion that the companies were eliminating a large chunk of their consumers & questioned the wisdom of doing so. I was jumped on by Rick who admits that his expertise comes from taking tours, doing skilled trades certifications, and presumably drinking coffee at Starbucks.
For the record, I did go to GMI a long time ago & actually gave those plant tours. I also have done industrial engineering studies in more than one auto plant along the way - both as a student and as a supply chain consultant. I have been in many, many capacities from plant floor to executive offices in the past 25 years. I am no longer an auto employee in any capacity, but have witnessed a lot of (questionable) things that have happened in GM, Ford, & Chrysler. I have many opinions about them. While I can probably cough up more credentials on the topic, that has little to do with my original observation.
So, since this is not the pit, could we please go back to sharing opinions instead of attacks & accusations? What do you say, Rick?
Irony of ironies, I heard that this morning, there was a new study published that says that there will be a shortage of auto workers in a relatively short time. This was on NPR roughly around 11 o’clock our time.
OK, since you say you are familiar with auto plants, let’s talk about a couple of stations inside those plants.
first stop on our tour is the marriage point. At the marriage point the body (with part of the interior and other items installed is mated to the engine, transmission, front suspension, rear suspension, exhaust, fuel tank, fuel lines etc. One part of the assembly plant has been working on the body, while in another part workers have been assembling the running gear. The marriage point is where these two parts are married.
Anyway this is a two station operation. We will start with station 1 with no car at it. Two workers amble onto the platform and grab a couple of handfuls of bolts. The place the bolts (thread side up please) into wrenches that are placed at various points around the platform. Probably about 20 wrenches in total. As they step off the platform they push a button. The running gear of the next car on the line moves over the wrenches. The body moves above that. A hydraulic lift raises the running gear up, and the wrenches move upward and turn counterclockwise about 1/2 turn then clockwise until the bolts are tight. While this is going on, the two workers have ambled (and I do mean ambled, they are moving slower than I do when browsing the mall) over to position 2 where they grab another handful of bolts out of a big box and place them in another 16-20 wrenches. as they step off platform 2 they push a button the car moves forward and the balance of the underbody to body bolts are installed. While this is going on, they have ambled back to platform #1 and are putting the bolts on the now empty wrenches.
Skills necessary for this position:
The ability to follow written or verbal instructions
The ability to remember that the big bolts go in the big wrenches, the middle sized ones go in the middle sized wrenches, and the small ones go in the small wrenches.
The ability to remember that the threads go up when they put the bolts in the wrenches.
The ability to push a button as they are leaving the platform
the ability to walk without tripping on their shoelaces
I am in awe of their mad skilz.
Next let’s move over to the fixed glass installation point. At this point in the factory four robots grab the four fixed pieces of glass with suctions cups, turn them over, move them over under nozzles that dispense the adhesive around the perimeter of each piece of glass.
then the car pulls into this station. The four robots automatically move and place the windshield, rear window, and the two fixed side windows. The robots hold the windows in place for about 20 seconds to allow the adhesive to work. Then the vacuum in the suction cups releases and the robots move to pick up the next pieces of glass, apply the spooge around the perimeter so that the windows can be installed on the next car.
As several different models are built on the same assembly line the various pieces and sizes of glass are aligned up in a rack in the order of the cars coming down the assembly line.*
The workers at this station only have to make sure that the existing rack is removed when empty, and the correct new rack is in the correct place.
Skills necessary:
Well you have to be able to read, and I assume count.
You have to be able to wheel the empty rack of glass out of the way, and a fresh rack of glass into the correct spot.
These jobs are about as close to unskilled labor as you can get. To call these guys skilled labor is an insult to every skilled workman in any job anywhere. As I said the barista at Starbucks has a more complex skill set. I don’t consider them overly skilled.
Now if you can justify to me and the other people reading this how those jobs are worth $30.00 per hour + benefits to start then I will give you an hour to gather a crowd and I will kiss your ass on main street.
Also if you truly believe that those jobs are worth that, will you hire me? With my skill set, I figure I am worth about $500 per hour to you.
Generally speaking the overseas products of the Detroit 3 do quite well in their respective markets, and are generally well regarded. They don’t offer them in the US because their overseas subsidiaries are largely independent and their offerings are not to American tastes. This is no different for the Japanese car makers, most of their US products are not sold widely in other countries either, most of them are built in the US specifically for the US market. European car makers like BMW and Mercedes have about the same market share in Japan as they do in the US. Japanese buyers like them for the same reasons American buyers do. No one else in the world wants giant gas guzzling FWD sedans(i.e. Honda Accord) or giant gas guzzling trucks/SUVs(i.e. Infiniti FX, which is made in Japan but not sold there ) which makes up most of the vehicles sold in North America by all carmakers.
[QUOTE=slaphead]
:smack: You’ve gone and confused a manager with an Executive.
When you become an Executive you get a corner office, a golden parachute, and a paycheck that will clear the average mortgage.[li] When I got Manager added to my job description it just meant I wasn’t eligible for overtime any more.[/li][li] Unless the Executive is at the end of your job title instead of at the beginning. Then it usually means you’ve got a shit job with some tinsel on it.[/li][/QUOTE]
You are 100% correct - I did mean to rant about executives - these are the true empty suits I spoke of.
That is Ignorance of the factory. The simple repetitive jobs were automated out years ago. Almost every job requires special training. Every new piece of equipment requires training to operate,repair and upkeep. Factories not only realize repetitive work is bad for the worker but it is bad for the product as well. Many thousands of workers have been eliminated throughout the industry due to automation. The impact of auto worker wages has been long ago diminished as a significant part of the cost of automobiles.
Well, Rick - I guess based on your last post we can safely put you down for a “no” on that one. Perhaps you could start a thread in the pit about how overpaid autoworkers are and why you know all about it.
Does anyone else have an opinion on the OP premise that cutting the wages of the automakers’ hourly workforce could have a negative effect on the sales of said autos?