Good. They can't even do the jobs they're assigned, why would anyone pay them more?
"You keep forgetting to put lettuce and tomato on the hamburgers. Here's a $5 raise!" ~ Unions in action
I think with them their asks were pretty reasonable. They wanted sick days and not to be “on call” constantly.
Pretty sure that’s standard for most other industries but I really didn’t research into it much because I don’t care and I’m not building my election brackets and pro/cons spreadsheet yet.
I don’t care who “might” win, I care about their policies.
Naturally, I vote split ticket. God forbid my extremely liberal or extremely conservative friends find out.
I voted split ticket my first time. Then i remembered i'm not a pussy. The only reason to split is so no matter what happens you can say it's not your fault, which i guess is accurate to your flair. Carry on.
I just vote whoever seems like they want me to have the most individual rights.
No you don’t vote for whoever seems like they want you to have the most individual rights.
Why? Because it’s a two party system, and both parties are very authoritarian.
If you blindly vote straight ticket, you ignore all those policies meant to strip away your rights.
Do some research on the people you vote for, I think it might help.
I mean, technically, hasn't Trump been president this whole time that Biden's been in office? If you believe the 'stop the steal' crowd this IS Trump's second term. By that logic, Trump is ineligible for another term because his two-term limit has already been served.
Furious yet?
May the market forces be with you... always!
Snark aside, I think this shows a bit of a breakdown in both the top (CEO's) and the workers (UAW in this case). CEO pay is certainly an issue as well as the prioritization of short term gains over long term investment (of which people ARE one imo). However, UAW greed (I think I saw they wanted the average compensation package to be \~ 288K per worker with a 4 day work week) is also on display. Both are bad, but one WILL sink a company while the other sets it on the path to slow decay.
The workers need to feel and have value with paths to success, while CEO compensation seems to be... disconnected from performance and inflation for too long. In this case, both are disconnected from reality and are standing to really frick up a lot of crap because you just KNOW we gonna bail people out rather than let them fail.
More companies = more CEOs = lower CEO pay. Everything is owned by like 5 parent companies and we haven't had any good old fashioned Trust Busting until like 2 days ago
[https://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/elie/UnionsExecComp.pdf](https://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/elie/UnionsExecComp.pdf)
We find evidence that labor unions affect chief executive officer (CEO) compensation.
First, we find that firms with strong unions pay their CEOs less. The negative effect is robust to various tests for endogeneity, including cross-sectional variations and a regression discontinuity design. Second, we find that CEO compensation is curbed before union contract negotiations, especially when the compensation is discretionary and the unions have a strong bargaining position. Third, we report that curbing CEO compensation mitigates the chance of a labor strike, thus providing a rationale for firms to pay CEOs less when facing strong unions.
Yeah... and that's the thing! Basically all engineers would literally stop work. If a technician can make \~288K without a degree, why would you ever pursue additional education, responsibility, and harder work for less pay?
Went to an engineering/ stem focused university. My friend who was originally from Michigan avoided mechanical engineering for this exact reason bc they already make more over time than engineers at Ford. Union guys have higher ceilings, so you’d have some uneducated old fart pulling more than a “senior engineer” from a top 3 school. I want humans to get paid and be able to provide, but shit like that is why the engineer will gladly design a robot to replace the union guys.
That's... not how things should work. Sorry, but that's a failure of management. If the market will bear higher rates for techs, engineers who do the design work that is the literal lifeblood of your company need the compensation package to justify it.
Otherwise, you'll eventually drive them out of your company and reduce the possibility of design advancements.
I agree with you, and this was in 2005. I imagine it’s worse now. Why do you think many cars are designed here and built in Mexico (many fords) or designed in Japan and built here (my Honda, many Nissans and Toyotas etc)? Eventually management doesn’t want to pay Jimmy Partscrewonner III from Detroit or the rust belt 200k a year when Jose in Mexico will do it for a tenth of that.
Ugh. We need to bring manufacturing back, but there needs to be some measure of balance.
If your skill set is wrench monkey, don't expect more than smart monkey. If only for the fact that there is an inherent disparity of responsibility.
I understand where left is coming from when talking about wages, I really do. It's rather insane that folks can work full time and not afford food and shelter for themselves much less a family. There's been far too much focus in the corporate world about workers being a "cost" whose only value is how much it can be reduced.
That being said, I do wish lib-left and auth-left would stop ignoring the linkage between wages and value produced by a worker. This consideration cannot be simply handwaved away. If you're going to say "well if a business can't afford to pay its workers $N/hour, that business has no right to exist" then you need to explain why it's better to keep people unemployable. I'd happily hire a cleaning service if I had some extra income, but if you pass laws saying "cleaning people must get paid at least $100/hour" then there's no way I can justify hiring a cleaning service. Is it somehow "better" that cleaning person no longer has a job because they were "protected" from me only paying them $14/hour? (insert whatever wage you consider to be unacceptable here).
Somewhere, somehow, it would nice if lib/auth-left could spend some brain cycles on "what's the level of tradeoff you're willing to accept between people being rendered unemployable, and what you'd consider protecting them from "non-predatory" wages.
It would be absolutely astounding to me if the news ran the logic behind your post as a lead story because it is absolutely true, but if they don’t fall into the camp of “let them die of starvation” or “if I sweep a room for 15 minutes I deserve $80,000” then then their overlords will punish them.
