[ale] Off topic - And now, Arizona

[Greg Freemyer]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs <jhubbslist at att.net> wrote:
>> >  Whenever someone around me gets all wound up about illegals, I ask
>> > them if they're ready for $10/lb strawberries and chicken more expensive
>> > than lobster.
>>
>> I seriously doubt chicken has more than a $2 of labor per chicken.
>> (More if its not whole.)
>>
>> Most of the process including feeding is highly automated, and a fast
>> processing line for whole chickens (not cut-up) can handle
>> 100/chickens a minute, so the butchering is very efficient.  (Max of
>> 50 or so people on that sort of line, so that works out to about 30
>> man-seconds per chicken to kill it, de-feather, etc.)
>>
>> It's a very low-margin business, so they want as cheap a labor as they
>> can get, but even if they had to pay $15/hr it would not be too
>> expensive to eat.
>>
>> Now paying car factory union rates of $50/hr would have a bigger
>> impact, but still not lobster prices.
>
> recheck the $50/hr.
> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/24/opinion/main4630103.shtml
> and
> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRViSBJZq45k
>
> The $51/hr in the bloomberg article is pay + benefits.
>
> Important numbers are here:
>
> The Detroit-based automaker's current assembly workers get $31.75 an hour in
> pay, including overtime and bonuses, and $19.25 in benefits, according to an
> analysis by Laurie Harbour-Felax, president of Chicago-based Stout Risius
> Ross Inc. Adding pensions and other retiree costs raises the total to about
> $73.
>
> Toyota's U.S. workers cost about $47.25 an hour, including $31.50 in pay and
> $15.75 in benefits, the study found. Toyota doesn't have additional expenses
> for retirees because so few of its U.S. factory employees have reached
> retirement.

So Jim, are you saying my $50/hr WAG (wild ass guess) was high or low.
 Looks like I was about right for Toyota and low from GM.  Either way,
I hope we never have to pay that kind of money for chicken processors.

fyi: I interviewed a electronic technition working on Rockwell's
production line one time.  We wanted to hire a electronic tech to work
in our prototype area.  During the interview the questions got easier
and easier as we tried to figure out if the guy knew anything.  Even
Ohm's low was unknown to him.

Turned out he was making good money ($25/hr iirc and this was 25 yrs
ago.)  His job was to stick a circuit board in a tester.  If the light
turned green, take it out and put it in the good pile.  If red, put it
in the bad pile.

I was flabbergasted at the time.  (I was young and naive).

Greg