How's YOUR Employer Treat YOU?

[gary s]

rich, said very well

 

[Tom Schindler]

I don't know what Toyota pays their assembly line workers, but I assure you it is not paying $25 per hour as a starting salary !!.

Read the newspaper once in a while. I will not research it, but Toyota pays thier employees $25.00/hr to build cars. It shouldn't matter if they have been building cars for a week, month, or year. They are performing the same duty as the guy next to them. They are not working faster or harder than the other guy. They work as fast as the line goes. No faster, no slower.

The problem with the unions is the high salaries, pensions and benefits they demand are driving companies either out of business or to cheaper labor overseas. The union salaries are driving up the prices of vehicles. Foreign vehicles are better engineered with better quality at lower or similar prices than American vehicles. If the US auto makes continue to compete in the same way as they have they will continue to lose sales and money and will co belly up.

So it is the union employees fault for poorly engineered vehicles? I did not know hourly workers were also engineers. Please explain. If you try that, "bla, bla bla, gotta make them cheaper bla, bla, bla to pay the higher wages (Though Toyota pays the same, MAYBE A BUCK AN HOUR LESS), bla, bla, bla high insurance costs...save it. It is BS.

Most progressiive manufacturers in the US are not unionized and are using more robots and automation to manufacture products of high quality. The factory worker has been replaced by skilled technicians who get excellent pay and benefits because they are in demand. Even China is looking to more automation to increase production. They are where the US was 40-50 years ago accept there government is much more restrictive and their workers have far less rights. If the only skill you have is manual labor, you will have a bleak future in tomorrow's world.

There is nothing bleak about manual labor. Since when do the build building with robots?





Tom

 

[Tom Schindler]

Overall, it still does not change the fact that the US Automakers NEVER invested ENOUGH money into the pension fund to cover expenses. They did have enough to pay CEO's millions more than they are worth, and coincidently, few countries in the world actually pay their CEO's that much money.



Most others invest that money BACK into the company to improve it.



Another thing to consider, the countries that are kicking our butts have government supplied health costs.



We are competing with companies that do not have the burdons we have in the USA.



We can not compare apples to oranges here. Lets look at more than wages and set our country to properly compete.



As it stands, we do not have a chance.





Tom

 

[Mark Grumpy]

Friend of mine started at Toyota here in SA a few months back, on the line. I bet he wishes it was $25/hour. Started at less than $15.00.



Don't believe everything you read in the paper.

 

[TomT]

Paying $25 per hour plus benefits as starting pay for an unskilled UAW assembly plant worker is crazy. In most cases, they job is not physically or mentally demanding. And is not particularly dangerous, at leas not when compared to a Police Officer or a Firefighter, and surely not as dangerous as military service.

Have to agree with you there. Most firefighters in my area get about $15 an hour starting out, if their lucky. Benefits are far behind UAW workers also. That's really my only gripe about most union workers (even though I'm in a union myself). They demand pay far beyond their worth. That only hurts the company they work for.

I personally don't think unions are going to be around much longer. If they pass that stupid new immigration bill, all non skilled jobs are going to be going to the immigrants, whom will work for a fraction of what union workers are getting now. Not something I want to see but it's inevitable.

 

[Johnny O]

At the hospital I used to work at (I quit early in '95 to start my own business) for the longest time we got a sick time buy-back. You got 80 sick hours a year, whatever you had over 480 the hospital would buy back at the end of the year and drop your accumulated time back to 480. So if you didn't call off at all, it would take you 6 years just to get to the 480, then get some buy-back at the end of your 7th year. When they started to run into financial trouble they stopped doing that, so then people were calling off all over the place. No one got a raise my last two years there either. Since I left, the nurses unionized but I don't think anyone else did.

For a union to be successful, one of the things they have to do is to eliminate competition. Further, the more easily replaceable someone is, the less likely it is that a union can protect their job. Nurses, welders, electricians, etc., can be unionized successfully because of specialized training and skills. Hotel maids and grocery checkers, not so much. Kroger grocery stores packed up and left Pennsylvania 25 years ago because they couldn't come to an agreement with their union.