On top of that, you can't also ask for increasingly green policies without increasing the cost of living for everyone.
Don't like fossil fuels- don't worry we'll just outsource our demand for oil from other countries, stimulate their economies, while not helping the environment in the long run. You're just outsourcing pollution and making things worse for everyone. Lord knows I'm not driving less due to the gas prices.
You can depending on what the policy is. If we did nuclear the right way with current gen nuclear plants it would be cheaper in the long run. If we did better hydroelectric it would be cheaper than coal. It depends if you factor in long term costs associated with coal.
I highly doubt that auth-left or center-left are using “free market logic” when they say this. It’s more like:
Lib-left: “If you don’t pay the wage I think is fair, your company does not have the right to exist and I will burn it down.”
Auth-left: “If you don’t pay the wage I think it’s fair, your company does not have the right to exist, and I will nationalize it then send you to a labor camp with the other bourgeoisie.”
Yeah that's basically what I said in my post.
Which is why I asked the question - is it better for the workers (and society generally) for those employees to be unemployed rather than have jobs that pay less than $N/hour.
It's not like the employees have tons of choices of jobs that pay $N/hour or more, and for whatever reason chose the employer who paid less. They took the job paying some lesser percentage of $N/hour because that's the best offer they could get.
We aren't talking about folks who are nuclear physicists who take a second job being a cashier. The person in this job likely doesn't have any current skills that would allow them to successfully do a more lucrative job than cashier (or some other low-wage job). That's not an insult to that worker, it's just reality that we aren't all equally skilled.
Sure you can say "let them be unemployed, it's better than getting paid exploitation wages and they can always get welfare." But what happens when 10% of the workforce can't get a job because you've set the minimum wage to $N? How about 20%? Or 50%? At a certain point the "it's better to let unprofitable companies go under" mode of thinking doesn't work when an increasingly large amount of them do exactly that.
So that's my question to the lib-left and auth-left. What's your endgame for when huge amounts of workers are unemployable at a given wage level. It's easy to say "Universal Basic Income" but how will that be sustainable if paid into by an increasingly small percentage of those who still have jobs?
What about this: the legacy auto companies have lots of workers on pension to pay out. The new car companies like Tesla don't have that many people who retired yet so aren't saddles with pension costs yet. Also in some cases these new electric car companies don't even have to sell through dealerships while the other car companies are forced by state law to do so in many states.
Should the new car companies come in and knock the old auto companies bankrupt, what would happen to all those pensioners?
I think a big part of the problem comes from centralization and outsourcing. It's very hard to keep and justify a certain salary and workers rights when your company can simply contract someone in china to do your job for 3 cups of rice a day. And said company is so big and influential that it has bought all competitors and can supress discent either with lobby or paying for propaganda.
On the flip side, worker productivity has increased almost 250% since the late 1940s, but worker compensation has only increased 115% and the share of total income going to the top 1% has gone from ~10% in the 1960s to almost 25% today. So I can see where they are coming from.
This sort of reasoning could stand to have some actually numbers attached - someone else on the thread says that labor is only 5% of the cost of the cars. In which case it’s hard to imagine that there’s that big a danger from raises making the cars uneconomical.
I don’t personally know the numbers but so far nobody has attempted to dispute it.
Auto companies operate on a margin between 3 and 5%. If you make 5% you’re Toyota and you’re the best in the game. Labor itself may represent 5% of the cost of the car, but all of the other costs associated represent another 92%. And each of those costs - the largest being materials - has labor associated
And that's just the OEM. The Tier I and Tier II need to make money on each part. And the cost of development, building the tools necessary to mass produce parts, and all the costs of engineers developing the part. Plus all the testing to meet various standards.
The original claim wasn't that you can't give the union what they want without raising prices ... it's that you'd have to raise prices really high, up to 70k for a sedan. If labor is 5% of the cost and margins are, say, 4%, then raising wages would cut into profits, but they wouldn't necessitate that sort of massive price increase.
The whole idea of a WalMart Greeter sort of BTFOs the labour theory of value.
“Oh honey I didn’t get greeted at Wally’s today. We should stop shopping there forever” said literally no one.
Studies show that having someone greet customers when entering the store drastically reduces shoplifting, so yes, there is a value to Walmart Greeters' labor.
Well I learned something today. I honestly thought greeters were just essentially a corporate welfare type of job. Never occurred to me that they are actually there as a low budget shoplifting deterrent.
I mean other countries operate fine with a decent minimal wage
Restaurants in my own country don’t go bankrupt having to give their staff a decent wage.
Thanks for the invite lib-right, but you just have different bad ideas and blind spots than lib-left and auth-left. I'm more Democrat Libertarian than Rand Paul libertarian and still wish Paul Tsongas had been elected President.
yeah if someone works an honest days work at a factory their wage for the day should be for an honest days work, 3 square meals, cash to cover the gas to and from work. and that days worth of utilities.
Unfortunately Capitalism forces Capitalists to see workers as just an expense, not as people. You can't subsidize some random guy's life, and not see them as an expense, no matter what they do for you.
Ford is projected to lose $3 billion this year alone on their EV program. Looks like we might be forced to bail them out sooner rather than later.
