Internation Management & Globalization: International Labor Rates - Research Paper Example

As the country’s leading player under the manufacturing industry, is it entirely true that the automobile industry has one of the best paying jobs in the manufacturing industry? Many critics of the automobile industry argue that automobile workers are the most outrageously paid workers in the manufacturing industry. Such an assertion is by Jonathan Cohn’s column found on The Republic where he asserts that the automotive workers in the U.S industry are some of the most overpaid workers in the manufacturing industry, earning an estimated $70 an hour.

Seventy dollars an hour in wages translates to approximately $150,000 a year in gross income, carrying the assumption of working forty hours per week. This is opposed to $28 an hour earned by other workers in the rest of the industry. Generally, this makes the worker in the U.S automotive to be highly paid than the rest of workers in the U.S. The gross effect of these salaries paid to the workers in the automotive is that they raise the average wages paid to the workers in the manufacturing sector above the wages payable to workers, say in the service industry (Platzer and Harrison, 7).

Contrary to many reports, these wages are not that much bigger compared to what companies like Honda, Toyota, and other overseas manufacturers pay workers in their U.S. factories. While we cannot be accurately sure how much those other employees make, because the companies don't make this data public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these foreign owned auto plants in the U.S as somewhere amid $20 and $26 an hour, and most probably about $24 or $25. That would place the average employees’ annual salary at $52,000 a year.

This amount is thought to be slightly above what the same auto industries pay to their workers in Japan. This may be partly due to the higher skill level required in the U.S industries and partly due to the raise in health insurance payable to the workers in the U.S. The increased competition in the automobile industry due to the entry of overseas car manufacturers such as Toyota from Japan has resulted in to better wages for automobile workers in the automobile plants owed by these competitors.

However, the employees in the automobile industry are paid a slightly lower wages compared to their fellow workers in the U.S industry. This is despite Toyota, Honda and Nissan announcing increased wages for their workers in Japan. By 2007, Toyota had increased its workers’ average monthly base pay by 1,000 yen ($8.55 by 2007 rate), or about 6.25 yen per hour. Honda increased its monthly base pay by 900 yen ($7.69), or 5.63 yen per hour, and Nissan increased its average monthly wage to 6,700 yen more per month the following year.

This brings the average wage for the three companies to roughly $57 per hour. This slight difference in payment for the workers in Japan and those working in auto plants in the U.S may be attributed to the higher cost of living in the U.S and the raise in health insurance for the workers in the U.S industry. This is because an industry’s compensation costs may also be influenced by the number of companies in the industry and the more the