In 2007, the United Auto Workers came to a defining decision: rather than sharing sacrifice equally in the spirit of solidarity, the union divided its membership into two tiers. Tier one was the old guard, existing UAW workers who continued to receive relatively generous wages. Tier two was made up of all new hires, who were paid about half what their tier one “brothers” made. As the bankruptcy and bailout of GM and Chrysler brought the UAW’s internal divisions to the fore, second-tier workers have become more and more vocal about their second-class status. The excellent Changing Gears project (a “public media conversation about the future of the industrial Midwest”) speaks with several second-tier workers about the challenges and frustrations of earning half as much as their union brethren. In the words of one worker
There’s a joke within the two tier people, that if two two-tier people died in a fire, they’d say “one GM employee lost.” You feel like half an employee… It’s not like we have to wear a badge.. or drink out of a seperate drinking fountain, it’s just, you know every day that when you go in there, the life these people have made for themselves is something you’ll never have.
Simple solution, cut the tier one pay in half, that way everything equals out and they all are happy.
Hey Mike,
Let’s cut your salary in half and see how cavalier you would be. What a shitty attitude.
Seriously, though, if you are working in a job in which your compensation could conceivably be cut in half–that is, there is a sufficient number of qualified people willing to do the same job for half as much–then you should either seek a new line of work, or ensure that you can live on half your current salary.
I don’t say this callously, because companies are constantly trying (with varying degrees of success) to outsource work in my own chosen field, to countries in which the wages are a fraction of what they are here. While I’ve been able to keep “ahead of the curve” in terms of skills and value I am able to produce, I imagine a day will come when offshoring will catch up with me. If that day catches me unprepared, I have no one to blame but myself.
If your job can be done by someone but for 1/2 the pay, the market should dictate that you’re getting paid too much, and adjust accordingly. It’s up to you to either take your lumps, or find a more specialized field to gouge your employer in.
Of course, this is without union interference. See how unions muck up this common sense process?
Hey Forraymond, I earn my money. i work for it honestly and I don’t have a shop steward protecting no matter how bad a job I do. I have to go a better than adequate job to keep the job and to get raises. I don’t depend on a union to extort money from my employer and to protect the imcompetent morons who also happen to be union members. I’m not a little baby who depends on the union for everything. I’m a grown up and I can stand on my own two feet.
How about you take a pay cut, you’re obviously not smart enough to see what’s wrong with the whole two tier situation. Unless you’re a mooch living off the people who actually do the real work.
One more thing, if that did happen to me, I would get another job. Unlike most union people, I’m pretty smart and experienced with a very good resume and I could get something else at more money probable pretty fast. Of course I’m not an assembly like robot though.
I used to work at a factory with UAW workers. The first tier and second tier membership was pretty much split among minority and white workers. It’s a pretty shitty system that all us non-union people knew about but couldn’t do anything because we would rock the dynamic between our company and the union. I hope these people are successful.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm… Wonder what Mikey thinks?
I Just got back from a long trip and cracked a cool one. Let me finish the comments ,and the beer.
Are these people serious? The whole article reads like someone in their family died. Shouldn’t they be glad that GM has finally sifted through the Jobs bank and had enough old timers retire that they can get hired AT ALL? Shouldn’t they be glad that they found A job – in a deep recession – in Michigan?! What other wonderful jobs did they turn down to take these horrible 1/2 wage jobs? Exactly.
“the life these people have made for themselves is something you’ll never have.”
Yes the days of making 60+ grand with just a high school diploma are gone. So take the money you are making and get an education and a better paying job. Sounds harsh, but it’s only going to get worse.
A college education costs a lot of money.
So much for the middle class.
So take the money you are making and get an education and a better paying job. Sounds harsh, but it’s only going to get worse.
It doesn’t have to.
The unions are being incredibly short-sighted. Instead of wondering why the guys at Toyota et al aren’t paying dues, they really ought to ask why the average worker’s salary has been stuck in neutral while the 95% percentile and above has skyrocketed.
Pitting the unionized middle class against the un-unionized middle class (or worse, the newly-unionized middle class) is not going to prove a winning strategy. It also plays right into the hands of the very rich who stand to benefit from it, just as the “Be thankful you’ve got a job at all” line does.
Back in the day, apprenticeships were available for line workers. They could learn skills that would allow them to work there way up in the plants. Most of those positions are now filled by contract labor. The skilled labor jobs that paid higher wages were mostly eliminated so the Manufacturers would not have to pay benefits and pensions.
Tier one employees have nothing to aspire to – And your body will not last for 30-40 years working on an assembly line, standing on concrete floors with no air conditioning 8 hours a day.
