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Sorry, I've seen all the numbers, but I haven't seen anyone try to attribute it to 150/hour. Line workers in "critical" jobs get 26/hour. The new contract signed in 2007 has a lower tiered rate in the area of 14/hour. The total goes up when you count paying for the benefits including health care, vacation etc. And the big number of 75/hour comes from adding in the cost of the retiree pension and health care. Starting with Rick Wagoner and working your way down I doubt there is more than 100 executives making that kind of money.
And to be clear, eliminating the health care costs and transferring it to the VEBA puts GM hourly workers within $2/hour of the Japanese transplants.
It's paying for the legacy cost that is crippling GM, not the hourly rate of the existing workers. I grew up in Flint. In the 70's there were 40,000 people in Genesee County working directly for GM. Now the entire company, hourly and salary is barely double that. GM is paying for the pensions of something like 400,000 retirees and the health care for nearly a million. And not one of them is putting parts on a car on the line.
Don't quote my numbers, but they're pretty close going from memory.
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"Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure." - Aldous Huxley
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