[ale] Off topic - And now, Arizona

[Jim Kinney]

High.What the worker makes is far less. Even adding in the benefits it was
high. However, doing the accounting trick of costing the retirement out to
the current work force, then you get above $50/hr.

But the retirement fund was a combination of money withheld from the
employees and money set aside by the company that was supposed to be
invested and available after retirement. But as per usual, the withheld
portion was not invested and the set aside funds never materialized so the
US automakers are reliant on the current workforce to pay for the retirement
of the prior workforce.'

Oh. Isn't that sort of like corporate taxation/socialism? WE take from YOU
to fund the promises WE made to THEM but WE always get paid on time and get
paid damn nicely to leave.

gaaahhhh..... greedy people suck.......

Personally, I think most corps have squandered the retirement funds they are
contractually obligated to pay.

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs <jhubbslist at att.net> wrote:
> >> >  Whenever someone around me gets all wound up about illegals, I ask
> >> > them if they're ready for $10/lb strawberries and chicken more
> expensive
> >> > than lobster.
> >>
> >> I seriously doubt chicken has more than a $2 of labor per chicken.
> >> (More if its not whole.)
> >>
> >> Most of the process including feeding is highly automated, and a fast
> >> processing line for whole chickens (not cut-up) can handle
> >> 100/chickens a minute, so the butchering is very efficient.  (Max of
> >> 50 or so people on that sort of line, so that works out to about 30
> >> man-seconds per chicken to kill it, de-feather, etc.)
> >>
> >> It's a very low-margin business, so they want as cheap a labor as they
> >> can get, but even if they had to pay $15/hr it would not be too
> >> expensive to eat.
> >>
> >> Now paying car factory union rates of $50/hr would have a bigger
> >> impact, but still not lobster prices.
> >
> > recheck the $50/hr.
> > http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/24/opinion/main4630103.shtml
> > and
> > http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRViSBJZq45k
> >
> > The $51/hr in the bloomberg article is pay + benefits.
> >
> > Important numbers are here:
> >
> > The Detroit-based automaker's current assembly workers get $31.75 an hour
> in
> > pay, including overtime and bonuses, and $19.25 in benefits, according to
> an
> > analysis by Laurie Harbour-Felax, president of Chicago-based Stout Risius
> > Ross Inc. Adding pensions and other retiree costs raises the total to
> about
> > $73.
> >
> > Toyota's U.S. workers cost about $47.25 an hour, including $31.50 in pay
> and
> > $15.75 in benefits, the study found. Toyota doesn't have additional
> expenses
> > for retirees because so few of its U.S. factory employees have reached
> > retirement.
>
> So Jim, are you saying my $50/hr WAG (wild ass guess) was high or low.
>  Looks like I was about right for Toyota and low from GM.  Either way,
> I hope we never have to pay that kind of money for chicken processors.
>
> fyi: I interviewed a electronic technition working on Rockwell's
> production line one time.  We wanted to hire a electronic tech to work
> in our prototype area.  During the interview the questions got easier
> and easier as we tried to figure out if the guy knew anything.  Even
> Ohm's low was unknown to him.
>
> Turned out he was making good money ($25/hr iirc and this was 25 yrs
> ago.)  His job was to stick a circuit board in a tester.  If the light
> turned green, take it out and put it in the good pile.  If red, put it
> in the bad pile.
>
> I was flabbergasted at the time.  (I was young and naive).
>
> Greg
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits

  Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by
faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.
    Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20100710/450a225e/attachment-0001.html