True, but engineers working for NASA are willing to accept a lower pay just for the opportunity to work for NASA. Those same engineers could probably work for Boeing or Lockheed and make twice that much.
The right-wing lie about the UAW
- Thread starter kut2k2
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True, but engineers working for NASA are willing to accept a lower pay just for the opportunity to work for NASA. Those same engineers could probably work for Boeing or Lockheed and make twice that much.
Did you actually read the original post in this thread? An assembly line worker is not making $75/hour, he is making $25 hour. And If you want to compare "total expenses" then you should compare apples to apples and realize that "the top notch engineering talent" also ends up costing his employer twice his hourly rate, probably around $100-120 hr.
Exactly, that's why they need no bailout. Let the market dictate the winners and losers.
The $60/hour figure is total expenses (salary, benefits, and overhead)
On average for total expenses to the company:
Auto assembly line worker - $75/hr
Engineers for the next generation of space vehicles - $60/hr
Granted the auto worker only "sees" $25/hr when the aerospace worker may "see" $30/hr - $35/hr due to lower benefits and overhead costs than the autoworker.
I am all for some guy making money and lots of it. But there comes a point when you got to just bite the bullet and recognize your industry cannot support such above market expenses for labor and either reduce the burdened rate or go under.
a_person
if you read the OP, he was referring to a statement made by someone on TV. That person said it cost $75 a man hour. he didn't say a worker got $75 an hour. those are two complete different statements. So you are right on the second half of your statement, but that wasn't what the person quoted by the OP said.
I still cannot believe people can't rationally argue and debate on this site without sinking into the gutter with the namecalling.
The $250 - $500 is what the employee pays for a family. The company pays much more than this, usually 3-4 times that amount.
There are other benefits other than just health insurance: disability, life insurance, AD&D, unemployment, retirement (401k matching) etc. $20/hour for benefits is not unreasonable.
If you look at the $75/hr you are talking about:
$25 to salary
$20 to benefits
$30 to overhead
Overhead covers everything not associated with the salary and benefits that is necessary to run a company (electricity for the plant, money to lease or purchase the plant, maintain the plant, hire security, salaries to the support staff that do not produce cars, coffee for the coffee makers, executive and management compensation, OSHA compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, EPA compliance, R&D, etc.) It all adds up.
And that is just for straight time. The goes up by a minimum of $12.50/hr for overtime
The bottom line is that the American worker in general is a costly proposition for any company. In the global competitive environment we live in the uneducated and unskilled are going to get hurt real bad. Even the educated and skilled are going to get hurt just not quite as soon or as much. The sooner folks realize this and accept it the sooner we as a country can find a way to mitigate this.