US Car maker General Motors...
US carmakers cut pay as Australia's hourly rates soared
Brad Norington And Sarah Martin
TheAustralian
12:00AM December 10, 2013
US carmakers cut the wages of their workers in half to engineer the survival of their industry six years ago, whereas Australian pay rates grew by up to 21 per cent over the same period.
The wages of American entry-level assembly workers were
slashed from $28 an hour to $14 an hour as part of a radical plan accepted by the United Auto Workers, a Detroit union famous for using its muscle to extract big hikes in salaries and conditions.
With General Motors poised to close down its Holden plant operations in Australia, halving labour costs is not a palatable option for the vehicle division of the
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union because of the precedent it would set across the nation.
Entry-level workers at Holden who have completed an induction program earn $23.50 an hour. If AMWU vehicle division secretary Dave Smith followed the example of his US colleagues, Holden workers would end up earning less than Australia's minimum wage of $16.37 an hour.
Mr Smith said he would not consider further sacrifices for his members in the car industry after they had agreed to a wage freeze for three years. "Why should I?" he said. "My members have already done their bit. They're past the post. It's up to the government to show some leadership now, not my members."
For General Motors in Australia, wages for trades employees have increased by about 76 per cent since 2000, and 21 per cent since 2008, jumping from $679.20 a week in 2000 to $1194.50 a week this year. This equates to $62,114 a year for a 38-hour week. Workers are paid shift penalties and overtime rates, with Sunday shifts paid at 2 1/2 times the normal weekday rate.A skilled tradesperson with at least three months' experience is on an annual base salary of $80,444 while a group leader is paid about $102,000 a year. For an entry-level non-trade position, such as a store worker or a minimally trained factory worker, the weekly wage has risen about 9 per cent from $817 in 2008 to $892 this year, an annual salary of about $46,423 a year.In August, Holden workers voted to forgo a 3 per cent wage rise scheduled for November on the condition that General Motors committed to building the two next-generation vehicles at Holden's Elizabeth plant. The union also voted to support a range of flexibility provisions that gave Holden operating savings of about $15 million a year. However, none of these has come into effect without the commitment from GM to build the two next-generation vehicles at Elizabeth.
AMWU acting South Australian secretary John Gee said Australian workers could not compete on labour costs "and nor do we want to".The decision of the UAW in Detroit, made as the global financial crisis took hold in 2007, was borne out of necessity after billions of dollars in government bailout money, with GM and Chrysler facing bankruptcy.
Then UAW president Bob King recognised that new labour market flexibility in the car industry was the only hope for survival. The union gave up pay claims linked to rises in the cost of living and annual bonuses in favour of a profit-share scheme that guaranteed workers nothing from year to year.
Many of GM's 74,000 US assembly workers took redundancy to make way for younger, lower-paid workers.
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