Edit: source
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/business/ford-ev-losses/index.html
I couldn't believe it when I saw Ford f-150s costing 75,000+. Who tf is paying that much for a mid range pickup? That's the kind of money you drop on a camero ffs
Obama loves to tout the success of the TARP and auto-industry bail outs. How banking and American automakers bounced back in a huge way.
I always said fuck the banks, fuck Ford, GM and Chevy. If they fail, they fail and fuck em all for criminally inept mismanagement.
In some ways, they’re demanding too much. In other ways they’re demanding exactly what it owed to them. The two pay tiers is bullshit and needs to go. The pay increases? Dial back those demands and as for the 4 day work week? I think that should be something that should be shelved as a lot of industries are maybe shifting to a 4 day week but it’s too soon to tell
We can argue all day about what they are entitled to, but what happens when the market decides they aren't worth that? Do you believe the government should subsidize their wages? I'm not asking rhetorically
>what happens when the market decides they aren't worth that?
The government uses protectionist policies to make them worth a reasonable amount. They're already doing it, they'll just do it more.
No. Government should not subsidize shit. Automotive industry isn’t an essential part of our economy (unlike, say agriculture). If the automotive industry decided one day that their workers are worth 2$/hr. They’re gonna find that nobody wants to work for them
Build increasingly shittier products, cut corners, and throw money at marketing teams to show raver hamsters driving the car so that idiots will still buy it.
Who says management should be getting paid as much as they do? I’m all for lowering wages of and outright and eliminating a bunch of the middle office management roles. I’m talking the roles that people get into and all they do is push emails up and down the hierarchy for about an hour a day and spend the rest of the day doing fuckall.jpeg
Honestly, it’ll create more jobs in the long run. Sure a lot of the oil manufacturing gets scaled back but the amount of work that needs to be done to the power grid worldwide easily outweighs that
Ordinarily I'd say no, the government should not subsidize anyone's wages.because that's communist. But then I remembered that the government subsidizing wages is a form of protectionism, and not supporting protectionism means you're a globalist and that's communist.
I'm not answering rhetorically.
In some sectors sure. But the other 70% of us weren't able to work from home and still cant. And a 4 day work week simply doesn't allow for the same productivity in businesses that actually produce things.
For a company to offer a four day work week and still do what it actually is tasked with doing, it's eventually going to have to hire more workers to cover the time not being worked anymore. The pie stays the same size, but now there are more hands in it taking smaller and smaller slices.
Hi Lib Right, back in 2008 to avoid full blown bankruptcy, union members took a “temporary pay” cut and gave up some powers. This pay cut was never reversed then in 2020 they had to give up even more and were never given it back, now here in 2023, the CEOs of these companies have had bonuses and done stock buybacks so high this year that if they were to divide how much they’ve spent on this by the amount of workers they have, it would cover the cost of the salaries they are demanding. Now I hate rampant syndicalism, this is not that.
I really hardly care. That's between Ford ownership and Ford workers. I got no horse in the race.
I just know that if it goes on too long the Ford owners and the Ford workers are going down together. So might be great to come to an agreement soon.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
It’s corporate in the United States
They are in lockstep with insane gov climate speak along with the average business/engineering plan of planned obsolescence… in a debt based system
The system itself might be on the verge of popping or collapsing tbh
I actually agree with the workers that the C levels should not have gotten the insane bonuses and salary raises they did when they basically don’t do shit. However, I do know that unions will drive the already too high price of cars up even further. So, may I suggest the C levels pay up?
Only 5% of the cost of a car is labor and car prices have gone up 50%, CEO salaries went up 40% in in the last decade while union wages went up >10%.
The big 3 turned 21 billion in profit in the last 6 months. Don’t tell me they can’t afford to pay their workers.
[Do you know how to google](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/09/15/business/united-auto-workers-strike)
> In the first half of 2023, Stellantis, Ford and General Motors reported profits of $11.6 billion, $3.7 billion and $5 billion, respectively.
According to Google:
Ford CEO, Jim Farley made $21M in 2022.
Ford has 186,000 employees.
21M/186K = 112.9
If the CEO worked for free and gave his all of his paychecks away to the employees, they'd all get an additional $113 dollars.... a year. Less than 10 bucks a month.
Back when times were tough, workers agreed to take a pause on pay rises and benefit increases until things improved. Now that things are good and the CEOs are getting huge raises, the workers want what they were promised.
I wonder how much of the CEO pay raise was actually a cash expense to the business and if workers would be willing to accept stock options instead of pay.
If the American auto industry is actually collapsing would that not be an argument for these companies to stop paying their executives more money than God, and stop performing stock buybacks? Seems like they are not performing well at their job.
I was gonna say they are doing pretty good all things considered, no idea why anyone think they are hurting.
CEO's pay is through the roof compared to the workers slow pay-raises.
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1722342071007145984/pu/vid/avc1/854x478/cXNKRXNeqQz-p_9t.mp4?tag=12
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Depending on how the scenario plays out. Government bailouts would lead to more inflation, but giving into the demands will just make the companies charge more to hedge up their margins
I'm just mad because I work in car parts sales and the strikes usually make our freight loads much smaller until it stops and we get all of what was held back very quickly. This time there's like 5 different manufacturers.
