Motown blues: What next for Detroit?
SHAIKEN, HARLEY
For much of the twentieth Century, Detroit was proudly known as the Motor City. Today, a drive up Woodward Avenue, its once bustling main street, takes you past abandoned buildings and...
...In congressional testimony, UAW president Gettelfinger endorsed "steps to ensure that fuel economy improvements continue in the years following 2020, and that the companies move expeditiously to introduce advanced technology vehicles...
...Amid this decline in market share, Detroit concentrated on light trucks for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: that's where the money was...
...Although the U.S.-Japan wage gap may be exaggerated, rather than matching UAW wages, Toyota's goal has become $12.64 an hour, the median wage for comparable manufacturing in Kentucky, where it has its largest plant, or $10.79 an hour in Alabama, where it is building a new plant...
...Mexican auto unions are taking a cue from U.S...
...labor leaders by offering two-tier hiring schemes and salary cuts that bring already low wages down to near-Chinese levels," an Associated Press article reported in June 2008...
...Wagoner replied that "if we hadn't done that, it would have been very dire for all three of the U.S.based auto businesses...
...The 2008 Harbour Report on productivity, which measures the number of hours required to assemble a vehicle, awarded the top ten places to unionized plants in North America...
...Mexican auto exports shot up by almost 70 percent between 2004 and 2007 to 1.6 million vehicles, the majority of which were destined for the U.S...
...Even before this string of good years, two major structural shifts had begun: The market for light trucks—fueled by low gas prices—climbed from under 30 percent of total vehicle sales in 1986 to a peak of 55 percent in 2004...
...Nonetheless, three factors point in a more positive direction: first, the automakers are in the midst of far-reaching restructurings...
...finally, their quality and productivity have gone up significantly, reflecting a positive relation with the union...
...Ford is bringing out a hybrid Fusion early in 2009...
...Sixty miles northwest of Detroit is Flint, a hardscrabble industrial town that was once the epicenter of General Motors, where sprawling factories used to be as common as parks in other cities...
...automakers are forced to shoulder the crippling burden of health care costs for their employees...
...Medical insurance should be addressed in Washington, not at the bargaining table in Detroit...
...In late 2008, when rescue loans were being discussed, Senate Republicans stridently argued that Detroit's most serious ills flowed from UAW contracts and that the best way to aid the industry was to shred the contracts and gut the union...
...The Italian car company will put up no cash in this transaction but will offer Chrysler vehicle designs and technology for small, fuel-efficient cars and provide a more global distribution network, particularly in Europe...
...In fact, unionized plants led the productivity rankings in seven out of eight categories...
...UAW president Ron Gettelfinger has already agreed to eliminate the much-maligned "Jobs Bank," in which displaced workers are temporarily paid while they are reassigned, and reportedly has agreed to forgo lump-sum bonuses and cost-ofliving allowances for the remaining two years of the contract...
...Health insurance reform has become a competitive necessity in industries such as auto as well as a moral obligation to uninsured Americans...
...It would mean a high tech, world-class auto industry that addresses three key goals: creating middle-class jobs, reducing global warming, and moving toward energy independence...
...So, unfortunately, the answer is yes...
...These auto firms directly support 1.5 million workers—from assemblers on the line in Kansas City to mechanics in auto dealerships in San Diego—and fuel an additional 3.5 million jobs throughout the country...
...Detroit also was weakened by its slowness to adopt alternative technologies, particularly hybrids...
...This vision could be introduced with at least three new members on the board of directors of each firm representing the union, the environmental community, and the public...
...firms still capable of competing in a fast-moving, fierce, global economy and, if so, what measures will be needed to make this happen...
...The $17.4 billion in loans awarded to GM and Chrysler avoided an irreversible collapse and provided valuable breathing room to restructure...
...GM is betting heavily on the Volt, a plug-in hybrid that will be on sale in late 2010...
...CAN DETROIT MAKE IT...
...The danger lies in redefining competitiveness to favor firms who pay the least, unwinding the gains unions have won over decades...
...The United States is the only major auto-producing country in the world without national health insurance...
...In its February 2009 issue, Consumer Reports noted "signs that Detroit is heading in the right direction, with better-performing models from General Motors and improved reliability from Ford...
...The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to join a union if a majority sign up for one...