As mentioned, over time the government has kind of stolen the unions' act, ironically often at the behest of the unions, rendering much of what unions stand for superfluous and redundant. Largely because of that, private sector union membership has fallen to 7% (from a high of 35% about 50 years ago). Union leadership gave up on the private sector long ago in favor of tapping the bottomless pit of money to be had from organizing government employees, and they're not getting any help on trade restrictions from the Democrats in Washington (remember, eliminate competition), so I think that horse has left the barn.

Most of the fastest-growing states in the U.S. are Sunbelt right-to-work states.

Most of the shrinking or non-growing states are in the formerly heavily-unionized Northeast Rust Belt. Ain't no jobs, ya gotta move where ya can get one.

8 of the 10 fastest-growing states have no state income tax.

I don't make this stuff up.

You know, they guy that deals with working in hot working conditions where the sweat runs down the crack of his butt until it is raw...The guy that suffers from UV burns from welding and burns on his body by molten metal slashing on him. The hard hat wearing man with metatarsal shoes and kevlar gloves.

Just an FYI, I've been there and done that back when we used to have steel mills here. Still have my old United Steel Workers membership card in a photo album.

 

[Tom Schindler]

Don't believe everything you read in the paper.

So all that propaganda about the harm Unions are doing is actually not true, or should we pick and choose what we take for the truth...you know, whatever supports your agenda.



As for your friend, that was his mistake. If he was a better worker, he would get more money....right?





Tom

 

[Mark Grumpy]

As for your friend, that was his mistake. If he was a better worker, he would get more money....right?

eeerrrr... NO!! If he were a more experienced worker - yes!!



So far as picking and choosing the propaganda we take for truth, other than the communist wisecrack above, I don't believe I've stated anything bad about unions other than the government having the largest: AFGE.



Nelson,

you'd be surprised who belongs. Take it from a guy that used to do civil service payroll, it's not WS, GS, WG or GM - whether or not they are union is strictly management or not.



And you don't get free medical and tax free purchases. Not CONUS anyway. I used to pay the commissary bills too, back before the advent of DECA.



And take your 30 days leave all in one shot and compare it to the guy who gets 8 hours per pay period and see which one of you goes back to work first - just have the coffee waiting when he/she shows up a week(ish) later than you.

 

[Tom Schindler]

Grumpy,



The article was quoting what Toyota reported. An assembly line worker gets paot about $26.00/hr. The same as a Ford worker. Toyota actually reported that no more plants are being built because it is cheaper to build a car in Japan than it is in the USA and Toyota has been building too many plants too quickly.



I am sure your friend is a hard worker. Hopefully he can start to earn a wage he can live on soon.





Tom

 

[Johnny O]

A big part of the U.S. automakers' cost is the so-called "legacy costs" of pensions and health insurance for retired workers. Toyota, Honda, BMW, haven't run into that yet since they haven't been here long enough to have very many retired workers.

 

[Tom Schindler]

JohnnyO,



You are 100% correct. Add the mistake of the US automakers of NOT investing ENOUGH money into the fund to the mix. Is that my problem or is it their problem?



I do know the CEO made sure he made more than he was worth.





Tom

 

[Nelson Atwell]

Since this thread has strayed so far, I guess I can continue it. The Japanese were only the first wave of car manufacturers to challenge the "Big Three". The Koreans were the second wave with imports from Kia, Daewoo, and Hyundai. A third wave is coming from China (Chery Motors) and Czech Republic (Skoda). Skoda is already conquering the European market. They have very fashionable, reliable cars at a very competitive price. I wouldn't be surprised to see them enter the US market within five years. Chery Motors is already moving in to the US.



As gas prices increase further, these low-cost, fuel efficient vehicles will become even more attractive to the US auto market, just as the first Hondas and Toyotas were attractive in the early '70s and early '80s. US automakers need to focus on economy vehicles. The Senate passed a bill yesterday that would require autos to meet a 35 mpg standard by 2020. They are complaining about that, but I believe if they want to stay in business that long, they better meet that standard much sooner than 2020 (more like 2012 - 2015) Toyota and Honda already have SUVs that meet that standard (hybrids).

 

[Tom Schindler]

Nelson,



Japan has been putting MPG requiirements on their automakers for years. The US SHOULD have done that 30 years ago.



Chinese cars are going to hurt the Japanese more than the US automakers.





Tom