It seems that Pontiac along with over 20,000 GM workers are being cashiered. I use the word "cashiered" because most of those workers will likely wind up with nothing better than cashiering jobs at fast-food restaurants.
Does it feel like it's the opposite of Morning Again in America? That the whole country is in financial, spiritual, and medical arrears?
Our hospitals don't work. We have little industrial base left. Our public schools are failing. Our cities and infrastructure are in decay. Even our military--recipient of over $600 billion/yr. in expenditures is over-stretched.
It's Monday Again in America.
I'm always left perplexed by the plight of the auto workers. Up here in Canukistan, the news reports that the average auto worker makes $86/hour with cumulative benefits.
ReplyDelete$86 an hour.
With a pension fund and extensive medical benefits.
Who gets that anymore?
Although I feel for the workers and their families, and the big auto makers are a bumbling, selfish lot, I also think the old reality of union benefits galore ain't fitting into the new reality of the cutback-driven days in which we live.
I just hired 2 auto plant workers as temps from a GM/Suzuki plant on layoff and they claimed their wage was $39 hour. On the news on way to work they said that union officials agreed to a $19/hour wage cut for Chrysler Canada, but that it wouldn't affect their actual hourly wage? You must be right about the absorbed benefits into the scale.
ReplyDeleteI asked the one what he did on his shift, he puts the tires on one side of the car, then switches to mirrors and trims etc every 2 hours.
Pretty sure the kids at my local mech shop are not much more then $15/hr with no benefits and they will clean the windows too.