“Yes the days of making 60+ grand with just a high school diploma are gone.” No, but perhaps the days of making 60+ at a factory line job are. There’s plenty of fields that pay over that with just a diploma, but all require some sort of training, be it on the job, apprenticeship or technical school.
This is where things go kind of awry for the union: it’s mortgaging your future to save the present. If you want to encourage people to join a trade union or guild, operating in this fashion is exactly the way to not do it.
Not only are you creating needless disaffection, but you’re cutting their ability to fund you and actively encouraging them to move to a non-union shop.
<i>the life these people have made for themselves</i>
One day I strive to ride the coattails of a century-old labor safety movement so I can contribute a few percent of my paycheck to a political/criminal organization that helps ensure I’m earning double the wage I’m worth. Then I will know I have made a good life for myself.
Thank you. How long until organized labor trademarks the middle class?
Nice work, ash78. That was about two thousand times better-said than the nearly unintelligible rant that guy’s asinine statement brought to my lips.
$16.00/hour. That’s a buck an hour more than I’m making on my job (although my working conditions beat the UAW’s all to hell). Excuse me if I’m not exactly sympathetic.
I suppose if he really feels like a second class employee, he can always find another job. I understand that MacDonald’s is hiring. At $9.00/hour, that should make him feel like a third class employee and finally appreciate what he had.
Wonder if he publicly announced that he’s fed up with second class status and was quitting, would he get trampled in the mob applying for his job?
I was once in these guys shoes – young worker just starting out and in a union job. Rather then ‘appreciating what I had’ (sic) I got serious about school and 5 years later – hello engineering degree.
20 years later I see the same guys I started with still on the shop floor. I still talk to them and have never once been told that I had made a mistake by quieting.
Long story short. These young workers are finding out that their ‘union jobs’ aren’t so great after 2 – not 20 years. Hopefully they’ll do something positive about it.
Some of you are kinda harsh, aren’t you? Can’t you see any reason to have some sympathy for these guys?
Every day they’re working beside people doing the same work as them who make twice the money. You wouldn’t suffer from any frustration in that situation?
Really, when you get right down to it, all of us are lucky to have the job that we have (or we can go get another) so none of us has any right to any dissatisfaction with our employer or career situation?
Try to look at it from their perspective – this guys are dealing with this disparity every day they work.
Who is preventing them from getting another job? If it’s that frustrating, then they should find a line of work where they don’t feel the way they do.
They’re working on that line because the rest of us were robbed of more than 50 billion dollars, and that is if we weren’t among GM’s bond holders. When union extortion results in unsustainable compensation packages, they blame management. Really, I couldn’t imagine a situation that would cause me to have sympathy for any union member.
So if I’m doing my math right, that comes out to $32k/year? That is about what I earned at a financial services company my first year out of college. Are there no opportunities for upward mobility at these plants? I would think a line job is a foot in the door; nothing more, nothing less.
So move and get a different job…. take a loan and go to trade school if college isn’t for you. No one is putting a gun to your head and telling you to stay at that crappy UAW/GM job.
Making $32K with benefits at his age isn’t a bad career start – particularly in the current economic circumstances and without a college degree. Welcome to what most workers outside of the UAW reality distortion field are dealing with. Be thankful you have a job and keep your eye on further education and advancement.
Three points:
One, not everyone is suited to higher education, and many people who are highly educated are not suited for this kind of work. So why are we arbitrarily valuing people with post-secondary—especially just undergrad—more highly? I’ve got an undergrad, am partway through a grad degree and work fairly long hours. I’ve also worked on a factory floor and, quite honestly, there’s not a lot of white collars jobs that are harder and inherently deserve more compensation.
Two, quite a few people “on the line” do have post-secondary skills, at least at the trade-school level.
Three—and this is the important one—why are you begrudging the guys on the line a few bucks? If you’re white collar and you work for a reasonable company, why not ask why the C-suite occupants and their underlings are pulling orders of magnitude more than either your or the lineworker. Are they really worth, again, orders of magnitude more money?
Or, to put it this way, why are the lineworkers’ wages the problem at GM when it’s the C-suiters being paid millions to bleed billions and yet weren’t accountable at all? Five guys made 40 million dollars in one year; the year, I might add, before they declared bankruptcy.
It’s a master-stroke, this work of misdirection that pits the middle class against itself.
<i>Three—and this is the important one—why are you begrudging the guys on the line a few bucks?</i>
$28 an hour is 56k a year. I can’t see how one could run a viable business building cars with those kind of wages unless the plants became much more efficient. And that could have worked if the UAW would have allowed it. But they didn’t – it wasn’t the demand for the high wages that was the problem so much as the work rules and feather bedding.
