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Dear Salon,
The CBC just ran a story where it compared GM wages to Honda employee wages. (I'm doing this from memory, so please forgive any inaccuracies). GM pays about $73/worker, vs. about $49 worker for Honda. It breaks down like this: the GM workers make about $28/hr vs. $26/hr for Honda. The GM people are paid about an additional $25/hr for various health benefits vs. about $20/hr for the Honda employees. The real difference in the cost per worker is on the "legacy benefits" where the GM people end up costing a lot more. I don't know anything about the car industry, but this seems to be money paid to keep retired people going and, I assume, money that goes to workers' pensions. Of course, the Big Three have also been around a lot longer and have a lot more retired worker than the non-American companies. So, in short, the CBC story backs up the idea that non-unionized and unionized employees don't make that much different in terms of take-home pay.
Sincerely
Shaun
