Viewing the autoworker's job in a different context

Viewing the autoworker's job in a different context
EDITOR:
The combined salaries of my late wife and I were about equal to the wages an autoworker would receive. There was a difference. We could count on receiving that salary all year. Unlike said autoworker, there were no layoffs to reduce the actual average wage. The hourly wage is high, but when averaged over 40 hours in 52 weeks, with layoffs, stoppages, etc., it cannot truly be that high. Besides, today's true equivalent of the $1.50 per hour unskilled labor wage I earned on my first job out of high school in 1950 is around $17 per hour.
Then there is that statement in your Dec. 9 page one article: "Workers will learn they don't need two snowmobiles and five or six TVs, one consultant said." That looks suspiciously like what is known in statistical studies as an outlier, a piece of data that lies far outside the rest of the data points. With a mortgage to pay, and two children to educate, we couldn't have afforded such amenities.
Bankruptcy consultant James McTevia's comparison to the animal trappers in earlier centuries is an absolutely false analogy, and one of the most asinine I have seen in a long time. The fur trade was an extractive industry, not a producing one. It collapsed when there were no more beaver to be trapped.
It would be a good thing to look at what was really behind the high wages in the auto industry, and, by extension, Delphi. The beginnings of these wages preceded the 1930s, before the unions gained much power. As the assembly line was implemented, labor turnover increased. In 1913, Ford was experiencing a turnover as high as 400 percent. The only way to keep the workers was to increase the wage well above the industry average.
There also were the working conditions. Working for Henry Ford in the 1920s was uncomfortably close to being like working for Joseph Stalin, with spies everywhere. An anonymous letter accusing a man of stealing parts was enough to have that man forced to sign a "permission to search" letter allowing company detectives to ransack his home in true Soviet style.
Then there was Ford's Sociological Department. Investigators from that department would visit workers' homes to see if they were "living in sin" or engaged in other unsavory ways. Workers could be fired over such. If Mr. McTevia worked under such conditions in a plant were dust was so thick he couldn't see the 200 watt overhead lights, and he wound up spitting blood after a short time, what would his reactions be?
Reading the headlines and stories over recent years, I wonder if the erosion of GM's core market by permanent layoffs and plant closings in other industries isn't an important (possibly deliberately) overlooked factor in the present day situation. Also, in the rush to compete in the global market, and after all that "outsourcing," American manufacturers could suddenly, and to their dismay, find there is no one in the U.S. that could afford to buy their junk. If that happens, the resulting unrest will make the 1930s look like a Sunday school picnic. The American worker has been surprisingly patient, but there is a saying that it might be well to heed. Beware the wrath of a patient man.
JEROME K. STEPHENS
Warren
Alito isn't best for America
EDITOR:
Samuel Alito's lack of commitment to the fundamental American belief of one person, one vote shows that he is utterly unfit to serve on the Supreme Court, our republic's highest arbiter of justice.
In a 1985 job application, Alito said that he disagreed with Supreme Court decisions on reapportionment that specified that state legislative districts must be apportioned according to population rather than geography. In other words, Alito saw no problem with a situation where some people's votes count for more than others in choosing legislators.
America can do better for a Supreme Court justice than a man who rejects the basic precepts of democracy.
Philip Zauderer
Youngstown