One, “we” don’t arbitrary value post-secondary education more highly. The laws of supply and demand assign such values. Many high-paying jobs have a (real or perceived) requirement of a certain level of education/training. This is because the demand for such work is relatively high, while the supply of qualified people is relatively low. There’s nothing arbitrary about that. Similarly, a job that doesn’t require any particular skill set can pull from a larger pool of applicants, who on average will be willing to work for less compensation. But you already know this. In any case, the laws of supply and demand are by no means based on what we think we or others “deserve” (based on what criteria, exactly?).
Two, that’s great, but post-secondary skills don’t automatically equate to higher pay. I have an undergrad degree and could pursue an advanced degree if I wanted to, but it wouldn’t particularly help me.
Three, I don’t begrudge anyone making as much as they (honestly) can. I do have a problem when people believe that they’re entitled to earn a certain amount. That said, this applies equally to those making $16/hour or $16M/year. If an executive can convince a company that he is worth that kind of paycheck, then more power to him/her, I guess. I personally don’t think they’re worth orders of magnitude greater compensation, but it’s not up to me to decide that. If a company believes another person could do the same job for less money, they should hire that person instead.
As for pitting the middle class against itself (instead of, presumably, devoting more energy to envying the wealthier classes), what do you suggest be done? I have no business telling anyone how much they should or shouldn’t pay someone. It’s not my money.
@psar: “Three—and this is the important one—why are you begrudging the guys on the line a few bucks? If you’re white collar and you work for a reasonable company, why not ask why the C-suite occupants and their underlings are pulling orders of magnitude more than either your or the lineworker. Are they really worth, again, orders of magnitude more money?”
I basically agree with your other posts in this thread, but not this one. As JeremyR points out, it’s the market that determines pay. This is why sports celebrities earn so much – because fans are willing to pay for it. Likewise, the suits upstairs are paid according to market forces and the Board of Directors. In this case, however, the UAW has artificially set wages for both tiers. This distortion puts both tiers at risk – the Tier 1 folks become easy cost-cutting fodder, and the Tier 2 folks (as you mention elsewhere) begin looking for work elsewhere.
One way to combat these problems is to eliminate pay as a variable, and permit the company to pay on a scale equivalent to non-union shops. The union can then dedicate its energies to issues of working conditions and benefits.
The UAW’s cannibalism is killing one group of people and sickening another.
The Market decide that the pay is higher for line workers than for young college graduates if you look at wages for them in the recent past and comparable foreign countries so it does sounds to me that you begrudge their income.
it’s the market that determines pay
Yes, I suppose you could say that, though it leaves out how upper management has a pretty effective thumb on the scales in their favour.
The union, badly, defends the jobs of a lot of people who really don’t make very much and have very little when it comes to resources to fall back on. Admittedly non-union staff of the same pay have even less leverage, but that’s not the point.
The point is that the other side, upper management, benefits from corporate interlock, deep wells of wealth, effective lobbying and a powerful social network. The market is determining their salaries, but they’re able to bend and twist the market than even hundreds or thousands of mikeys.
I’m not nearly as anti-market as people probably think, but I think that people who are pro- either underestimate or are willfully blind to the disproportionate amount of influence that the wealthiest participants in the market have. It’s not really “free” and it’s certainly broken when it’s rewarding self-destructive behaviour and/or failing to punish incompetence in a timely fashion.
Unions also have a thumb on the scale when they establish a monopoly on labor. This is effective for a period of time–but since the monopoly is usually a local (or at best regional) one, it has the long-term effect of driving would-be employers elsewhere.
As for the “corporate interlock, deep wells of wealth, effective lobbying and a powerful social network” of “upper management,” I would agree that they have more tools at their disposal to negotiate their own compensation, but this has nothing to do with what lower-level workers are paid (unless you believe that compensation is a zero-sum game). Despite what power they may have, they decidedly don’t have the power to force anyone to work at a particular job. Again, workers are free to seek market rates for their labor–or if they’re not happy with that, they can increase their marketability by learning new skills, or relocate to a locale with better job opportunities, or attempt to establish a labor monopoly, or any number of things.
Finally, with respect to “rewarding self-destructive behaviour and/or failing to punish incompetence in a timely fashion,” I can think of a few recent instances in which the market was about to do just that, before the government(s) stepped in and interfered. Nevertheless, I will join you in lamenting that the market often doesn’t deliver consequences soon enough. But as far as compensation is concerned, it’s irrelevant: If the top executives of corporate America stopped taking 8-figure salaries tomorrow, it’s not like the rank and file would suddenly see a 25% (or whatever) wage increase.