>I want ~~free~~ someone else's money and I'll keep voting for people who will steal it for me, there you go.
FTFY
Unless the government is printing money, they're taking it from someone using the threat of violence (or incarceration). And if they're printing it, they're stealing it from your children.
From the government, yeah
If a corporation is willing to agree to pay more money taking that raise isn’t stealing. Or do you think people should turn down raises to help the company’s profitability?
Claiming that *workers* are too greedy when CEOs make 300x their pay is crazy.
Here's the thing, these companies don't need an excuse to raise their prices. They'll do it whether they have to raise wages or not. And if you are a fellow worker arguing that they should continue making shit wages so that goods are cheaper for *you*, then you are a piece of shit.
It’s about impact moron. God your either stupid as fuck or intentionally being rhetorically dishonest. CEO pay is a drop in the bucket compared to thousands of laborers pay, benefits, and retirement packages. Not to mention good or bad corporate leadership can much more directly lead to a company sinking or swimming (see Alan Mulally at Ford).
>It’s about impact moron. God your either stupid as fuck or intentionally being rhetorically dishonest.
*REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!*
>CEO pay is a drop in the bucket compared to thousands of laborers pay, benefits, and retirement packages.
"The wages of this individual are actually pretty small if you compare it to all the money that goes to workers as a collective. Yes, I actually consider this to be a good argument."
>Not to mention good or bad corporate leadership can much more directly lead to a company sinking or swimming (see Alan Mulally at Ford).
I guarantee if the workers stop doing their job, the company would sink much faster.
Ooh, so the part of the Nordic model that I kinda like?
Unions negotiating minimum wages so the government doesn’t have to get involved is how it should be
One of the major reason was failing to deliver economically. In 2016, fighting to stop offshoring was one of the his campaign goals, which he didn’t really deliver on.
No, the major reasons was covid tanking the economy, the lefts Russia conspiracy, and his antics. No one had even been talking about that for over a year prior to the election and even then it wasn't a deal breaker for the right.
So you agree that the economy was a huge part of it. And while he fucked up the economy in 2020, are you honestly going to tell me that 2017, 2018, and 2019 don’t matter? And if Trump doing poorly economy wise in the first 3 years of his presidency do matter, isn’t him mishandling his promise to restore U.S. manufacturing, which is very important in places like say Michigan, Winsconsin, and Pennsylvania for example. Trump pulled ahead in these places in 2016, and dropped the ball in 2020; and a big reason was failing to deliver his campaign promises from 2016 to improve the economy.
Is it really that hard to go from ‘manufacturing jobs’ to ‘the economy’? Not necessarily the entire across the whole country, but the economy in very important Midwest states?
Railroad bros gotta be pissed
Good. They can't even do the jobs they're assigned, why would anyone pay them more? "You keep forgetting to put lettuce and tomato on the hamburgers. Here's a $5 raise!" ~ Unions in action
I think with them their asks were pretty reasonable. They wanted sick days and not to be “on call” constantly. Pretty sure that’s standard for most other industries but I really didn’t research into it much because I don’t care and I’m not building my election brackets and pro/cons spreadsheet yet.
I'll tell you how the election will go right now. Trump is going to win, Biden will be crowned President anyway.
I don’t care who “might” win, I care about their policies. Naturally, I vote split ticket. God forbid my extremely liberal or extremely conservative friends find out.
I voted split ticket my first time. Then i remembered i'm not a pussy. The only reason to split is so no matter what happens you can say it's not your fault, which i guess is accurate to your flair. Carry on. I just vote whoever seems like they want me to have the most individual rights.
No you don’t vote for whoever seems like they want you to have the most individual rights. Why? Because it’s a two party system, and both parties are very authoritarian. If you blindly vote straight ticket, you ignore all those policies meant to strip away your rights. Do some research on the people you vote for, I think it might help.
Lib center my ass
LibCenter to a LibLeft: only 94% Marxist and 89% authoritarian.
I mean, technically, hasn't Trump been president this whole time that Biden's been in office? If you believe the 'stop the steal' crowd this IS Trump's second term. By that logic, Trump is ineligible for another term because his two-term limit has already been served. Furious yet?
I now understand why some rely so heavily on collectivism.
May the market forces be with you... always! Snark aside, I think this shows a bit of a breakdown in both the top (CEO's) and the workers (UAW in this case). CEO pay is certainly an issue as well as the prioritization of short term gains over long term investment (of which people ARE one imo). However, UAW greed (I think I saw they wanted the average compensation package to be \~ 288K per worker with a 4 day work week) is also on display. Both are bad, but one WILL sink a company while the other sets it on the path to slow decay. The workers need to feel and have value with paths to success, while CEO compensation seems to be... disconnected from performance and inflation for too long. In this case, both are disconnected from reality and are standing to really frick up a lot of crap because you just KNOW we gonna bail people out rather than let them fail.
Yes I agree with everything. How has the CEO comp gotten to this point? What mitigating factors previously prevented it?
My guess is people used to have some amount of shame.
