U.S. auto industry closing great divide in quality, wages

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By David M. Dickson

U.S. automakers have made major progress in recent years closing both the labor-cost gap and the quality gap with foreign companies manufacturing autos in the United States.

"Conditions are in place for the wages and benefits of workers at Detroit automakers to be lower in several years than the U.S. wages and benefits paid by international manufacturers," such as Toyota and Honda, said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) based in Ann Arbor, Mich., which receives a portion of its funding from Detroit auto firms and Toyota.

"This is a huge change," Mr. Cole emphasized.

The new labor contracts that the United Auto Workers (UAW) union signed with the Big Three last fall "really brought the UAW much closer to parity with Japanese transplants," said Aaron Bragman, an auto analyst at IHS Global Insight.

Meanwhile, Detroit automakers have been making "leaps and bounds" of progress on quality in recent years, which "are now manifesting themselves in three-year dependability surveys," said Neal Oddes, an auto analyst for J.D. Power and Associates.

Before contract negotiations between the UAW and General Motors commenced last year, UAW workers earned between $70 and $75 per hour in wages and benefits, Mr. Cole said. International firms paid their nonunion workers about $45 per hour in wages and benefits. The hourly cost differential was between $25 and $30.

Once the historic provisions of last year's four-year labor contract are fully implemented, the Big Three eventually will be paying their unionized workers an average of $40 to $45 per hour in wages and benefits, Mr. Cole told The Washington Times in an interview. That range is as low or lower than the wage-and-benefit package earned by workers at Toyota and Honda plants, he said.

"The gap in labor costs that had previously existed between Detroit-based auto companies and the foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated by the end of the contract," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Before the same committee, Peter Morici, business professor at the University of Maryland, argued that the concessions were still not enough to make Detroit competitive. "Today, the Detroit Three, though improved in productivity and with lower labor costs thanks to concessions from the United Auto Workers, are still not as competitive as the Japanese transplants," he said.

The UAW had big incentives to make the concessions it did. "Over the years, the union had won many battles, but it realized last year it was on the verge of losing the war," said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. That's why the UAW agreed to so many concessions during 2007 contract negotiations, he explained.