...Despite costly miscalculations, Detroit retains some of the most gifted design, manufacturing, and engineering talent in the world and has been moving quickly to catch up...
...General Motors and Chrysler skidded alarmingly close to bankruptcy in the last days of 2008, and Ford was not far behind...
...market...
...The domestic automakers' top executives and the president of the UAW came to Washington, D.C., hat in hand, in early December, pleading for $34 billion in loans and lines of credit to survive until the economy recovered...
...Nonetheless, the mandate of the Washington loans is pushing the UAW back into negotiations for further concessions...
...In 2007, GM required an average rebate of almost $3,000 per vehicle it sold compared to about $800 for Toyota...
...LABOR COSTS What about the argument that outsized labor costs brought Detroit down...
...First, the additional $22 billion in loans GM and Chrysler requested in February are vital...
...The result was what Walter Reuther, the legendary president of the UAW, called "high velocity purchasing power," and it fueled both corporate success and economic growth in the aftermath of the Second World War...
...auto industry pays among the highest manufacturing wages in the world," it continued...
...Ironically, GM reportedly invested $1 billion in the early 1990s in the EV-1, a technically impressive electric vehicle...
...The combination of Henry Ford's assembly line and the emergence of the UAW produced what may be Detroit's most important model: the blue-collar middle class...
...Despite the positive technical reviews, all three automakers passed on the innovation...
...But why stop there...
...In contrast, GM built super-sized Chevy Suburbans and then invested in Hummers...
...Passenger vehicle sales slid from 16.1 million in 2007 to 13.2 million in 2008, an 18 percent drop and the worst annual decline since the early 1970s...
...Unlike their competitors, U.S...
...This argument raises a critical question: how viable is Detroit in the long run...
...The Volt reflects a major step forward technologically but will at best be a niche vehicle for some time...
...The domestic automakers could earn in excess of $10,000 on SUVs, while their profit on small cars was often below $1,000...
...Some maintain that the domestic carmakers are failing because compliant executives and an aggressive union raised labor costs to the point that the companies could no longer compete...
...These legacy costs amount to $16 an hour at Ford compared to $3 an hour at Toyota...
...In 1937, autoworkers in Flint made their own history when their famed "sit-down" strikes paralyzed GM's assembly lines and energized the fledgling United Auto Workers union...
...The automakers argue that federal loans are a bridge over troubled economic times...
...The future now depends on Barack Obama and the new Congress...
...in the long run, it is pivotal to survival in a rapidly changing market...
...When the market shifted, they were unprepared...
...One way or the other," he wrote, "ordinary citizens who don't earn nearly the pay and benefits autoworkers receive would be paying taxes to subsidize their rather generous lifestyles...
...What was bad in December became far worse by mid-February...
...The problem to date has been the strategic vision at the top, not the skill in the trenches...
...An important cautionary note concerning future jobs is that the Fusion is assembled in Mexico, and GM has contracted the critical batteries for the Volt from a Chinese firm, although final battery pack assembly will take place in Michigan...
...The domestic car companies currently have over 775,000 retirees and surviving spouses while all foreign automakers in the United States support a total of 5,000 pensioners...
...While the future remains uncertain, the Detroit automakers can succeed once the economy turns around if aid from Washington is forthcoming...
...the other path enhances the manufacturing base and contributes to a blue-collar middle class...
...Meanwhile, Detroit's share of car sales plummeted from 71 percent to 37 percent...
...This gap reflects a failure of public policy, not of collective bargaining...
...In the short run, flexibility is costly...
...firms were highly competitive, and the U.S...
...Much has been made about matching the wages and benefits of the Japanese automakers in the United States...
...Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, put forward a punitive amendment in early December 2008 mandating that UAW wages and benefits be slashed to the level of Japanese car companies in the U.S...
...In 2007, the influential J.D...
...The domestic auto industry spent over $12 billion on research and development in 2007, and these linkages run through a wide swath of the economy, underscoring the fact that Detroit is a high tech industry, not simply a rusted relic from the last century, as it is often portrayed...
...Ford, for example, garnered $38 billion in profit in its North American manufacturing operations between 1996 and 2000, when the SUVs it pioneered were selling as fast as it could turn them out...
...GM and Chrysler have also moved in this direction...
