<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Greg Freemyer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:greg.freemyer@gmail.com">greg.freemyer@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs <<a href="mailto:jhubbslist@att.net">jhubbslist@att.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> Whenever someone around me gets all wound up about illegals, I ask<br>
> them if they're ready for $10/lb strawberries and chicken more expensive<br>
> than lobster.<br>
<br>
</div>I seriously doubt chicken has more than a $2 of labor per chicken.<br>
(More if its not whole.)<br>
<br>
Most of the process including feeding is highly automated, and a fast<br>
processing line for whole chickens (not cut-up) can handle<br>
100/chickens a minute, so the butchering is very efficient. (Max of<br>
50 or so people on that sort of line, so that works out to about 30<br>
man-seconds per chicken to kill it, de-feather, etc.)<br>
<br>
It's a very low-margin business, so they want as cheap a labor as they<br>
can get, but even if they had to pay $15/hr it would not be too<br>
expensive to eat.<br>
<br>
Now paying car factory union rates of $50/hr would have a bigger<br>
impact, but still not lobster prices.<br></blockquote><div><br>recheck the $50/hr. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/24/opinion/main4630103.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/24/opinion/main4630103.shtml</a><br>
and<br><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRViSBJZq45k">http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRViSBJZq45k</a><br><br>The $51/hr in the bloomberg article is pay + benefits.<br>
<br>Important numbers are here:<br><br><p>The Detroit-based automaker's current assembly workers get
$31.75 an hour in pay, including overtime and bonuses, and $19.25
in benefits, according to an analysis by <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Laurie+Harbour-Felax&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1">Laurie
Harbour-Felax</a>,
president of Chicago-based Stout Risius Ross Inc. Adding pensions
and other retiree costs raises the total to about $73. </p>
<p> <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=TM:US">Toyota</a>'s
U.S. workers cost about $47.25 an hour, including
$31.50 in pay and $15.75 in benefits, the study found. Toyota
doesn't have additional expenses for retirees because so few of
its U.S. factory employees have reached retirement. </p></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<font color="#888888"><br>
Greg<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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