I just don’t understand all the Union wage hate and for that matter all the C-Suite hating either (talking to you Psar).
The problem isn’t with either class of worker, rather our inability to see any other perspective then the one we posses.
I’ll give you an example. Last month my wife was over at the local Bank of Mtl branch arguing about some nickle and dime charges. Her perspective was that she was getting ripped off, my perspective was that I needed to go buy some BoM stock (I did).
So, instead of raging against the perceived unfairness of the machine (Union Machine, MBA Machine, etc.) perhaps an individual would be better served trying to figure out how things really are – and acting accordingly.
I just don’t understand all the Union wage hate and for that matter all the C-Suite hating either (talking to you Psar).
I don’t hate C-suiters—I’d not complain to have CIO or CTO on my business card—but I do want to raise the dichotomy of why there’s hardly any complaints about executive and management non-performance, nor about the interlock that perpetuates the situation, but there’s no shortage of vitriol for blue-collar guys who have the kinds of jobs that more people used to have before blue collar got hollowed out.
I don’t dispute that the union leadership’s myopia, but I do think that the attitude from many of my white-collar colleagues, especially when we’re giving a free pass, if not outright idolizing the decision-makers, is equally myopic.
The lower wage worker took the job with full access to the knowledge of the wage disparity. No one is forcing that person to stay. Take your wage, invest in an education (and no, a college education does not have to be expensive) and improve your situation in life. This is the kind of thing that happens to people that sit back and let life deal them their cards. I prefer to stack the deck in my favor and have a crapload of aces up my sleeve.
This is the beginning of the end for the UAW. At some point, the Tier 2 workers are going to reach critical mass. These are going to be younger workers who see that the UAW has done nothing for them. The UAW is going to be in for a decertification election and will either be replaced by another union that will level the pay across the entire workforce, or these guys will opt to try a non-union strategy for awhile. It seems to work for the foreign transplant companies.
When Tier 2 becomes a majority, the UAW and Tier 1 workers will have a big problem.
When Tier 2 becomes a majority, the UAW and Tier 1 workers will have a big problem.
There will be a compromise, Tier II workers will count for .47 votes and .51 salary. A grand win for all concerned.
I’ve wondered that too. What happens when the oppressed minority becomes the majority.
History teaches us that the outcome typically does not go so well for the former status quo.
One the eve of being forced out of control I bet we’ll see final, desperate acts of the Tier 1 majority trying to vote in permanent preferences that can not be renegotiated once the Tier 2 workers take over the unions.
yeah…I started at $30k with a college degree from a solid university in the small business field, and in a much more expensive local than most midwest manufacturing areas, to boot. So $16 an hour is a solid starting wage for non-college educated assembly work, especially with the health benefits and so on.
The $28 wage is clearly not sustainable for non college educated work, until after many years of promotion and dedication to the company. Hopefully they have different promotional ladders for Tier 1 and Tier 2, freezing Tier 1 pay rates for more years until promotion and giving more opportunities to Tier 2.
I wonder how they came up with the $16/hour figure. I bet that the real worth of these jobs is somewhere in between the two pays of these gentlemen pictured, say $20-22/hr.
That equals ~$42K-$46K/yr. Still pretty good for a job you can pick up the skills for in one afternoon.
I can empathize with what these young ones are feeling. I didn’t really start making good money until I was in my mid-40’s.
35 years ago while working as a line mechanic after a stint in the Army, I decided to go to college. Unfortunately, it took me four years while working full time at a VW dealership and then an independent shop to get through two years of community college. – Yes, it is frustrating.
With a change in majors, it took me four more years to finish a BA and then a BS, while working about 30 hours a week in first one and then another research lab – where I really figured out where to go career wise. There were no new cars and there were a couple of housemate situations from hell and some good ones, too.
A college education is just a foot in the door so you can get started in a career. All along the way, be it as a McDonald’s at 9 bucks an hour fast-food worker, a Tier 2 employee at GM or as line mechanic, the life lesson is those job are where you gain experience. The most important thing to learn is how to manage people.
So, to Generation Y / a.k.a the Millennials: – good luck, because they really are just getting started. If they decide to go through college – then they will be just getting started, once again and by the way, there is no shame in becoming a master welder or machinist, which also happen to pay pretty well.
