Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Quote:
In case you are curious, I was making just a tick under $16/hr, and he was making almost $24/hr.
You are part of the service sector ..not manufacturing. Find out the wages of those who make HP ER monitors ..xray machines ..MRI machines ...and probably anything else that you use on a daily basis. Look at the cost of those products.
We simply disagree on the relevance of this fact.
In my opinion, the relevant issue is that an unskilled and easily replaced worker is valued more than a skilled and difficult-to-replace worker.
This points to artificial inflation or deflation of one of the values.
I do agree that, based upon sector, there will be some variation of compensation. Some sectors simply have more cash.
I see your point that direct comparisons of compensation aren't easy, because of the number of variables involved.
However, regardless of sector, compensation is a simple function of supply and demand. The market is flooded with unskilled labor, yet somehow UAW employees are immune to normal market forces. This (combined with other data) implies that compensation was artificially inflated.
This info is interesting, as it compares earnings by sector:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030623ar01p1.htm
This shows that union workers earn more doing the same work, so the term "overpaid" just might apply, as the comparison is apples-to-apples.
One of the figures, "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation" indicates that the non-union employee makes $14.81/hr, and the union employee makes $18.36/hr. The difference is $3.55/hr, so the union employee is making nearly 24% more.
I am curious as to what makes the union employee 24% more valuable...?
The free market proves that there are people perfectly willing to work for 24% less, so what makes union employees so special?
In another comparison, we see this, from the above link:
"Blue-collar occupations
Earnings distribution. Average hourly earnings for the 142 union blue-collar occupations in the 1997 NCS sample were $15.07 and ranged from $7.34 to $26.81. For the 175 nonunion blue-collar occupations in the sample, average hourly earnings were $10.95, with a range of $6.47 to $21.41.10"
$15.07 vs $10.95. The union worker is paid 37% more than non-union. This trend is consistent throughout the article.
(I am aware that there are a lot of variables, and that some data may be incompatible, but the numbers are pretty striking.)
That said, I have no problem at all with unions. I believe that they had noble beginnings, but later twisted into shakedown operations--and the end result may contribute to the death of our auto industry.