...and in 2007, Daimler unloaded Chrysler to private equity giant Cerberus Capital Management for about a quarter of its 1998 purchase price...
...market...
...GM, for example, could dedicate two or three plants to SUVs, while Honda had both the need and the capability to produce five or six models on the same line...
...At the same time, Detroit's total share of the market slipped from 75 percent in 1986 to 48 percent in 2008...
...These changes will slash Detroit's health care costs by 50 percent when they take effect in 2010...
...The problems in Detroit raise some pivotal questions that go well beyond the auto industry: First, are U.S...
...Labor costs are important, of course, but need to be kept in perspective...
...As the report makes clear, the American South may only be a way station in the search for lower wages...
...The UAW has also agreed, pending ratification and court approval, that Ford can meet up to half its obligation to the retiree health care trust fund with company stock, a change that could save the company billions in cash...
...Although much is different today, the $1.5 billion in loan guarantees Washington gave Chrysler in the early 1980s were repaid early with a $300 million gain for taxpayers...
...These are dark economic times, and things will very likely get worse before they get better...
...WHAT WILL IT TAKE...
...The right product is central to Detroit's recovery...
...manufacturing base...
...Ironically, profit-sharing bonuses boosted Toyota's wages to over $30 an hour in 2006 and 2007, meaning that wage parity would give UAW workers a raise...
...some of its competitive, nicely finished, small European models, such as the Fiesta and the new Focus...
...Ford, for example, will have flexible body shops in almost all its U.S...
...As one Chrysler engineer optimistically put it about the company's plight, "All I know is that we've been here before, and we can do it again...
...Finally, we need a trade policy that allows labor standards to harmonize upward rather than slide downward, particularly in a global industry such as auto...
...Along the way, the union pioneered new benefits, from paid health care to pensions, which were widely adopted by both union and nonunion firms, setting a standard for millions of American workers...
...From 2000 through 2007, U.S...
...This oft-repeated argument superimposes a snapshot of work rules in the 1960s or 1970s on a far more flexible shop floor reality today...
...As a result of these changes, Detroit automakers would have had labor costs comparable to those of their Japanese rivals by 2011, the end of the current contract, if not before...
...DETROITS DOWNHILL RIDE What brought the domestic car companies to the edge of disaster...
...International Trade Commission, raised an oft-heard critique of unionized labor costs...
...Second, how do we ensure that competitiveness translates into blue-collar, middle-class jobs, and a fuel-efficient green product, a Detroit Model for the twenty-first century...
...Now the Detroit Model is about to be recalled...
...These high quality and productivity rankings fly in the face of the notion that antiquated work rules still hobble the Detroit automakers...
...Second, public funding should be allocated for a consortium to develop the next generation of vehicle power trains from hybrids now to electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles in the longer term...
...Even before the current crisis, a journalist asked GM CEO Richard Wagoner whether he had "to destroy the American middle class to save the company...
...If one looks solely at the balance sheet, the prognosis is grim...
...Retiree health care and pension payments make up the lion's share of this gap...
...As a result, the corporation will go from building 74 percent of its vehicle sales in 2007 in the United States to 63 percent in 2012...
...The key question is the road they take to profitability...
...Detroit was not alone in noticing these mega-profits...
...A new Detroit Model is capable of delivering the best product at the best value to the consumer and driving the economy to a more prosperous green future...
...GM's February restructuring plan calls for shuttering fourteen of its fifty-nine plants in the United States and eliminating almost one out of four hourly workers—16,000 jobs—by 2012...
...Foreign automakers aggressively went after the light truck market, reducing Detroit's share of this segment from almost 80 percent in 1986 to 64 percent in 2007...
...Finally, quality and productivity have improved, which reflects better technology, improved methods, and a positive relationship with unions...
...plants by 2012, and GM is already able to assemble different types of vehicles on flexible lines in 60 percent of its plants...
...And, finally, what are the roles of Washington, Detroit, and the union in all of this...
...Beyond the loss of jobs, a revitalized Detroit is essential for a vibrant, competitive economy...
...When gas prices began to rise, the market for SUVs and pickups tanked...
...The companies will fund the trust to a percentage of the projected future liability for health care, and then the responsibility and risk for managing the trust will fall to the union...
