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It's hard to make the big bucks when your productivity is low and you have no skills.

Doesn't look that way to me.

What is the chart supposed to show? You have a link to the source?

Chart shows productivity in automobile manufacturing.

Despite these glowing assessments, labour productivity in assembly as measured in hours per vehicle (HPV) in Mexican assembly plants typically lags the productivity seen in U.S. and Canadian plants, as we have previously noted in Section 2. Although auto workers in Canada and Mexico work a similar number of hours, the hours spent per vehicle are considerably higher in Mexico (on average 74% higher for the Big Three plants in 1999) such that 45% fewer vehicles were produced per worker in Mexico in 1999

I love it when you prove my point. Thanks.

For most of these plants, however, the differences are relatively slight, particularly given the large labour cost differential between Mexico and Canada (and the U.S.). Among the newer or recently remodelled assembly plants with lines of annual capacities of over 100,000 units (DCX Toluca, DCX Saltillo, GM Silao, GM Ramos Arizpe, and Ford Hermosillo) only at DCX Toluca were HPV more than 50% greater than at the most comparable U.S. or Canadian plants. Moreover, the DCX Toluca plant was producing a much wider variety of products than its U.S. counterpart as well as undergoing a major model changeover in 1999, which explains a large part of the difference with U.S. facilities. Similar, although less dramatic, differences in product mix also explain a portion of the differences in HPV between the larger Mexican facilities and their U.S. counterparts. Nonetheless, most of the difference is probably due to the deliberate use of more labour intensive methods of production to take advantage of lower Mexican labour costs. For example, in the bodyshop of its Silao plant, GM is reported to be using only 80 robots, and then only for tasks that are mandated by quality or safety concerns, while its factory in Janesville, Wisconsin uses 600 robots.110 With such low labour costs, it is to be expected that OEMs operating in Mexico will choose to use greater labour per vehicle than in higher labour cost environments, such as Canada and the U.S.

They don't use as many robots in Mexico. Those employees are working hard. Probably harder than you have to work as you type all day and shill for slave labor.