I feel like I am watching a very delayed insatant replay. 20 years ago the Japanese invaded the refrigeration compressor industry, opening a non union plant in Tennessee turning out a 1,000,000 compressors a year of the most popular models at prices that were chaepaer than we could buy the parts. I know not as glamorous as cars, but still it had a devesaing effect on the market. One of the reactions that Tecumseh Products of MI was to introduce a 2 tier wage system in their UAW plant in Tecumseh MI. it was done under the threat of plant closure. At the time I was a Quality technician at its plant in London Ontario Canada. When our next contract came up with the CAW, Tecumseh proposed a 2 tier wage system, existing employees where making $18 an hour, new employees would make $12. The CAW told the employees to vote no, CAW execs even attended the vote and slapped them on the back promising support as they waited to vote. and they would support them, the employees voted no, even though not one of them would have taken a pay reduction and as promised the plant closed. I was responsible to try and get out product running in the Tecumseh MI. plant. When I would ask a line worker a question I was often told to ask that guy over there, they don’t pay me to think. Look up the history of the Tecumseh plant, you will see that 2 tier wages did not save it, all of the jobs are in Sicom, Brazil. It is a different industry but I can’t help feeling I am watching history repeat itself.
Congress needs to, AGAIN, increase the number of H-1B and other visas so you uppity white-collar over-paid mouth breathers can do your patriotic duty and enter the ranks of the working-poor.
Don’t you know there is a class war the elites and their brethren need to win?
Companies whine that these limits need to be increased because there is a shortage of workers with the required skill sets. But it’s closer to the truth that they just want to increase the number of workers willing to do the jobs for peanuts. I don’t blame them for trying, but at 10% unemployment, the last thing we need is to import more foreign workers.
I nominate the parent for “Most subtle piss-taking”
….off topic…. A couple of years ago I was talking to a well-educated guy who worked at a help desk, (in the US), and he was ranting about all of his type jobs were going overseas. In the next few minutes we were talking cars and he told me he was going to buy a certain Japanese made Nissan, when asked if he should support autoworkers the same as he wanted for himself, he said it didn’t effect him personally, so he didn’t care…..
Is it too much to ask for a little consistency?
While I’m concerned about outsourcing in my field, I don’t expect anyone else to watch out for “my job.” That responsibility is mine alone. If this guy thinks of his job as an entitlement, I don’t have much sympathy for him.
Well ……interesting stuff.
OKAY…”jmo” your up first. Your comment may have some merit if it was written in 1988. The domestic plants are equal or better than the transplants,as far as man hours per vehicle. What few “union work rules” that were stil in exsistence, died in the 2007-2010 era.
@ MikeAR “forraymond” said it all.
@ jpcavavnaugh.. I hate to say this,but your right. Here in Canada we don’t call them “two tiered”our lower tier people work for a different company, for now. Do you know what frightens me? I make more on my pension than the lower wage people earn in the plant.
So when they ARE the majority, whats gonn’a happen when management says, were going to give you guys a 20% raise. All you got to do is knock the pensions back 30%. All in favour,raise you hand. In thier position,I know how I would vote.
@ “akitadog” I had a position training people once. I’ve seen big tough men brought to tears cause they coudn’t keep up to the line. Do how many times I heard “if that little skinny f–r can do it, I can pick it up in an hour”. Three days later the dude is sitting in the foremans office.
“Can ya get me another job, that one’s too hard”
Or the guy with the good education saying. “If I can do this for a year,and get out of debt,it would be great” The guy lasted ten months or so. He told the foreman “if I spend another minute here, thier gonn’a haft’a lock me up”.
@ psar ,as always your insight is right on the money.
JeremyR – no kidding. Have the commenting policies just gone out the window? Edward? Anyone?
I don’t know all of the economics involved but I read that labor represents about 7% of the price of a car. The poster who pointed out the supply and demand has a good point but when execs are making millions while the company hemorrhages money I have to question the law od supply and demand. We have lost respect for the people that actually produce a product. These jobs pump money into our economy so all benefit. Our economic system will always require a difference in wages but if it’s too far out it’s unhealthy. If you save a couple of bucks but have to pay taxes to support welfare are you any better off?
Obamanomics is THE answer…
The guy getting $28 an hour needs taxed down to $21.
The guy getting $14 gets free government health care equal to $7 an hour.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Two other solutions…
– The $14 / hour brother moves in with the $28 and robs him blind. Food, siphon gas, run up the electric bill, rent out a room to illegals. Whatever it takes to suck $7/hour of value from his brother
– A “reasonable wage law” that forces everyone to say $20/hour. You make more? They tax you down to $20. You make less? They gross you up. You make nothing? They assume you would make $20 if you could get a job and since everyone wants a job and everyone is honest/moral, you just get $20 an hour forever regardless.