...GM lost almost $31 billion and Chrysler dropped $8 billion in 2008...
...Total compensation in China is reportedly $2-2.50 an hour...
...The UAW also has embraced new energy and environmental initiatives...
...costs...
...Consider the restructurings...
...The union agreed to transfer retiree health costs to an independent trust known as the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA...
...The industry is consolidating global designs, eliminating overlapping models, moving to new fuel-efficient technologies, and adopting far more flexible manufacturing processes...
...It's easy to forget that autoworker wages and benefits reflect decades of high productivity, not simply tough collective bargaining...
...U.S...
...GM tested the new battery on the EV-1, and key engineers issued what they termed a "very encouraging report on nickel-metal hydride battery performance...
...As bad as things were, they became worse with the new year...
...To put labor costs in perspective, consider another legacy cost: the incentives Detroit has needed in recent years to sell the cars and trucks it builds, driven in part by an outdated reputation for poor quality in the past...
...GM and Chrysler simultaneously handed in their interim restructuring reports to the secretary of the treasury and requested an additional $21.6 billion in loans for a total of $39 billion...
...auto industry, or other competitors," the report stated...
...auto industry pays 50 percent higher wages and over five times more than Mexico's auto manufacturers...
...The decision is all the more inexplicable given that the nickel-metal hydride battery, which powers almost all commercial hybrids on the road today, was developed by a scientist and entrepreneur based in the Detroit area...
...The alternative is a downward wage spiral that would slow economic growth...
...Much oil production was in politically unstable regions from the Middle East to Africa, and global demand was going up with the rise of China and India as industrial powers...
...Ultimately, what carried the day in Washington was the fear of adding another million or more unemployed to the 2.5 million people who had already lost their jobs in 2008, a year that saw the worst drop in employment since 1945...
...firms—profits next quarter—and the long turnaround time automakers require: it takes three to four years to develop a new model...
...The modifications will protect jobs for U.A.W...
...The plant closings and sharp drop in employment reflect plans to rely more heavily on imports to supply the U.S...
...Cutting labor costs can be a slippery slope...
...Today, a drive up Woodward Avenue, its once bustling main street, takes you past abandoned buildings and debris-strewn lots...
...Instead of investing in flexibility, domestic carmakers lobbied hard against tightening federal mileage standards to preserve their advantage in light trucks...
...This drop in domestic assembly translates into corresponding cuts in supplier employment...
...Compared with Japan and France, the U.S...
...However, the total hourly compensation cost—which includes wages, health care, pensions, and other benefits—was $70 at Ford prior to the 2007 contract negotiations with the UAW and about $47 at Toyota, according to some estimates...
...Toyota also poured billions of dollars into giant SUVs and pickup trucks, but, unlike Detroit, it also brought out the gas-sipping hybrid Prius and the fuel-efficient Corolla...
...In order to make significant progress in electrification," Ford maintained in December, "[the company] supports a public/private partnership to develop next generation battery technology...
...economy prospered, when companies paid the highest wages in the world, not the lowest...
...An increasing number of plants have adopted competitive operating agreements, which provide considerable flexibility on the shop floor...
...At this site in 1913, Henry Ford mated the Model T and the moving assembly line to put the world on wheels...
...As it is, the Bush loans target the same goal, though nine months later...
...Health insurance costs should be addressed in Washington as they are in Tokyo, Berlin, and Ottawa, not at the bargaining table in Detroit...
...Detroit made a serious miscalculation: it failed to hedge its bets by investing in fuel-efficient cars...
...Detroit] wouldn't stand up to the labor union bosses, and now they're facing the consequences," Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, opined...
...Peter Morici, the former chief economist at the U.S...
...Would it be the economically rational thing to bring small cars here years ago...
...The legacy cost gap reflects two things: better benefits and far more retirees at the Detroit automakers...
...The result...
...Moody's Investor Services was under whelmed by the restructuring plans submitted by GM and Chrysler, commenting there was a "70 percent" probability that either company or both would slip into bankruptcy...
...In contrast, Toyota and Honda built hybrids such as the Prius and the Civic around Ovshinsky's nickelmetal hydride battery and have put well over a million hybrid vehicles on the road over the last decade...
...At a critical economic moment, the right to unionize would strengthen the productivity/wage linkage...
