Who said they earn less than $10? I stated that factory workers may earn $10 less than they used to.
For nearly 20 years, Darrell Eberhardt worked in an Ohio factory putting together wheelchairs, earning $18.50 an hour, enough to gain a toehold in the middle class and feel respected at work.
He is still working with his hands, assembling seats for Chevrolet Cruze cars at the Camaco auto parts factory in Lorain, Ohio, but now he makes $10.50 an hour and is barely hanging on. “I’d like to earn more,” said Mr. Eberhardt, who is 49 and went back to school a few years ago to earn an associate’s degree. “But the chances of finding something like I used to have are slim to none.” nytimes.com/2014/11/21/busi … class.html
I’d bet that Mr. Eberhardt has no benefits now either.
The perception that manufacturing jobs
are highly paid disguises how many workers
are stuck at the bottom.Today, more than 600,000 manufacturing workers
make just $9.60 per hour or less. More than 1.5 million
manufacturing workers—one out of every four—
make $11.91 or less.Manufacturing wages are not even keeping
up with inflation.Real wages for manufacturing workers declined
by 4.4 percent from 2003 to 2013—almost three times
faster than for workers as a whole.Heavy reliance on temporary workers hides
even bigger declines in manufacturing wages.About 14 percent of auto parts workers are employed
by staffing agencies today. Wages for these workers
are lower than for direct-hire parts workers and are
not included in the official industry-specific wage
data cited above.
Estimates based on U.S. Census Bureau data,
however, indicate that auto parts workers placed by
staffing agencies make, on average, 29 percent less than
those employed directly by auto parts manufacturers.
nelp.org/content/uploads/2015/03 … -Class.pdf
The last bit about companies using temps rather than hiring full-time employees is a huge growing problem, but I have already covered that issue with you in an earlier post.