by Deb Cupples | At the end of November, Media Matters explained how the New York Times, Businessweek, and other media had started a misleading meme by claiming that the average Detroit autoworker makes $70 per hour (or $140,000 annually based on a 2000-hour year).
Actually, average line workers make only $28 per hour (about $56,000 a year) -- which isn't much considering how productive and physically dangerous their jobs are.
To its credit, the New York Times ran a piece yesterday, admitting that the $70+ per hour figure is wrong:
"That figure — repeated on television and in newspapers as the average pay of a Big Three autoworker — has become a big symbol in the fight over what should happen to Detroit. To critics, it is a neat encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with bloated car companies and their entitled workers.
"To the Big Three’s defenders, meanwhile, the number has become proof positive that autoworkers are being unfairly blamed for Detroit’s decline. 'We’ve heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour,' Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said last week. “It’s a total lie. I think some people have perpetrated that deliberately, in a calculated way, to mislead the American people about what we’re doing here.”
"So what is the reality behind the number? Detroit’s defenders are right that the number is basically wrong. Big Three workers aren’t making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year)." (New York Times)
The online article's title is not as effective as it could be ("$73 an hour: Adding it up"), but at least the Times firmly challenged the original, misleading meme.
Memeorandum has commentary.
Gee! They ran the correction on page A1! Maybe my years of nagging have paid off.
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