Michigan Manufacturing: The New Normal?

Market Watch is reporting:

Base pay for new hires at Axle in Three Rivers is $10.50 per hour, half the going rate of 10 years ago. Workers get health care but must contribute to it. They have access to a 401(k) retirement plan. Benefits and the promise of incremental pay increases may explain the huge turnout at a company job fair on Aug. 10, which American Axle says yielded 250 qualified applicants.

Despite Michigan becoming a right-to-work state last year, new American Axle employees must join the United Auto Workers, whose contract with the company runs until September 2017. Company spokesman Chris Son describes relations with the UAW as good. He says the lower cost structure allows American Axle to be competitive in the globalized auto-parts industry.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, a leader in the drive to roll back union power in Michigan, says employment gains over the past year, “make Michigan the come-back state.” That may be. But George Erickcek, an analyst at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, says a legacy of the great recession is lower wages and slow job growth. 

There are a dozen story lines in this article. Maybe I will have time to come back to this later.