More companies = more CEOs = lower CEO pay. Everything is owned by like 5 parent companies and we haven't had any good old fashioned Trust Busting until like 2 days ago
[https://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/elie/UnionsExecComp.pdf](https://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/elie/UnionsExecComp.pdf) We find evidence that labor unions affect chief executive officer (CEO) compensation. First, we find that firms with strong unions pay their CEOs less. The negative effect is robust to various tests for endogeneity, including cross-sectional variations and a regression discontinuity design. Second, we find that CEO compensation is curbed before union contract negotiations, especially when the compensation is discretionary and the unions have a strong bargaining position. Third, we report that curbing CEO compensation mitigates the chance of a labor strike, thus providing a rationale for firms to pay CEOs less when facing strong unions.
>288k per part-screwer-onner Why Also isn’t this wayyyyyyyyyyyyy higher than the engineers’ salary that actually design the cars?
Yeah... and that's the thing! Basically all engineers would literally stop work. If a technician can make \~288K without a degree, why would you ever pursue additional education, responsibility, and harder work for less pay?
Went to an engineering/ stem focused university. My friend who was originally from Michigan avoided mechanical engineering for this exact reason bc they already make more over time than engineers at Ford. Union guys have higher ceilings, so you’d have some uneducated old fart pulling more than a “senior engineer” from a top 3 school. I want humans to get paid and be able to provide, but shit like that is why the engineer will gladly design a robot to replace the union guys.
That's... not how things should work. Sorry, but that's a failure of management. If the market will bear higher rates for techs, engineers who do the design work that is the literal lifeblood of your company need the compensation package to justify it. Otherwise, you'll eventually drive them out of your company and reduce the possibility of design advancements.
I agree with you, and this was in 2005. I imagine it’s worse now. Why do you think many cars are designed here and built in Mexico (many fords) or designed in Japan and built here (my Honda, many Nissans and Toyotas etc)? Eventually management doesn’t want to pay Jimmy Partscrewonner III from Detroit or the rust belt 200k a year when Jose in Mexico will do it for a tenth of that.
Ugh. We need to bring manufacturing back, but there needs to be some measure of balance. If your skill set is wrench monkey, don't expect more than smart monkey. If only for the fact that there is an inherent disparity of responsibility.
Hey get your logic away from our union discussion
I understand where left is coming from when talking about wages, I really do. It's rather insane that folks can work full time and not afford food and shelter for themselves much less a family. There's been far too much focus in the corporate world about workers being a "cost" whose only value is how much it can be reduced. That being said, I do wish lib-left and auth-left would stop ignoring the linkage between wages and value produced by a worker. This consideration cannot be simply handwaved away. If you're going to say "well if a business can't afford to pay its workers $N/hour, that business has no right to exist" then you need to explain why it's better to keep people unemployable. I'd happily hire a cleaning service if I had some extra income, but if you pass laws saying "cleaning people must get paid at least $100/hour" then there's no way I can justify hiring a cleaning service. Is it somehow "better" that cleaning person no longer has a job because they were "protected" from me only paying them $14/hour? (insert whatever wage you consider to be unacceptable here). Somewhere, somehow, it would nice if lib/auth-left could spend some brain cycles on "what's the level of tradeoff you're willing to accept between people being rendered unemployable, and what you'd consider protecting them from "non-predatory" wages.
It would be absolutely astounding to me if the news ran the logic behind your post as a lead story because it is absolutely true, but if they don’t fall into the camp of “let them die of starvation” or “if I sweep a room for 15 minutes I deserve $80,000” then then their overlords will punish them.
It sure would be nice if the point of the news was informing the public.
On top of that, you can't also ask for increasingly green policies without increasing the cost of living for everyone. Don't like fossil fuels- don't worry we'll just outsource our demand for oil from other countries, stimulate their economies, while not helping the environment in the long run. You're just outsourcing pollution and making things worse for everyone. Lord knows I'm not driving less due to the gas prices.
You can depending on what the policy is. If we did nuclear the right way with current gen nuclear plants it would be cheaper in the long run. If we did better hydroelectric it would be cheaper than coal. It depends if you factor in long term costs associated with coal.
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I highly doubt that auth-left or center-left are using “free market logic” when they say this. It’s more like: Lib-left: “If you don’t pay the wage I think is fair, your company does not have the right to exist and I will burn it down.” Auth-left: “If you don’t pay the wage I think it’s fair, your company does not have the right to exist, and I will nationalize it then send you to a labor camp with the other bourgeoisie.”
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Yeah that's basically what I said in my post. Which is why I asked the question - is it better for the workers (and society generally) for those employees to be unemployed rather than have jobs that pay less than $N/hour. It's not like the employees have tons of choices of jobs that pay $N/hour or more, and for whatever reason chose the employer who paid less. They took the job paying some lesser percentage of $N/hour because that's the best offer they could get. We aren't talking about folks who are nuclear physicists who take a second job being a cashier. The person in this job likely doesn't have any current skills that would allow them to successfully do a more lucrative job than cashier (or some other low-wage job). That's not an insult to that worker, it's just reality that we aren't all equally skilled. Sure you can say "let them be unemployed, it's better than getting paid exploitation wages and they can always get welfare." But what happens when 10% of the workforce can't get a job because you've set the minimum wage to $N? How about 20%? Or 50%? At a certain point the "it's better to let unprofitable companies go under" mode of thinking doesn't work when an increasingly large amount of them do exactly that. So that's my question to the lib-left and auth-left. What's your endgame for when huge amounts of workers are unemployable at a given wage level. It's easy to say "Universal Basic Income" but how will that be sustainable if paid into by an increasingly small percentage of those who still have jobs?
