Yes Jim,
You are wrong, I've worked in the biz for over 20 years. And you know what!
Most places hire Joe Smoe right off the street and show him how to shoot
rivets and put him or her on the line.....shocking isn't it.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Jim Carriere" wrote in message
...
Kyle Boatright wrote:

"W P Dixon" wrote in message
...

Well,
Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
to doesn't it ? I loved working production but you just made alot more
snip

$45 an hour is probably a realistic cost once you consider that it costs
money to put a building over the worker's head, pay for lights, pay for
tools, pay for supervision, pay to heat/cool the building, etc. For
reference, what shop rate do you pay when someone works on your car?
Here in the Atlanta 'burbs, I pay $60 or so (IIRC) at the local Honda
Dealer. The independant guy charges about $50/hr. I'd say both of these
are comparable rates to the $45/hr mentioned for labor in the previous
post.

Heheh, $60/hr shop rate to get a car fixed actually sounds reasonable to
me.

Like KA/karel said in the other reply, around half of the cost of labor
ends up on the paycheck.

If you want _good_ workers (this is aircraft production after all, you
don't take a wrecked airplane back for exchange like a hamburger), they'll
deserve benefits. They'll also need some training and supervision (both
of which will tie up experienced labor), overhead like management,
payroll/HR, taxes. When they get experience and turn out to be good
workers, they'll deserve pay raises. Also, a disproportionate effort is
always expended picking up the slack for the bad workers. I agree with
$45 as an approximation.

$10-15 an hour seems very low. I'm curious where you get this figure. It
sounds like a starting wage advertised in the jobs section in the
newspaper... I could be wrong though.