Sean Reiser

Watching the coverage over the last few weeks about the automotive industry and bailouts. Where I agree a that the industry's problems are partially caused by them resting on their laurels the last few decades I am surprised by the union bashing and complaints about the salaries that the autoworkers were making.

When this started and I was hearing all this about the excessive salaries I checked it out. The average autoworker makes $57,000 a year. I know I'm often out of balance because of my NY point of view, but that sounds like a lower middle class salary to me. Even if you factor in the cost of their pension (I assume that the firms put aside an addition 10% of the employees salary to fund that) and $6,000 a year in health insurance costs that comes to under $70,000 a year, again not what I'd call excessive for a line of work that's a career. Where that's a living wage, I wouldn't call it "excessive" by any means. If we were discussing the compensation for the C level employees of these firms, I might have a different POV but I don't feel the problem is the line worker.

Someone might point out how much cheaper salaries are in other parts of the world. You need to keep in mind however, the general cost of living in these countries is cheaper then it is here.

I do agree that the industry needs to take a hard look at itself. It's time for automotive industry to reinvent itself and become more streamlined. I also agree that a plan should be layed out before any sort of loan or bailout is done by the taxpayer.