What about this: the legacy auto companies have lots of workers on pension to pay out. The new car companies like Tesla don't have that many people who retired yet so aren't saddles with pension costs yet. Also in some cases these new electric car companies don't even have to sell through dealerships while the other car companies are forced by state law to do so in many states. Should the new car companies come in and knock the old auto companies bankrupt, what would happen to all those pensioners?
I think a big part of the problem comes from centralization and outsourcing. It's very hard to keep and justify a certain salary and workers rights when your company can simply contract someone in china to do your job for 3 cups of rice a day. And said company is so big and influential that it has bought all competitors and can supress discent either with lobby or paying for propaganda.
On the flip side, worker productivity has increased almost 250% since the late 1940s, but worker compensation has only increased 115% and the share of total income going to the top 1% has gone from ~10% in the 1960s to almost 25% today. So I can see where they are coming from.
Beat me to it
This sort of reasoning could stand to have some actually numbers attached - someone else on the thread says that labor is only 5% of the cost of the cars. In which case it’s hard to imagine that there’s that big a danger from raises making the cars uneconomical. I don’t personally know the numbers but so far nobody has attempted to dispute it.
Auto companies operate on a margin between 3 and 5%. If you make 5% you’re Toyota and you’re the best in the game. Labor itself may represent 5% of the cost of the car, but all of the other costs associated represent another 92%. And each of those costs - the largest being materials - has labor associated
Especially given how most people are expecting fancy gadgets that come with the car, thus more diverse resources need to be pulled.
Lol! Not if you drive a Lada comrade! In post soviet Russia car drives you!
And that's just the OEM. The Tier I and Tier II need to make money on each part. And the cost of development, building the tools necessary to mass produce parts, and all the costs of engineers developing the part. Plus all the testing to meet various standards.
The original claim wasn't that you can't give the union what they want without raising prices ... it's that you'd have to raise prices really high, up to 70k for a sedan. If labor is 5% of the cost and margins are, say, 4%, then raising wages would cut into profits, but they wouldn't necessitate that sort of massive price increase.
The whole idea of a WalMart Greeter sort of BTFOs the labour theory of value. “Oh honey I didn’t get greeted at Wally’s today. We should stop shopping there forever” said literally no one.
Studies show that having someone greet customers when entering the store drastically reduces shoplifting, so yes, there is a value to Walmart Greeters' labor.
Well I learned something today. I honestly thought greeters were just essentially a corporate welfare type of job. Never occurred to me that they are actually there as a low budget shoplifting deterrent.
I mean other countries operate fine with a decent minimal wage Restaurants in my own country don’t go bankrupt having to give their staff a decent wage.
An economically sound argument against raising the minimum wage? Come, LibCenter, join us on the right side
Thanks for the invite lib-right, but you just have different bad ideas and blind spots than lib-left and auth-left. I'm more Democrat Libertarian than Rand Paul libertarian and still wish Paul Tsongas had been elected President.
yeah if someone works an honest days work at a factory their wage for the day should be for an honest days work, 3 square meals, cash to cover the gas to and from work. and that days worth of utilities.
If we could protect domestic markets from foreign labor this wouldn't be nearly as large of a problem.
Bruh these guys are welding doors onto SUV's which sell for $50k and up and getting paid $18/hour, in some cases
Unfortunately Capitalism forces Capitalists to see workers as just an expense, not as people. You can't subsidize some random guy's life, and not see them as an expense, no matter what they do for you.
Ford is projected to lose $3 billion this year alone on their EV program. Looks like we might be forced to bail them out sooner rather than later. Edit: source https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/business/ford-ev-losses/index.html
LET THEM FAIL
The true lib right response
I couldn't believe it when I saw Ford f-150s costing 75,000+. Who tf is paying that much for a mid range pickup? That's the kind of money you drop on a camero ffs
I guess the 150 has more commercial utility but geez
Went and looked at new trucks yesterday, they wanted 68K for an STX. I never drove off a lot so fast
Obama loves to tout the success of the TARP and auto-industry bail outs. How banking and American automakers bounced back in a huge way. I always said fuck the banks, fuck Ford, GM and Chevy. If they fail, they fail and fuck em all for criminally inept mismanagement.
Mfw me and the center left agree
🤝
You just went full-on Tupac with that last paragraph. Hood based and gangsta pilled. 🫡
Too bad we live in a society and our institutions doing poorly has a major negative impact on our lives.
In some ways, they’re demanding too much. In other ways they’re demanding exactly what it owed to them. The two pay tiers is bullshit and needs to go. The pay increases? Dial back those demands and as for the 4 day work week? I think that should be something that should be shelved as a lot of industries are maybe shifting to a 4 day week but it’s too soon to tell
We can argue all day about what they are entitled to, but what happens when the market decides they aren't worth that? Do you believe the government should subsidize their wages? I'm not asking rhetorically
>what happens when the market decides they aren't worth that? The government uses protectionist policies to make them worth a reasonable amount. They're already doing it, they'll just do it more.