A little perspective: National Institutes for Health post-doctoral salaries start at $37,740 per year. This is for people with four years of college and four to six years of grad school to earn a PhD in biochemistry or a related biomedical field. Typically you need to be near the top of your class to get an NIH-funded position, other positions pay less. Ultimately these people will make six figure salaries, but after eight to ten years of being paid little or nothing that $37k makes you feel like a millionaire. Oh, and by the way you’d better work 60-80 hours per week in the lab if you want that permanent position in a few years! (This is also why fewer and fewer American citizens want these kinds of degrees, the dues paying is too much for many.)
An anecdote: a buddy of mine from university is just about done his PhD in neuroscience. He and I both did plant-floor stints, in his case at Chrysler in Brampton as his father worked there.
We’ve both confirmed that no way, no how, is line work easier than academia. It doesn’t bother him, nor does it bother me, that CAW guys make more than post-docs. Neither job is easy, but dissecting rat brains doesn’t leave you quite the wreck that line-work does.
Yes, the market doesn’t deem that work valuable. Yes, much of it is probably, eventually, going to be done by robots or low-wage foreigners. Yes, the union stewards and execs are myopic in the extreme, but I wouldn’t use the word “parasite” when “justly compensated” is more accurate.
Were I the union, I would be raising the compensation argument. Were I upper management, I would seriously consider cooling compensation trends as the other 95% of the population are going to be easy prey for income-redistribution populists who seek office in the future. The message: start growing the middle class now while it’s comfortable to do so, rather than in the future, when it might not be.
It’s getting worse – a mere PhD isn’t enough anymore. Now combined degrees are starting to creep into the picture. I have friends in medical research that are having a tough time getting funding because they only have a PhD. My son is interested in research or biomedical engineering, so we’ve been looking at combined MD/PhD programs.
@psar We’ve both confirmed that no way, no how, is line work easier than academia.
I’m from the Detroit area and the fear of having to work on the line augmented by a tour of the Rouge Plant as a kid pretty kept me going in college. Whenever I felt like slacking off, the memories of that tour got me back on track.
“We’ve both confirmed that no way, no how, is line work easier than academia.”
That depends on how you measure the level of “easy” though, non?
I wasn’t saying that lab work was harder than line work. My point is that salaries are not always what you might expect, especially for those starting out in a field.
Further, it is unclear that education pays off when total income over a lifetime of work is considered. Add to that the debt incurred in going to college and grad school and income disparity is not what people make of it. After all, “yearly salary” is only one metric to measure income. Lifetime salary tells a different story.
Also, those H1B visas aren’t for auto workers they’re for scientists and engineers. Either visas are granted and the workers come here from China and India or the jobs go there. A big worry is not the manufacturing jobs being exported but the jobs requiring high levels of education. When they leave who will be left to pay taxes to support unemployment insurance? Remember, one salary of $100k yields much more tax revenue than four salaries of $25k each.
That depends on how you measure the level of “easy” though, non?
Not really, no. Academia and white-collar is intellectually challenging. Occasionally, the hours can be long. Sometimes the politics are stressful.
No way in hell is it as soul- and/or body-destroying as a production line. I’d hazard there’s very few professions that are quite that nasty: nursing and front-line military are probably the only ones that comes to mind.
@MikeAR- There’s only one crowd I despise more than the big unions, and that’s big management.
Those who do only enough to get by can be found all over, not just among union labor.
There was a lot of sacrifice early on, including countless deaths, to win the most basic of
human rights in the workplace.
I’ve never belonged myself, nor has anyone in my family,
but my dad remembered when everyone worked half-days on Saturdays, and vacations were
only for management.
I don’t like management who runs their company into the ground and leaves with millions either. And I agree with psar, saving and enlarging the middle class is vital if we are to have any future as a country.
And I agree with psar
Hell just froze over.
I was just readinga study where people were asked which they’d prefer.
a) to be paid 50k, and someone else gets 100k
b) to be paid 100k, and someone else gets 250k
a) was the winner.
Now this was an experiement run by economists, trying to calibrate their model of consumers. There is no rational explanation for the result, yet curiously the Tier 2 whiners are exhibiting the exact same behaviour.
You’ve got a job, at a wage you agreed to. The fact that someone else gets paid twice as much to do the same thing is IRRELEVANT.
I totally disagree that wage one gets paid relative to one’s co-workers is irrelevant. Wage disparity naturally leads to resentment. If you and a co-worker do exactly the same job day in and day out, but his wages allow him to …
… buy a car twice as expensive as yours,
… live in a house twice as big as yours,
… enjoy vacations twice as costly as yours, and
… put his kids through schools twice as good as what you can afford for your kids
… tell me you wouldn’t be the least bit resentful.
I suppose that envy does breed resentment. But for most of us, there’s always going to be someone else who earns more. If one can’t find a way to live with that fact, appreciate what one has and not worry so much that a friend/coworker/complete stranger has more than he does, he’s never going to be very happy in this world.
