October 3, 2010 - Lansing State Journal

The 2012 Sonic LTZ hatchback (image stolen from mlive.com)

Email exchange with Free Press reporter:

From: Steve Harry [mailto:steve_harry@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 3:27 PM
To: Thompson, Chrissie
Cc: Bell, Dawson
Subject: New jobs at Lake Orion plant

Chrissie,

I just read your September 23 article "Tiny Aveo a Big UAW Challenge" and I have some questions you might be able to answer.

Seems to me that building the Aveo in Michigan rather than Korea is a big deal. It means that a lot of new jobs will be created. If the Aveo was being manufactured elsewhere in the U.S. , or if it was replacing another model manufactured here, or even competing with another model manufactured here, the jobs created might have been offset by job losses elsewhere, but that is not the case. These really are new jobs, and to manufacture a whole new car, isn't it going to require, like, thousands of new jobs? So my first question is, How many jobs will be created? Has anybody offered an estimate?

My second question assumes that a lot of jobs will indeed be created: Why isn't Governor Granholm making a big thing of it? New jobs - especially when we are talking maybe thousands of new jobs - should be big news here in Michigan, right? Your article says Bob King has some doubts as to whether the Aveo can be produced at a profit. If it can only be produced at a profit by the UAW's $14 per hour "third tier" workers, I can see why King isn't too excited about it.

I had a letter in the Lansing State Journal's Sunday edition on this subject. You can see it at [link no longer works].

Steve Harry
517-323-3897

From: Chrissie Thompson
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2010 1:59 PM
To: Steve Harry
Cc: Bell, Dawson
Subject: Re: New jobs at Lake Orion plant

Hey, Steve. Did you see my story yesterday? [link no longer works] This speaks to your last point about why people may not be making a big deal about the Orion jobs…

GM still hasn’t said how many workers they’ll put in the Orion plant. About 1,500 workers are on layoff there now.

-Chrissie Thompson
Reporter
Detroit Free Press
cthompson@freepress.com

Responses to my letter:

$14 an hour isn't high
October 12, 2010

 

I write in response to Steve Harry's astonishing Oct. 3 commentary, claiming that the answer to creating jobs is to cut wages to some mythical "market" level. He thinks that the UAW agreeing under pressure to cut wages for new autoworkers from $28 to $14 an hour was great, but adds that $14 is "still high." How can he be serious? Fourteen dollars an hour is only $29,000 a year. That's barely above the federal poverty level for a worker with a family! Meanwhile, the average CEO compensation for the S&P 500 corporations - who've been outsourcing our jobs by the millions - is $9.2 million per year. That's more than $4,400 per hour.

 

In the 1960s, the average CEO earned 30 times the amount of the average worker. Today, it is 300 times as much. Thirty years of Reagan Republican "trickle-down" economics are destroying the middle class.

 

Marty Kushler
Williamston

 

Wage claims ridiculous
October 19, 2010

 

Steve Harry (Forum, Oct. 3) is obviously a " trained economist" who has the answers to all the problems we face. Or is he only mimicking ravings of the far right? To blame auto workers and unions for these problems, without even mentioning the gaffs of management and the greed of corporations, is a good indication of his allegiances. Admittedly, I am not an expert on economics, but it would be very easy to find someone who could refute all of Harry's ideas. As a retired auto worker, I am not ashamed of the wages I earned. It allowed me to pay more than $260,000 in taxes, give to charity and buy goods and services, etc. - all things that kept the economy going strong. That is until the author of "trickle down and voodoo economics," Ronald Reagan, came along and the age of corporate greed began!

 

Steve Stavros
DeWitt

 

Cut from the top
November 3, 2010

 

First, it was the guy who penned a column in the LSJ to say that if the union workers would take a 50 percent pay cut, it would solve unemployment and fix the recession. (Except they didn't cause it.) Then, Rick Snyder says he will cut state employees' wages and benefits. Great idea - if he starts at the top with his pay and the rest of the overpaid, part-time Legislature, its staff, the judges and everybody else who is paid with tax dollars.

 

The union workers and state employees didn't cause this mess. The greedy, overpaid suits did.

 

I am sure most of the union workers would take a pay cut if it would bring back their coworkers. But, only if it started at the top. The divide between workers' pay and the CEOs and board members' pay has grown exponentially. There is no reason for a CEO to make 450 times more than the average worker. They certainly don't work 450 times harder.

 

Start cutting at the top and see how things improve.

 

Hugh Dunlap
Dimondale