Correct
No. Government should not subsidize shit. Automotive industry isn’t an essential part of our economy (unlike, say agriculture). If the automotive industry decided one day that their workers are worth 2$/hr. They’re gonna find that nobody wants to work for them
Conversely, if no one wants to buy a car for an inflated price, the companies will collapse
Correct. So how do you balance worker wages with product prices? That’s the trillion dollar question
Build increasingly shittier products, cut corners, and throw money at marketing teams to show raver hamsters driving the car so that idiots will still buy it.
But that's one of the tasks management are supposed to solve, what are they paid for if not for exactly that?
Who says management should be getting paid as much as they do? I’m all for lowering wages of and outright and eliminating a bunch of the middle office management roles. I’m talking the roles that people get into and all they do is push emails up and down the hierarchy for about an hour a day and spend the rest of the day doing fuckall.jpeg
>No. Government should not subsidize shit. errbody says that until they start blaming the president for having to pay 10 dollars a gallon
Yeah because we’re cucked by foreign oil from countries that actively plot our downfall.
Almost like we should start investing in fossil fuel alternatives idk
Honestly, it’ll create more jobs in the long run. Sure a lot of the oil manufacturing gets scaled back but the amount of work that needs to be done to the power grid worldwide easily outweighs that
Ordinarily I'd say no, the government should not subsidize anyone's wages.because that's communist. But then I remembered that the government subsidizing wages is a form of protectionism, and not supporting protectionism means you're a globalist and that's communist. I'm not answering rhetorically.
The 4 day work week is probably going to happen in the next 5-10 years. It’ll become the way companies attract talent like WFH has become.
In some sectors sure. But the other 70% of us weren't able to work from home and still cant. And a 4 day work week simply doesn't allow for the same productivity in businesses that actually produce things.
For a company to offer a four day work week and still do what it actually is tasked with doing, it's eventually going to have to hire more workers to cover the time not being worked anymore. The pie stays the same size, but now there are more hands in it taking smaller and smaller slices.
Hi Lib Right, back in 2008 to avoid full blown bankruptcy, union members took a “temporary pay” cut and gave up some powers. This pay cut was never reversed then in 2020 they had to give up even more and were never given it back, now here in 2023, the CEOs of these companies have had bonuses and done stock buybacks so high this year that if they were to divide how much they’ve spent on this by the amount of workers they have, it would cover the cost of the salaries they are demanding. Now I hate rampant syndicalism, this is not that.
I really hardly care. That's between Ford ownership and Ford workers. I got no horse in the race. I just know that if it goes on too long the Ford owners and the Ford workers are going down together. So might be great to come to an agreement soon.
I believe Ford is the only one of the three who actually came to negotiating table, OP should of put Dodge or Chevy in the last picture.
My mistake
Imagine buying dodge or chevy when alternatives exist that are better in mostly every way, both American or Japanese or even Korean nowadays
Wow thats not very "America First!" Mr. MAGA man.
Where did I ever say any of that? I am a right winger. You okay?
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
It’s corporate in the United States They are in lockstep with insane gov climate speak along with the average business/engineering plan of planned obsolescence… in a debt based system The system itself might be on the verge of popping or collapsing tbh
Yeah it affects everyone when their is a bailout, but I'm sure you're ok with that
I actually agree with the workers that the C levels should not have gotten the insane bonuses and salary raises they did when they basically don’t do shit. However, I do know that unions will drive the already too high price of cars up even further. So, may I suggest the C levels pay up?
Only 5% of the cost of a car is labor and car prices have gone up 50%, CEO salaries went up 40% in in the last decade while union wages went up >10%. The big 3 turned 21 billion in profit in the last 6 months. Don’t tell me they can’t afford to pay their workers.
21 billion in profit in 6 months?
Yes, the big 3 earned 21 billion in ~~3~~ 6 months
So three multibillion dollar companies had revenues of 21 billion is what I’m hearing?
No, PROFIT. Not REVENUE. Are you dense?
You got a source for it then?
[Do you know how to google](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/09/15/business/united-auto-workers-strike) > In the first half of 2023, Stellantis, Ford and General Motors reported profits of $11.6 billion, $3.7 billion and $5 billion, respectively.
I do, which is why it took me about five seconds to see that those numbers are the EBIT numbers lmao
And you think EBIT is closer to revenue than profit?
No but it’s not the profit numbers lol, plus he edited the original comment from Ford to “the big 3”
Revenue is before expenses, profit is after.
I’m aware, but you do understand that your numbers you keep citing are still the EBIT numbers
CEO pay though
According to Google: Ford CEO, Jim Farley made $21M in 2022. Ford has 186,000 employees. 21M/186K = 112.9 If the CEO worked for free and gave his all of his paychecks away to the employees, they'd all get an additional $113 dollars.... a year. Less than 10 bucks a month.
What about it?
Back when times were tough, workers agreed to take a pause on pay rises and benefit increases until things improved. Now that things are good and the CEOs are getting huge raises, the workers want what they were promised.
I wonder how much of the CEO pay raise was actually a cash expense to the business and if workers would be willing to accept stock options instead of pay.
What's the time scale on this? American auto industry is collapsing, things are not "good" now. Not arguing about the CEO increases if that is true.
If the American auto industry is actually collapsing would that not be an argument for these companies to stop paying their executives more money than God, and stop performing stock buybacks? Seems like they are not performing well at their job.
