[quote=bobby]$28/hour. that’s engineer’s wage. A typical engineer is an above average student that have gone on to higher education for 4 years or more.
an typical UAW member is likely a HS graduate with likely average work ethics.
UAW does not play by free market pricing. market pricing for these folks is not $28/hour.
their spending habits are not supported by their skill level.
Huh? $28/hr is what an engineer can expect to make the day they graduate from college – it’s far from the “average” engineers wage. An engineer at the midpoint of their career track (say with 10-15 years of experience) should be making close to double that.
I’m pretty sure that the wages for a UAW worker aren’t anywhere near that when they get out of their trade school.
As others have pointed out here, a large portion of that $73/hr that some are quoting here is the result of the overly generous packages that the current UAW workers no longer get. And, frankly, I don’t see much wrong with the average UAW worker in the prime of his career making a bit more than the local waiter makes for doing a much tougher and more physically demanding job – and the wages and benefits packages currently offered are not out of line with the packages which their non-union competitors pay. The problem that GM has, as others have again pointed out, is that they are living with the legacy of much higher compensation packages in the past, which they didn’t fund properly, and so they “jimmy” the books now to fund their PAST compensation packages by paying the CURRENT employees a phantom wage that is appropriated into their PAST pension obligations.
