A mid-career IT professional, with a college degree, ongoing certifications, and perhaps some management experience, working something way above a 40 hour week (assuming they can maintain their technological skills and knowledge) is going to pull in about what the average hourly lineworker makes - a job that requires a high school diploma, and essentially no job experience that wasn’t given to him/her by his/her employer.
Either IT pros are paid too little, or auto company line workers are paid too much.
Surely you jest............
Well, to start with, the UAW workers don’t exactly make that $73/per hour, that is the per hour cost of the contract. That amount includes benefits and payouts to laid off workers at closed plants, who are still being paid their full salary. The actual worker doesn’t make much more than the workers at non-union plants. You add the contract benefits, to the other hidden costs, such as payments to towns and states for bond issues that were issued to help build, now closed, plants, and you get a bigger picture of the problems that are facing US auto workers.
Those bond issues and tax breaks that were made to lure the auto plants were nothing more than subsidies, that the auto companies cannot pay back.
There was a good article on WSJ about how bankruptcy filing makes good sense.
As you point out, it's not just about what each person does. It's also about how much training and sacrifice was involved. I worked through college and medical school (labored for brick layers, moved furniture, pumped gas, worked in a factory etc.) and was near 30 when I graduated. Then I started residency training, working 12 -14 hour days and not sleeping at all every 4th night, for just over $20,000/yr. During this time some of my student loans came due, and I worked at nights moonlighting at outside hospitals to pay them (some of them were 13-14% interest rate HEAL loans). Then I did a fellowship to get sub-specialty training for another 5 years (total nine years of training AFTER medical school). During much of that period I made less than $30,000/year, and the highest was about $41,000/year for one or two years. Then I stated my first job as a sub-specialist, and was low on the totem poll for quite a while with a commensurately low salary. It really is important to consider what is involved in training for a position to put relative wages in proper context. Also, I have to plan for my own retirement, and don't have an autoworker type pension plan. Oh, I also came from a blue collar family, was the first in my family to go to college, and didn't get help with medical school tuition.
Wow.
You are SPOT ON.
I’m a systems analyst with management experience in manufacturing and logistics, and I couldn’t agree more.