JeremyR, I agree that you’ll always be able to find someone who earns more than you do. In a free market economy this is quite normal. The money you earn depends on what compensation you are able to negotiate for the work you do.
That said, most people also have an innate sense of fairness. When two people do the same work for the same company there is a general expectation that both will receive comparable compensation (perhaps with some factor to account for time previously spent working for the company). If the compensation one person receives is significantly larger than the other there is bound to be discontent. Telling someone “not to worry so much” and that “he’s never going to be very happy in this world” won’t cut ice with most people for very long. And I would add that such advice (ie, telling someone to accept that they are paid half as much as someone else who does exactly the same job) runs counter to the principles on which our free market economy is supposed to be based.
Oh I agree. In the experiment I mentioned people turn down a 100% pay rise because someone else gets even more.
That is, they had the option of spending twice as much on
“… buy a car twice as expensive as yours,
… live in a house twice as big as yours,
… enjoy vacations twice as costly as yours, and
… put his kids through schools twice as good as what you can afford for your kids”
And turned it down because someone else could spend even more than that.
Now I don’t want to get all religious on you, but the Parable of the vineyard workers has direct relevance here.
Well, I’d admit that such advice isn’t going to make anyone feel better. Incidentally, in much of corporate America, people don’t ask each other how much they make, so I guess it’s a bit less of a problem.
“And I would add that such advice (ie, telling someone to accept that they are paid half as much as someone else who does exactly the same job) runs counter to the principles on which our free market economy is supposed to be based.”
I disagree, for two reasons. First is that the market doesn’t guarantee any particular outcome, e.g. that two sellers of an equivalent product (labor in this case) will receive an equal price. It’s up to them to negotiate that. Again looking at supply and demand, if there is a job that pays $20/hour, but enough people are willing to do that job for $10/hour, that will soon become the new market rate for that job. If nobody were willing to do the job for $10, the would-be employer would have to increase the wage, or possibly do without the work being done. Secondly, this particular two-tier wage structure is imposed by a labor monopoly (the union), which is a distortion of a free market. Still, people are free to not take those jobs since they’re perfectly aware that others are paid twice as much for the same work–yet the jobs are still filled. Go figure.
So a lower-tier worker has no hope of aspiring to an upper-tier level?
That doesn’t sound right at all. Unions all over have made concessions to entry-level pay rates to protect the experienced workers, but just about everyone catches up after a specific period of time.
For example, the New York Police Department (union shop) starts its officers out of the academy at about $42K base salary, but they’re up to $77K ($90K when you figure in shift differentials, etc) after 5 1/2 years.
Now this is intended to be an example, not any commentary on how cops are paid, especially since officers in the surrounding counties outside NYC do even better. It’s just an example of how the rookies start off low and build themselves up in stages.
Do that, and it’s a lot fairer. Earn your stripes. Otherwise, it’s counterproductive in that you end up with a demoralized workforce and decreased quality. That will blow away anything they save on wages.
I’m an engineer for a transplant automaker. This two tier system seems like a great way to pit team members against one another. What is the motivation to outperform the guy beside you… or even do better than the absolute minimum? It becomes a plant floor full of apathetic workers. “Why should I be responsible for this extra work? Jim over there is making 2x as much money. He can do it.”
I came right out of college and got a job with the company I co-op’d with. The pay they offered me seemed amazing initially, but when the downturn hit, I was basically making the same money with 4 years experience as when I started. My coworkers that came in 3 years prior were making $30k+ more than I was. After 4 years of working, I’d leveled up and was pretty much as competent as my fellow engineers. They had the fortune of hiring in on good times, though, and while doing the same job, were earning $30k more. I don’t expect to make what they do because I haven’t put in as many years, but it seemed somewhat unfair that doing the same job at the same competency level has such a difference in pay… especially since some of the older guys were on cruise control. I can imagine it is far worse when you are literally doing the same job as the guy beside you and you just hired in at the wrong time.
I seem to remember that way back when I was starting out in the working world, a friend told me that the auto industry in North America was going to destroy the economy if given the chance. Knowing nothing about anything at the time, I shrugged it off. I had other interests. A few years later I started to notice that every fall, about new car time, the UAW would strike at one of the Big Three and wouldn’t budge until they got their way. (over simplified for brevity)
I had tried this approach to negotiating with my parents as a kid and it always got me a back hand and to bed with no supper response. So I started reading the paper to see how this worked out for the Union and soon came to the conclusion that when it was finally setlled and you figured in the lost wages during the strike, and the pittance they were given for strike pay, nobody ever got back what they lost. Or gained. Because a few short months later, they did it all over again!
