Your figures are way way high. Nobody in the UAW at GM makes anywhere near $40 an hour and the average is around $30 an hour.

Your comment is an excellent example of how I think conservatives should make our case. Obviously, a politician wouldn’t make the same foot-dragging claim you did, but a politician wouldn’t have to. Just point out the facts.

I’ve no doubt that some auto workers, with shift premiums and overtime included, are earning $150k, especially in the better paying trades. But I have a hard time believing that’s the norm across the board, which is what the $73/hr figure conveys. (This blog is called The Skepticrats for a reason.)

For what it’s worth, I worked as bottom-rung management (i.e., shift supervisor) in a union manufacturing shop, so I saw first hand exactly how the numbers of that particular local of the union worked. I saw my share of slackers, etc., and it was quite jarring, because it was my first job after I left the Marine Corps, where I was used to orders being obeyed all along the chain of command. (Nobody wants automatons, though — questioning was never out of bounds as long as everyone remembered who outranked whom.) The challenges I saw to authority in this union shop, though, were rarely due to the worker having an idea for doing something differently or more safely. It was often pure surliness or a desire to disrespect authority.

The last straw for me was when a co-supervisor of mine on another shift fired an employee for threatening her with immediate physical harm (he was an awfully big guy, too), the fired employee filed a grievance, and he was reinstated almost automatically.