...Ford has put an impressive effort into building a better relationship with the UAW and, as a result, has negotiated flexible, local agreements in all its U.S...
...In the quarter-century between 1947 and 1973, productivity doubled in the economy and so did median family income...
...In case the message wasn't entirely clear, Wall Street Journal columnist Jenkins asked, "If GM can make cars profitably in China, why doesn't GM import them to the U.S...
...The article cautioned that "they still lack the high level of consistency of the best automakers, such as Honda and Toyota...
...As a result, GM would employ 46,000 hourly workers, less than one-third of the 146,000 it employed in 2000 and only slightly over 10 percent of the 440,000 hourly workers on its rolls in 1981...
...All automakers were pummeled, but the domestic companies, weakened by managerial miscalculations in years past, were slammed to the mat...
...That said, the magazine pointed out that "GM's next generation of small cars, including the Chevrolet Cruze, looks promising" and that "Ford plans to bring to the U.S...
...Fourth, health care and pension reforms are essential...
...While the companies indicated that these loans would see them through the crisis, the final amount could well depend on the depth and length of the economic collapse...
...The restructuring plan projects GM selling 3.2 million units in the United States in 2013 with an assembly capacity of 2 million vehicles, down from 2.8 million in 2008...
...Chrysler faces an unusually tough challenge, but will be aided by the fact that Fiat has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to take a 35 percent stake in the troubled automaker that it may raise to 55 percent later on...
...The short answer is that a deepening recession unexpectedly morphed into a devastating financial panic, which, in turn, caused credit to freeze and the market for cars and trucks to roar downhill...
...A 2006 internal report by Seiichi Sudo, president of Toyota Engineering and Manufacturing in North America, set out a new goal for hourly wages in the states where Toyota operates...
...The cost of not acting would far outweigh the cost of the loans...
...Ford, the first company to announce its earnings, lost $14.6 billion in 2008, the worst result in its century-long history...
...Even the transplants don't match the transplants," Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., reported in late December, "as evidenced by new factories from Honda and Kia with starting wages about half those of existing foreign-owned plants...
...Landmarks of Detroit's storied history, however, are still in evidence despite the devastation...
...About five miles north of the Detroit River are the remains of the Ford Highland Park plant...
...Over the next seven decades, the UAW forged a link between rising productivity and workers' paychecks that allowed autoworkers to buy homes, purchase cars, and send their kids to college...
...Third, new perspectives are needed to ensure the right strategic vision for the future...
...Senate Republicans—guided by a potent mixture of ideology, the influence of nonunion carmakers in their states, and a colossal dislike of unions in general and the UAW in particular—torpedoed their request...
...The key was innovation and productivity...
...second, they are already producing better vehicles and have impressive projects in the pipeline...
...Total compensation costs for new workers will be about $26 an hour versus $70 an hour for existing workers in 2007...
...Ford dropped $12.6 billion in 2006...
...Hell no, not when every one you bring over here is less profitable than selling a big truck...
...within three months...
...Two conundrums complicated matters: First was the contradiction between the short-term financial focus of U.S...
...Because it isn't, the UAW negotiated painful changes to its agreements with the Detroit automakers over the last several years...
...A faded historical marker reminds us that "mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry and set the pattern of abundance for twentieth-century living...
...Historically, unions have linked rising productivity to rising living standards, an arrangement that has fueled the entire economy...
...When the product was right for the times, Detroit earned billions with its current labor costs in place...
...It is expected to retail for $40,000, and plans call for building only ten thousand vehicles in its first year...
...What might a new Detroit Model look like...
...Power & Associates annual Initial Quality Study, which measures defects encountered in the first ninety days of ownership, ranked the domestic car companies first in seven vehicle categories, equal to the total of their Japanese competitors...
...The result would also slam the brakes to Walter Reuther's notion of "high velocity purchasing power," hardly the recipe to pull the country out of a deep recession...
...Consider the context...
...At Ford, for example, total hourly compensation costs would have fallen to $58 in early 2010 and then to $53 once 20 percent of the workforce is hired at the new lower rate without any additional changes to the union contract...
...Why are the domestic car companies so important...
...The reality is that if UAW wages are hammered down, workers who earn less will feel a fierce downward pressure on their own paychecks...
...One direction leads to a successful firm with far fewer workers and much reduced wages...
