Ottawa Citizen
November 5, 1997
Business Page D 2
45,000 apply for 1,2000 jobs at Honda plant
Toronto --- A trickle of job seekers has turned into a flood at Honda of
Canada in Alliston, Ontario, as 45,000 people have applied for 1,200 new
jobs in just ten days.
"It is astounding," Vaughn Hibbets, vice-presence of administration for the
automaker, said Tuesday.
Printed applications for the 1,200 jobs became available late last month at
Human Resources Canada offices in mid-Ontario cities and towns, but Honda
plans to be cut off applications because it has received so many, Mr.
Hibbets said.
The Honda operation is hiring 1,200 workers as in gears up to make a
minivan for the 1999 model year at an assembly plant under construction
next to Honda's plant in Alliston, about 90 kilometres northwest of
Toronto. Those hired will be paid about $23 an hour.
When the minivan plant is at full capacity, production from the combined
operation will jump to 270,000 vehicles a year from 150, 000.
Comment
Despite continued assurances that Ontario and the Canadian economy is
booming, one has to wonder what world the economists and bankers live in
when they make these comments. Can you imagine 45,000 people? These
people would be willing to relocate themselves and their families for what
they consider a decent but mindless job as an auto assembly plant worker. I
would venture to guess that probably half of the applicants have advanced
degrees.
Forty hours a week, at $23 per hour is $900 per week or $3,600 per month or
about $43,000 per year, hardly excessive wages and just barely enough to
keep a family of four with only one worker alive. Consider that roughly
30% is deducted for taxes and another 4 or 5% for benefits such as CPP and
EI leaving a take home wage of around $29,000 per year.
Because of my inability to deal with numbers, I find that my sense of wages
and prices is often based in a 60's mentality. My crude estimate is that
money has inflated 6 times since 1965. Based on this admittedly biased way
of viewing the world, I would divide 6 into 23 for an approximate wage of
$4 per hour in 1965 terms. When it came out last year that autoworkers in
the States were making in excess of $40 per hour US or converted to $60
Canadian with the exchange rates, $23 seems pretty paltry. If we use my
factor of 6 on American workers wages, they are getting $10 per hour
Canadian while Honda is offering $4 per hour Canadian.
If we look at the ratio of applicants to demand, we find that dividing
45,000 into 1,200, we get approximately 2% demand for labour against a pool
of 98% supply. Perhaps some of the more qualified people on this list
could explain economic reality to me in a layman's manner so I can
understand why our economy is so good and unemployment is going down
because of all the jobs being created? I'm very confused.
