Are "Greedy" Workers Possible?

[Mute Fox]

I was talking to my friend today, who class-wise is somewhere between a Lumpenprole and an aspiring petit-bourgie, and we got into an argument about U.S. auto-workers (we live in Detroit, so stuff like that comes up.) He made the argument that american auto workers are "greedy" and get paid way too much, and this is what caused the big three to go under. I tried to explain to him that it's impossible for a worker to be overpaid, since no capitalist would consciously allow a situation where they can't steal the surplus value of a worker's labor. He simply replied that at $72 an hour (or some bullshit figure he probably pulled out of his ass), it is impossible to get any profit from a car because the production cost would be ridiculously high.

Anyway, I couldn't come up with an argument of my own as to why that's not the end of the story. I know there has to be large chunks missing from this picture, and I was hoping you comrades could help fill me in. Thanks a bunch.

[FreeFocus]

If I'm not mistaken, that $72/hour figure he gave comes from including workers' benefits, such as health insurance, as part of the wage. I mean, really, your friend is just making an idiotic argument. Think about it, manufacturing a car certainly doesn't cost the $30,000 or $40,000 they normally charge (at least, I wouldn't think so - if someone knows otherwise, please correct me).

[Red Saxon]

From CNSNews.com (http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=39499)
It costs over $73 per hour on average to employ a union auto worker, according to University of Michigan at Flint economist Mark J. Perry.I actually find this incredibly hard to believe. If you average out the work week to 40 hours and then multiply it by 50 weeks (2 weeks off for Thanksgiving and Christmas) then it would be an astounding $146,000 a year salary. Multiply that by the number of people in the United Auto Workers Union and it comes up to be $74,898,000,000 in salary that the Automotive corporations would have to pay (and that's just for one union).

Obviously it simply doesn't add up.

[syndicat]

i think the actual hourly wage, for someone with seniority was something like $23 an hour. hourly wage for auto workers in Germany is around $28. the "greedy auto worker" storyline was what the corporate media put out there to back up the politicians in Congress who demanded that auto worker pay be cut to the $14 an hour in the non-union plants in the U.S. south. German plants there pay half what they do in Germany.

another argument you could have used is to look at labor productivity. the ability of a company to pay a given wage depends on the value of the stuff the workers create. so a reason that auto plant workers can be paid more than a clerk a the local shoe store is that their productivity is a lot higher. and it is because of this productivity the company can make a profit despite paying them a high wage.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Workers are paid too much compared to what? In the US the average CEO pay is something like 120 times the average worker pay whereas it is only 28 in the UK and 12 in Japan. Don't quote me on the exact figures, but it should be pretty close to these.

Auto workers start at about $28/hr and make an average wage of $40/hour. That's from "Forbes", so feel free to quote that establishment source - it's probably more generous than the truth.

So 40 x 40hrs a week x 4 weeks a month x 12 months = $76,800. Which is very nice to you and me and is probably worth more after benefits. That's an average auto worker - also the same as a STARTING Oakland cop and about one Oakland teacher's annual salary less than the $100,000 that the average Oakland cops get paid. But I doubt the people who complain about auto workers think that cops are overpaid.

This year GM paid $9 million to one of its CEOs =
$9,000,000 vs.
$76,800

That's one man making the same as 117 of his employees. A little below the average for CEOs in the US.

Or as the editor of SocialistWorker.org put it:

But amid this crying need, there is immense wealth--fortunes beyond imagining for most people. Just how immense? Think of it this way: Let's say we had a full year's wages for the average U.S. manufacturing worker--$37,107 at the end of 2008, according to the Labor Department--in stacks of $20 bills. If we laid all the bills end to end, they would stretch 928 feet. That's almost one-sixth of a mile--about three-quarters of a lap around a football field.

Now take Microsoft founder Bill Gates. According to Forbes magazine's survey of the richest Americans in 2009, he was worth $50 billion. If we had Gates's fortune in $20 bills, laid end to end, they would stretch for 236,742 miles. That's 1 million laps around a football field. Or six laps around the full circumference of the earth.
Bill Gates's fortune would stretch from the earth to the moon.

So this is just worker vs. CEO wages and says nothing about the relationship of workers wages and production, but I think it helps put things in perspective considering that companies have seen exponential profit increases over the last generation while worker wages in the US have stagnated and inequality has reached Victorian-era levels.

