Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Peach, don't have the wrong impression of those who work for the auto industry, particularly those in middle management. No, there aren't any European vacations and Ivy League schools.

If I had to describe my son's situation it would be "highly stressful" with 12-hour days and six-day weeks. The population of his department has been cut several times in the last 18 months and is now down about 40% from where it was. But the work, the reports, etc. continue to be the same. Everyone just has to work harder and worry about the next cutback. There have been no raises or bonuses for two years now. For a couple of years they got stock options, but the option price is so far above the current market that they're worthless.

The kids aren't in fancy, private schools, but they are in parochial schools (that aren't cheap these days). My son lives in a nice suburb where the homes sold in the $400,000 range 3-4 years ago. He mows his own lawn, shovels the snow, is the leader of a Cub Scout pack and ran the Pinewood Derby (model races for the Scouts) for the whole metropolitan area. Most of his neighbors work in the auto industry in middle management or professional jobs (engineers, designers, sales, etc.). From his front door he now looks at six homes that have been foreclosed on. Just to keep the neighborhood looking nice, the neighbors have begun mowing the lawns that the banks now owning the houses refuse to maintain. My son says that based on the few recent sales in his subdivision, he'd take a $150,000 loss from what he paid for his house, not including the improvements he's made. Business with the local newspapers is so bad that they've stopped daily delivery, dropping papers at houses only 3 days a week now. About a third of the kids in the local Catholic school have dropped out during this school year as one or both of their parents were laid off.

I can't imagine that the situation with the UAW hourly factory workers is as bad as it is for the middle managers and professional employees. Their average hourly rate is just a little shy of $30 an hour (a little more than $60,000 a year without any overtime, with many older workers earning much more than that), with health insurance almost completely paid for and a generous non-contributory pension plan that permits retirement with full benefits after 25 years of employment. There are a lot of people in their late 40's in Detroit that are enjoying the good life with a full pension and no-cost health insurance, having gone to work in an auto plant right out of high school in their late teens, retiring after 25 years, and then finding another job to supplant their pension payments, often to a six-figure level. The UAW workers don't fear layoffs or temporary plant shutdowns as the UAW contract provides that they be paid 95% of their hourly pay, even if they are laid off and stay at home with the kids, or until they are recalled to fill a job very closely defined as the one they were laid off from. As I understand it, that benefit applies with no time limit unless or until the factory where they worked is permanently closed and shut down. That is the "job bank" benefit that the UAW says it will agree to give up. But their "give-up" only applies to new, yet-to-be hired employees, not any union member currently on the payroll. The same is true of the new, somewhat lower wage scale that they've agreed to--it only applies to yet-to-be hired workers. But the UAW leadership wails, "Look what we've given up."

So, Peach, if you are left with any impression of "living large" by people employed in the auto industry--the middle management types anyway--remember this story when your hear the spin from the president of the UAW saying, "...we're being taken advantage of...we've already given enough...President Bush placed too much of the responsibility of the auto re-structuring on our members." Do you think this is "reality" in today's work-a-day world? The UAW thinks so. And they think all those taxpayers out here that are working for little more than the minimum wage, getting paid only when work is available, with no heath insurance and no pension plan ought to have some of their tax dollars used to maintain the UAW lifestyle.