Autoworkers Have Good Reason to Demand a Big Raise
Their real wages have fallen 30% over the past two decades. But can the Detroit Three really afford to bring back the old days?
The real wage decline explains a lot about why the UAW is taking an aggressive approach in contract talks.
Photographer: Jeff Kowalsaky/AFP/Getty Images
During the past 20 years, the inflation-adjusted average hourly wage of non-management US workers, also known as production and nonsupervisory employees, has risen 13%. That’s not exactly a rip-roaring pace — 0.6% a year. Then again, real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory employees fell in the 1970s and 1980s and rose at only a 0.3% annual pace in the 1990s.
One group of American workers has had a much different experience over the past two decades. The average hourly wage for autoworkers on the production line has dropped 30% since 2003.