It made no sense to me then, and it still doesn’t. Every one of those strikes over the years has only resulted in pricing North America right out of the Global Economy. It long ago became a no win situation.
When some guy on an assembly line is making as much as my doctor there’s something way out of whack. Good going UAW.
No because for decades US manufacturing wage scales were attached to UAW wages (since auto was largest employer in the country) and that priced industry after industry (shipbuilding, steel, textile, rubber, etc) out of business or offshore. At some point there should have been an adjustment, the world changed, consumers spoke with thier wallets and votes (you can’t tell me that the UAW leaders weren’t hiring consultants and actuaries who were telling them exactly where this was leading), instead they just took more and sacrificed thier own and the companies they worked for (solidarity is great, except for when it kills you).
Yes unions did more than anyone to create the middle class in this country, they also did more than anyone to destroy it. At one point in time my education and skills would have been the yellow brick road to three martini lunches and jaunts to europe, today it just qualifies me for the rat race, but that’s life, you adjust or die.
Really? The auto industry and the UAW have destroyed the economy? Nafta had nothing to do with? Corporate tax shelters set up in off shore bank acounts had nothing to do with? Outsourcing labor had nothing to do with it? A corrupt mortagage inudstry who loaned bad loans to people had nothing to do with it? Two wars draining the economy had nothing to do with it?
I am not union but I have no problem with a group of workers asking for decent pay from corporations that make more than enough money to sustain the corporation and its workers and make a profit. Is the UAW perfect no, was mangement at the big three perfect, no, But tell me why mangement or white collar should be able to keep the all the money and not have to share it with those who actually make the product. By painting the UAW as the devil it paints the corporate heads as angels and proclaimers of truth justice and the American way.
No the Auto Industry did not kill the economy, UAW do not kill the economy, greed and the inability to retool our economy for the 21centry has killed our economy. I will never ever fault any worker who works hard and wants to earn a living wage to support family on it. No one , that is no one deserves to settle for peanuts when those in manegment are eating cake. When those who manage start to eat peanuts then let everyone do so, until then remeber that the AMerican Worker is the back bone of this counrty, the american worker built the roads. the highways, the infastructure of this country. If they want to gather their voting power together and demand a piece of the pie that they helped to build then good for them. If they don’t do it themselves, noone. not mangement nor the corporate heads will give them anything.
This is a hobesian work world in which workers either band together and demand some form of equality or else become a living Charles Dickens novel.
portico,
“greed and the inability to retool our economy for the 21centry has killed our economy. ”
You left out of your list woeful voter ignorance, voting blocks and a sense of entitlement. The last one is a kicker, as it applies to the ignorance at the C-suite of companies and permeates so much of so many companies.
portico: Much of your first paragraph concerns relatively recent history. The destruction bestowed on this continent by the UAW, and other big labour unions, began long before that.
Didn’t I read somewhere that Toyota has tiered wages too? I swear I saw that somewhere.
Anyway, a union shop I know of effectively tiered the wages by eliminating defined positions and making the bid jobs “helper” positions where you were responsible for knowing three jobs, but at drastically reduced pay compared to what each single position used to be paid. Or rather, they kept the hiring wage down for years and the older workers didn’t give a crap if the newer workers got paid anything or not. Well, that place filled up with lower tiered workers, and I’m sure the union is going to face a reckoning soon.
The union and the auto companies have added a second problem to their first one, high labor costs. Like people have mentioned, when people work side by side, doing the same job, and get paid half as much, they get resentful. This resentment effects the quality of their work. Now you’ve got old guys who make too much and can’t get fired so they scr_w off, alongside new guys, who are p_ssed that they make less and therefore scr_w off. High labor cost coupled with low productivity. Yeah!!!
Here is an interesting read about how even monkey’s have an innate sense of fairness.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129233715
So, GM willingly pays half of its staff twice as much as the market will bear.
Every penny GM overpays its tier one UAW employees is a penny of value that doesn’t get put into the car. Which would account for their horrible reliability record. And which is why I woul never buy a GM product.
Perhaps if they build cars that can compete with the foreign automakers, after 25 or 30 years people will start to trust them again.
I find it hard to sympathize… These guys knew the conditions when they took the job.
Don’t get me wrong – the situation sucks – it has to be a cancer on workplace relationships and functionality. And that says something about the sub-species management types that agreed to such a charlie-foxtrot pay system.
Does anyone know bankruptcy case law? Are 2 tier pay scales normally part of bankruptcies???
The new hires have much lower wages because they are carrying about 8 other retired “brothers” each…They are not brothers…They are slaves of the retirees…Bet they don’t even have a clue that they are slaves….LOL!