Labour cost/wages per hour

HappySquid

Not to pollute the Tariff thread.
Guys a question: what are the gross labour costs per hour for the employer of a steel-worker in the US ? in the Netherlands it is around € 40.--/45,-- per hour ( $ 47.08/$ 52,97 ) ?

Varmintmist

I think that would be net in the US. Gross, ie Loaded Labor Rate at a guess would be close to 100+/hr. I dont get paid what they do nor is my insurance or retirement as good, but I do have a loaded bucket truck and mine is in the 118.00/hr area cost of keeping me in the field.

HappySquid

So a simple steelworker at a steel-factory costs the factory around $ 4,000.-- a week ? No wonder it is cheaper to import steel

Varmintmist

IF you are figuring the taxes the employer pays, the insurance for the employee and everything he works with, the cost of replacement of everything he works with, tools specialty clothing, safety gear, the cost of the HR and support depts, sure, that isnt out of line.

A office person is probably the cheapest. Wages, taxes, and you need a few sq feet and a puter every 18 months or so. The insurance is nothing because the odds of getting killed by a paper cut are pretty slim.

It is cheaper to import steel because the places we import from dont do the safety thing at all and are not taxed as hard as our companies are. Corporate taxes are paid by the consumer in the form of higher prices.

The tariffs are changing because they are becoming equatable. X country taxes our exports at 12%, we are going to tax their imports at 12%. Post WW2 the US made the tariffs UN equal to help other countries get on their feet and NOT fall into another war.

tennmike

What Varmintmist is saying is the way it is. Like Will Rogers said, "It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts." Wages can actually be, and generally are, the smallest part of the cost of an employee. With all the add-ons like insurance, tools, taxes (LOTS AND LOTS OF TAXES), and all the other peripheral support, and government meddling adding costs, an employee can and does cost a lot more than the wages per hour. Foreign governments that don't choke their industries like our government does can produce products at lower cost, especially with the retirement thing here adding on another cost. And then add on the insult to injury of charging us high tariffs to import into those countries is just too much.

Like Canada's 270% tariff on U.S. Dairy products imported into Canada. 270% Canadian tariff on dairy products.................REALLY? Just one example; there are MANY others.

HappySquid

Sorry guys. I did not include the workspace-costs, innovation costs over the last 50 yrs for said foundry/steel  factory , so I think yours are running and making steel the world wants ?
But I guess said steel-worker gets a full pension and state/governement Healthcare and benefits at 65 ??
I'm not working in that branch but I gross € 40,000,-- a yr,  49% of that is going towards the mandatory government retiremend-fund, Healthcare and unemployment funds. I guess that our countries/governments in Northern europe have their workforce covered from start to grave, how is that in the US with those expensive steel-workers ???


And NO , I dont want a pissing contest over this, I just dont understand the reasoning by the current US-Government

tennmike

One thing that you don't have to the extent WE do is the EPA (Environmental Protection Act) that pretty much makes ANYTHING regarded as a byproduct of manufacturing ANYTHING a hazardous waste problem. And that would include ANYTHING that goes out an exhaust stack. It's so bad that even innocuous water vapor seen as a white 'cloud' coming from a vent or exhaust stack is considered air pollution. The costs to clean that up are not insignificant. And both state and federal laws on that have to be complied with or hefty fines are the result. Waste water has to be cleaned of anything that might hurt the environment.

State and U.S. government regulations are a significant cost in the compliance to avoid problems.

Take fly ash from coal fired anything. It was used at one time as an additive to concrete. Then some Cheetoh Munching Hair Jelled Nancy discovered that there was an insignificant amount of radioactive material in it. OMG!!!!!! So now there are two choices for disposal, either sequestration in fly ash ponds and landfilling. There have been some accidents with fly ash ponds breaching, and landfilling has its own unique problems in transport and disposal. And there's not enough radioactive material in it to be considered a health hazard to anyone. Breathing in the fly ash dust is the REAL hazard, but that is mostly ignored except at the sequestration and landfilling end. Fly ash had other uses, but those are now cut off, too.

Over here the unions in the steel industry bargain for wages and benefits, and also pay into Social Security and Medicare, and so does the company.

Regulations on mining of raw materials is also another added-on cost. Even the regulations concerning recycling materials is way overboard driving up the price of raw materials.

HappySquid

That explains a lot, thanks Mike

Varmintmist

HappySquid said:

Sorry guys. I did not include the workspace-costs, innovation costs over the last 50 yrs for said foundry/steel  factory , so I think yours are running and making steel the world wants ?
But I guess said steel-worker gets a full pension and state/governement Healthcare and benefits at 65 ??
I'm not working in that branch but I gross € 40,000,-- a yr,  49% of that is going towards the mandatory government retiremend-fund, Healthcare and unemployment funds. I guess that our countries/governments in Northern europe have their workforce covered from start to grave, how is that in the US with those expensive steel-workers ???