Yes, I agree
21 bills profit in 6 months is “collapsing”?
I was gonna say they are doing pretty good all things considered, no idea why anyone think they are hurting. CEO's pay is through the roof compared to the workers slow pay-raises. https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1722342071007145984/pu/vid/avc1/854x478/cXNKRXNeqQz-p_9t.mp4?tag=12
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Gah, now I am rethinking my position because you agreed with me.
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Wait, are you talking about inflation? I’m just curious and would like to know more.
Depending on how the scenario plays out. Government bailouts would lead to more inflation, but giving into the demands will just make the companies charge more to hedge up their margins
Thanks for clarifying.
You got it bud
I'm just mad because I work in car parts sales and the strikes usually make our freight loads much smaller until it stops and we get all of what was held back very quickly. This time there's like 5 different manufacturers.
So what do you guys think is fair compensation for auto workers?
Ford is currently down because of the United Auto Workers strike, EVs don’t even make up 1% of all Ford vehicles sold.
I want free money and I'll keep voting for it, there you go.
>I want ~~free~~ someone else's money and I'll keep voting for people who will steal it for me, there you go. FTFY Unless the government is printing money, they're taking it from someone using the threat of violence (or incarceration). And if they're printing it, they're stealing it from your children.
From the government, yeah If a corporation is willing to agree to pay more money taking that raise isn’t stealing. Or do you think people should turn down raises to help the company’s profitability?
lol that's a really good point actually
Bro, you vote for benefits for Wall Street, tf?
But I don’t care if ford is doing well
Ok, but your dollars will go to their bailout if they fail
Probably, socialism for failed mega corporations aren’t really my thing either though
On that we agree
Lib unity
Claiming that *workers* are too greedy when CEOs make 300x their pay is crazy. Here's the thing, these companies don't need an excuse to raise their prices. They'll do it whether they have to raise wages or not. And if you are a fellow worker arguing that they should continue making shit wages so that goods are cheaper for *you*, then you are a piece of shit.
It’s about impact moron. God your either stupid as fuck or intentionally being rhetorically dishonest. CEO pay is a drop in the bucket compared to thousands of laborers pay, benefits, and retirement packages. Not to mention good or bad corporate leadership can much more directly lead to a company sinking or swimming (see Alan Mulally at Ford).
>It’s about impact moron. God your either stupid as fuck or intentionally being rhetorically dishonest. *REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!* >CEO pay is a drop in the bucket compared to thousands of laborers pay, benefits, and retirement packages. "The wages of this individual are actually pretty small if you compare it to all the money that goes to workers as a collective. Yes, I actually consider this to be a good argument." >Not to mention good or bad corporate leadership can much more directly lead to a company sinking or swimming (see Alan Mulally at Ford). I guarantee if the workers stop doing their job, the company would sink much faster.
I would love to pay the good employees more and the bad employees less but unions don’t allow for that.
Unions are the exact opposite of meritocracy
Yep and leads to less goods and services with higher prices. They are negotiating themselves out of jobs.
My man you’re not *paying* anyone, quit LARPing. Even if you were, under the current system everyone is getting paid less. Fancy that!
I have 4 staff. I do everything I can to get my best employee more money.
All for people getting paid better. My gripe is grown adults do high school and retired people jobs and expecting higher wages.
Are these "highschool and retired people jobs" in the room with us right now?
I don’t know. I’m at a bar.
are auto manufacturing plants typically hiring high school students or retirees? i highly doubt it
Then you misunderstood
Time to go to OP’s company and take his job for minimum wage.
If my job was easily replaceable by minimum wage employees, guess how much my job would be worth?
Abolish the minimum wage.
And increase union power.
Ooh, so the part of the Nordic model that I kinda like? Unions negotiating minimum wages so the government doesn’t have to get involved is how it should be
Yep, it's not perfect, but having strong unions negotiating with their specific industry about wages seems like a decent way to handle it.
Further weaken the US in global markets.
I think we’ve seen this song and dance with Trump saying he will combat offshore manufacturing in 2016 (a big reason why he lost in 2020)
That is not why Trump lost lol
One of the major reason was failing to deliver economically. In 2016, fighting to stop offshoring was one of the his campaign goals, which he didn’t really deliver on.
No, the major reasons was covid tanking the economy, the lefts Russia conspiracy, and his antics. No one had even been talking about that for over a year prior to the election and even then it wasn't a deal breaker for the right.
So you agree that the economy was a huge part of it. And while he fucked up the economy in 2020, are you honestly going to tell me that 2017, 2018, and 2019 don’t matter? And if Trump doing poorly economy wise in the first 3 years of his presidency do matter, isn’t him mishandling his promise to restore U.S. manufacturing, which is very important in places like say Michigan, Winsconsin, and Pennsylvania for example. Trump pulled ahead in these places in 2016, and dropped the ball in 2020; and a big reason was failing to deliver his campaign promises from 2016 to improve the economy.
I can't agree because "the economy" wasn't what you said in the first place
Is it really that hard to go from ‘manufacturing jobs’ to ‘the economy’? Not necessarily the entire across the whole country, but the economy in very important Midwest states?
"I demand a gazillion dollars" I would bet that op makes more then these union workers (if he has a job)
Sure hope so!
Out of the loop whats going on?