A retired United Auto Worker and friend of mine brought this article to my attention.

With the current debate over the auto makers' bailout going on full tilt, one of the recurring themes is the reason for the auto makers' ills is the greed of the unions. This article provides some factual discussion of some of the numbers you're hearing.

To quote from the article, "More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year."

Read the full article at this link.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1026e955-541c-4aa6-bcf2-56dfc3323682