...Fifth, labor law reform is important...
...Moreover, we need to ensure that firms based in the United States are able to export their products to other markets effectively...
...The conventional wisdom of financials never, ever directs you to investments that pay off in years five through ten," Jim Schroer, Ford's former global marketing chief told Mother Jones magazine...
...The plant where the sit-downs took place is long gone, and GM's presence is a shadow of its former self, but the legacy of what took place that cold winter in Flint transformed American life...
...After several years the corporation concluded that it couldn't make electric cars profitably and then walked away, ignoring hybrids for years and squandering its technological lead...
...Clearly, steering the economy out of a deep recession is paramount for the entire country—not to mention the rest of the world—and is especially important for the auto industry...
...Even before the current meltdown, Toyota indicated that it wanted to cut its labor costs despite record profits at the time...
...The car improves on the gas mileage of the hybrid Toyota Camry by eight miles per gallon, making it the most fuel-efficient midsized car on the market...
...We should] not tie ourselves so closely to the U.S...
...GM lost $10.4 billion in 2005...
...The union also agreed to far lower starting wages and benefits for new hires, who will now start at $14.20 an hour, receive pared-down health benefits, and remain ineligible for health care and pensions when they retire...
...Stan Ovshinsky, founder of Energy Conversion Devices, brought the battery to the Detroit automakers first...
...This growth reflects the high productivity and quality of Mexican manufacturing combined with wages and benefits that run about $4 an hour, according to 2007 statements by the consulting firm Plante and Moran...
...January sales skidded to an annual rate of 9.8 million units, and GM now projects annual sales of 10.5 million vehicles for 2009...
...Mexican wages, however, are not immune from global pressures...
...For some, the collapse of Detroit has turned into an opportunity to blast unionized workers in general and the UAW in particular...
...Second, Detroit's high production volumes resulted in a rigid production process that made it difficult to shift from one model to another...
...The magazine gave Chrysler, the weakest of the domestic car makers, credit for the 2009 Ram pickup but not much else...
...members by ensuring the long-term viability of the company," Gettelfinger said in a statement...
...plants...
...President Barack Obama appointed a cabinet-level auto task force co-chaired by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and chief White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers to chart a road forward...
...Although the plan doesn't indicate where the projected 1.2 million imports will be built, it is likely that Mexico, Korea, and China will play an expanded role...
...What Morici fails to consider is the upward lift union wages provide across the economy...
...The results were so positive that one key engineer maintained, "I want to push so hard for this to get in for a regular '98 model start up...
...Other estimates put Mexican total compensation at closer to $8 an hour, still a small fraction of U.S...
...Of course, any firm can earn more next quarter by paying less, but long term that depresses purchasing power and throttles the markets businesses depend on...
...Otherwise the danger is that repression rather than innovation becomes a comparative advantage...
...Energy independence and global warming are national issues and should be treated with an urgency that transcends what the market may or may not do next quarter...
...A wreck of the domestic auto industry was avoided only when, in the waning days of December, George W. Bush authorized $17.4 billion in emergency loans—$13.4 billion for GM and $4 billion for Chrysler—from the $700 billion financial system rescue fund...
...Detroit, battered though it is, remains the linchpin of the U.S...
...As Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman put it, "everything we know about unions says that their new power was a major factor in the creation of a middle-class society...
...Currently, the hourly wages of senior UAW autoworkers and their nonunion Japanese counterparts are roughly comparable: about $29 an hour at Ford compared to $26 an hour at Toyota...
...These loans are an investment in the manufacturing base and, with conditions targeting domestic investment, a vital part of the broader stimulus package for creating jobs...
...The U.S...
...The new reality of the global economy is the ability to site high-productivity, high-quality plants in low-wage emerging economies...
...The car companies already market thirty-four models capable of thirty or more miles per gallon...
...sales of cars and light trucks—SUVs, minivans, and pickups—cruised along at just under seventeen million units a year...
...If GM had sold its vehicles with the same incentives as Toyota, it would have generated about $8 billion in additional revenues, a figure almost equal to its total hourly labor costs in the United States last year...
...Oil prices were low, but the geopolitics of oil remained volatile...
...A number of policy ideas should be part of the mix...
Vol. 56 • April 2009 • No. 2
