“Members of the UAW want job guarantees because outside a GM plant their skills will never, ever return anything close to what they make inside one. According to the Freep, wages and benefits for the average UAW worker run about $73. At a standard 40-hour workweek, that’s the equivalent of a roughly $100,000 a year salary for someone with a high school education who takes no entrepreneurial risk. Where else is that kind of deal available? Is it any wonder that the membership wants to fight to keep that? Slash the health benefits and pensions in half and it would still be an extraordinarily good deal for workers whose earning power on the open market is probably more in the $20 an hour range”. –Megan McArdle on why GM workers want job guarantees