Your friend is essentially falling for propaganda used by both the auto industry as well as other sectors of the ruling class. The Auto industry used this propaganda when they tried to force the auto industry to take concessions (which they did voluntarily as "shared sacrifice" in 2009 - but only they shared in the sacrifice) after the start of the economic collapse. This argument is also used ideologically by various anti-union forces to justify an increased attack on the unions and US worker's wages. Many of the politicians paused the idea that auto-workers IN DETROIT (where they are unionized) are too high because they were from non-union "right-to -work" states where the auto industry has been setting up factories.

What is happening across the board in society right now is that the capitalists are trying to use the capitalists states to stick the working class with the bill for the economic crisis. The irony is that even from a capitalist perspective, if various national economies are trying to undersell other economies in order to re-start exports - but if they all cut wages across the board, then it is just a race to the bottom and things will stay the same regarding trade. Austerity is the other method they are using to try and make us pay for the sins of the capitalist crash and that involves cutting social services, so right now in California, there are constant stories on the news about how governmnet workers are overpaid and how "California 'spends' beyond it's means".

It's all a lie and a trick by the ruling class to convince workers to willingly drink poison in the name of "shared sacrifice". It is also what a one-sided class war waged against us looks like.

[AK]

I was talking to my friend today, who class-wise is somewhere between a Lumpenprole and an aspiring petit-bourgie
You mean like... a Proletarian?

[Blackscare]

You mean like... a Proletarian?

Maybe if you see classes as a linear progression rather than a description of each class's relations to means of production.

What I get from that line is that he is most likely a petty criminal who would like to be legitimately (well, legally) self-employed. That is not proletarian.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You mean like... a Proletarian?:lol:

Yeah, that sound you just heard was me hitting my own forehead and going... oh yeah. Duh.

Anyway I think the OP means: is there a labor aristocracy?

[Red Saxon]

Anyway I think the OP means: is there a labor aristocracy?The sad fact of the matter is that the unions have been exploited and there are some people who make millions by collecting union fees while not protecting the rights of the workers at all.

Also, when I worked at Krogers for a week (it was so bad I left) the Union leaders were actually hostile to me asking questions about money and what protection they offered.

[AK]

Maybe if you see classes as a linear progression rather than a description of each class's relations to means of production.

What I get from that line is that he is most likely a petty criminal who would like to be legitimately (well, legally) self-employed. That is not proletarian.
Well. This friend doesn't sound like they own means of production. They sound dependent on someone else who could possibly be proletarian.

[Mute Fox]

Originally posted by Alpha Kappa:
You mean like... a Proletarian?


Originally posted by Blackscare: What I get from that line is that he is most likely a petty criminal who would like to be legitimately (well, legally) self-employed. That is not proletarian.


Originally posted by Alpha Kappa: Well. This friend doesn't sound like they own means of production. They sound dependent on someone else who could possibly be proletarian.

Sorry if I wasn't more clear, I was feeling lazy and didn't wanna go into detail about my friends' circumstances. I can tell you that he is not a criminal, but he's chronically unemployed and currently survives along with his family on welfare and disability, along with some less...conventional means. In any case, he's very clever and ambitious and came here to Detroit to buy up foreclosed properties, fix them up and rent them out, among other things. That's why I said he's a (non-criminal)Lumpen/petty bourgeois cross, at least in his outlook. I thought his class outlook would help you understand the way he thinks a bit better. Oh, and he's also clinically insane, fo realz. So that might influence things a bit. Great guy, though.

Anyway, moving on...


Originally posted by Red Saxon: Obviously it simply doesn't add up.

Yeah that's what I said.

Your explanations have been really helpful guys, so thanks a bunch. I do still have some questions though. For example, my friend said that GM, Ford, and the other big auto companies here in Detroit and the U.S. haven't been running a profit in the past few years (or longer, I forget.) He said that this was because the union workers were too greedy, blah blah...but what I don't understand is why any company would allow that to happen. As you guys mentioned, it is probably just propoganda he's swallowed. I'd like to learn a bit more about the history of the U.S. auto industry, particularly in Detroit, if there's anything you guys would care to teach me about it.

Anyway, this probably won't be the last "crazy stuff my friend told me the other day" post. He thinks he knows a great deal about the world, and then I hear him talk, and I just lose touch of reality a bit myself XD

[bailey_187]

Workers should be more greedy.