Mercedes plant has highest per-hour labor cost in U.S.; VW and BMW pay least
Source: Auto News
DETROIT (Reuters) -- Workers at Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., have the highest hourly pay and benefits among employees at U.S. car factories while Volkswagen and BMW workers earn the least, a study shows.
Daimler workers earn an average of $65 an hour while employees at Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant are paid an average of $38 per hour and workers at BMW's Spartanburg, S.C., factory earn $39 an hour, a study of 2014 labor costs by the Center for Automotive Research shows.
Labor costs at General Motors' U.S. plants including benefits are $58 per hour. Ford Motor Co. is right behind GM at $57 per hour while employees at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles earn $48 per hour, reflecting the much higher percentage of lower-paid, entry-level workers at FCA.
The study was released as UAW officials prepare for contract talks with the Detroit 3. GM, Ford and FCA are the only automakers in the CAR report whose U.S. workers are represented by the UAW.
FULL story at link.
Daimler's Alabama plant, shown, has about 2,500 full-time and 1,000 temporary workers.
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/20150324/COPY01/303249971/mercedes-plant-has-highest-per-hour-labor-cost-in-u-s-vw-and-bmw-pay
Items that contribute to auto cost per hour:
Base wage
Overtime
Health Ins
Pension
Social Security
FICA
Sick pay
Vacation pay
Down time such as line equipment that failed or lack of parts. Lack of parts was in the HBO film "The Last Truck".
PAID FMLA (varies per employer)
On the job training for safety, new model changes, etc.
What did I forget?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Most DUers would say that about OS!
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/12/auto-worker-salaries/
Snip: The problem is, that’s just not true. The automakers say that the average wage earned by its unionized workers is about $29 per hour. So how does that climb to more than $70? Add in benefits: life insurance, health care, pension and so on. But not just the benefits that the current workers actually receive – after all, it’s pretty rare for the value of a benefits package to add up to more than wages paid, even with a really, really good health plan in place. What’s causing the number to balloon is the cost of providing benefits to tens of thousands of retired auto workers and their surviving spouses.
Snip: Labor Costs Aren’t the Same as Wages Earned
The result is the per-hour labor cost to the automakers, which is very different from "pay" or "wages" or even "wages and benefits" earned by their workers. As David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times (countering, in a sense, the earlier piece by Sorkin), the average GM, Ford and Chrysler worker receives compensation – wages, bonuses, overtime and paid time off – of about $40 an hour. Add in benefits such as health insurance and pensions and you get to about $55. Another $15 or so in benefits to retirees (known as "legacy costs"
brings the number to roughly $70.
That last figure accounts for the biggest difference between labor costs of the Big Two and a Half and those of the "transplants," as foreign carmakers with manufacturing facilities on U.S. soil are called. Ford, in material it submitted to Congress for hearings this month (see "Congressional Submission Appendix (PPT)"
, estimated the transplants’ legacy costs at about $3 per hour, a number that has less to do with the level of benefits paid than it does with the fact that the transplants don’t have many retirees yet, according to economist Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automotive Research.
The Ford chart also estimates that, as a result of a historic 2007 labor agreement with the UAW, the legacy costs of the U.S. automakers are expected to fall – to about $3 per hour. That’s because the deal calls for a new voluntary employee beneficiary association (or VEBA), a seldom-used 100-year-old tax loophole. A VEBA is a tax-exempt trust that can be used to fund almost any sort of employee benefit, but they are most commonly used to pay for health care expenses.
FULL story at link.
