Monosyllabic Pedantry

Monday, January 29, 2007

American Car Costs

According to money magazine:

GM (Charts), for instance spends $1,635 per vehicle on health care for active and retired workers in the U.S. Toyota (Charts) pays nothing for retired workers - it has very few - and only $215 for active ones.
Other labor costs add to the bill. Contract issues like work rules, line relief and holiday pay amount to $630 per vehicle - costs that the Japanese don't have. And paying UAW members for not working when plants are shut costs another $350 per vehicle.

Here's one example of how knotty Detroit's labor problem can be:
If an assembly plant with 3,000 workers has no dealer orders, it has two options. One is to close the plant for a week and not build any cars. Then the company still has to give the idled workers 95 percent of their take-home pay plus all benefits for not working. So a one-week shutdown costs $7.7 million or $1,545 for each vehicle it didn't make.

1 Comments:

  • Are you advocating for some form of universal health care, killing off autoworkers right before they retire, or doing away with unions, or all three?

    Also, not to take umbrage with Money Magazine, but Toyota has fourteen North American plants, some of which have been in operation for twenty years. They certainly must pay those folks healthcare and retirement.

    Anyway, the Detroit gossip is that Bill is running Ford into the ground on purpose so that he can buy up all the shares and take it private again.

    By Blogger Aunt B, at 8:01 AM  

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