And NO , I dont want a pissing contest over this, I just dont understand the reasoning by the current US-Government

Well they have been making specialty steels in the area I live in. They just put in a state of the art rolled steel production mill. You feed a block in one end that is everything a tractor trailer can handle and a roll spins up on the other end of sheet steel at close to 80mph. US Steel is reopening a plant to the tune of about 300 jobs by Oct. What the current us gov is doing is making the give and take even.

Varmintmist

As to what leaves the paycheck in the US.

The pensions are going away. Most are frozen with new hires not getting any. Retirement is all personal savings. You are free to become a millionaire or eat dog food and complain at retirement. Social Security, govt supplement, we pay 6.2%each with the employer paying another 6.2% (cost of employment) and Medicare is 1.45% employee and company also. So to work you are already giving up 15.3% for a system that may or may not be there much less cover anything when you are needing it before you put in for your own retirement. Employees should be putting in around 10-15% in retirement savings to develop a nest egg so that when you retire you will remain financially independent. Unemployment is taxed by state. In PA where I am and a lot of the steel industry is, the employee pays .07% on every 1000.00 earned directly, and indirectly through the employer (HIDDEN, LOADED LABOR RATE) pays between 2.8% to 10.9% to a max of 8750.00.

You also mentioned the Netherlands. As I understand it, they are allowed to work 2080 hrs per year. That is regular time in the US. We make what other countries consider to be a exceptional wage by working more than them. I for one would not be where I am if I hadnt worked the extra 3-5 months a year at time and a half for 20 years or so. So the argument to be made is that if a US worker is more productive, and the company only has to shell out the cost of taxes and insurance for two people vs 3  to get the same amount of production, the cost passed on the the consumer should be lower, but out steel is still more expensive. Thus the tarriffs

bisley

The US taxpayer has been shouldering the lion's share of the defense burden for war-torn Europe since 1945. A series of US presidents and Congresses have been completely willing to let their taxpayers supplement foreign economies for over six decades, without a lot of complaining from those taxpayers. In fact, it has been so 'normal' that each succeeding generation has not really even been aware of it. Now, we have a 20 trillion dollar debt, and some European politicians have made a big deal about frowning down upon us for our lack of fiscal discipline. So, now we have noticed.

Finally, taxpayers are getting tired of paying excessive taxes so that our own politicians can govern against the will of the majority, and piss off the taxes they confiscate from us, for whatever whim comes to their minds. Instead of giving to our favorite charities, we pay taxes so our politicians can distribute it to their favorite charities. So, it is only natural for our politicians to point the finger at others. Donald Trump sees this and uses it to curry favor with the producing portion of our population, and it works - we like it. His analogy of the 'piggy bank that everybody robs' strikes a chord with middle class America, spanning across ideologies and other divisions within the working portion of the population, and that gives him confidence to use tariffs to try to bring the trade deficit into a reasonable balance. Our allies are our allies, but business is business. One does not exclude the other.

Don't worry, though, because if those countries that are levied the tariffs don't respond with reasonable compromises, the American consumer will pay a price, too. If the countries involved do offer compromise, Trump will compromise, too, because any net gain will be better than before, and it can be revisited later.

Those of us who understand that this is the most likely method of leveling the playing field on trade balances will endure it without a lot of complaint, and the rest will endure it, with a lot of complaint.

HappySquid

The problem with a trade deficit is that a country is buying more than it sells pricewise.

tennmike

HappySquid said:

The problem with a trade deficit is that a country is buying more than it sells pricewise.

And that is generally, but not always, a result of the country being shut out by protectionist government policies, and tariffs. While tariffs can protect the budding industries of a country, they can cause those same industries to become lazy and not innovate, streamline, and increase quality of goods. The bad and ugly side of tariffs are embargos of products being imported. That has caused a war or two, either directly or indirectly. The Canadian tariff on U.S. dairy products is an example; nothing can justify a 270% tariff on ANYTHING. Yet Canada's dumping of lower quality wood products on the U.S. has been a sore spot for decades and is ruining our own logging and sawmill industries. Add in U.S. government interference and banning logging in many places and it becomes clear that our own government is strangling the entire U.S. logging industry from forest to finished product. Wood products are a renewable resource; the U.S. government's stifling of the industry makes no sense.

Tariffs are complicated things. They can protect a budding industry, can be used to fight unfair trade practices, and can be used to alter the trade imbalance of protectionist countries by making their products higher in cost than products of the same or better quality produced in the importing country.

And some countries have been known to dump products at or below cost on another country to collapse the same industry in the target country. They then become the main supplier and raise prices accordingly as they have a 'captive audience'. More trade imbalance results.
An example: In my area of the South, clothing manufacturing plants turned out high quality very reasonably priced goods and prospered. With the importation of clothing from overseas, mostly from SE Asia that used what can only be described as slave labor, the companies in my area couldn't compete. They have now almost all closed; the very few remaining make clothing that is still very high quality, costs a bit more than the foreign made, and is mostly uniforms for doctors, police, and other professions. The clothing is higher quality and much longer lasting than the foreign made equivalent. AND, some of those companies demand 'Made in the U.S.A' clothing.