It doesn't matter if it's a cabinet secretary or a line worker in the White House".
Herman Marino, a line worker from Denver, said the damage to Galveston's power lines was the worst he had ever seen, including the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
After the Reagan tax cuts, which eliminated these high marginal rates, executive pay soared from 40 times a line worker's pay to 300 times and higher.
Perfectly straight, evenly spaced hood stripes on a 1967 big block Corvette are certainly the product of a restorer with a lot of time, as opposed to a line worker in a rush with a casually placed template.
On a recent visit to the Mustang plant in Dearborn, Michael Joseph, who handles internal communications at the facility, said there were 4,000 workers when he started as a line worker nearly three decades ago.
"In order to get those guys up, we'll take a signing bonus or profit-sharing instead," said Gary Wurtz, a line worker at G.M.'s plant in Orion Township, Mich., where 40 percent of the employees are lower tier.
And the jobs at the plant pay well: even without much overtime, a line worker, earning about $24 a hour, can easily make $50,000 a year, which goes far in central Illinois.
A line worker in a Chinese auto factory earns $200 to $300 a month, and an engineer makes between $700 and $900.
I tried it out by role-playing a manager discussing mandatory overtime with a line worker who was struggling to keep two part-time jobs.
When a line worker noticed an abnormality (e.g. quality defect) in a workstation he or she pulled the cord, the Andon would light up in yellow, but the line will continue moving.
