Posted by
Compassionate Conservative on Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:53:53 PM
Another letter to the P-N editor.
You just published a letter from one Andrew George claiming, among other things, that wages are lower now than for any time since World War II. This is misleading. According to the Department of Labor website, real hourly earnings (in 1998 dollars) were just under $8 in 1947, while today they are just over $13. Of course, this includes benefits, but as any intelligent person knows, to get the true picture American workers' compensation one must also include benefits.
American workers' earnings actually peaked at about $14 an hour in 1973, just before the first OPEC oil embargo. This is easy to understand, since the oil embargo represented a major shift in resources away from the Western world to oil-rich nations. This trend will continue until we find some significant efficient alternative source(s) of energy.
However, some workers in some industries do considerably better than $13 an hour. According to ABC News, UAW members working in the American auto industry receive over $73 an hour, vs. about $43 an hour for foreign auto manufacturers' U.S. plants. Those numbers represent benefits as well, but they represent real costs for U.S. auto makers currently struggling to compete. And why do they pay so much? Because those benefits were extorted by the UAW in the late '80s and early '90s under the threat of strikes.
So yes, Mr. George, unions are to blame. Don't believe the claims of people like Andrew George, who say that deregulation is to blame. Deregulation forces American companies to compete for customers using such incentives as lower prices and/or better service, and that's a good thing for the American consumer.