I have been employed by General Motors for 8 1/2 years.  First off lets get something straight GM always reports that we make $70 plus dollars per hour and that is not true at all. I am an electrician with the company and I make $33 and some change per hour, but that is a skilled trade.

Before I worked for General Motors I was a machinist for 8 years. There I left the trade at $15.50 an hour.  Guess what?  I am a female and I guarantee every one of the guys I worked with made more with less experience, and I'm doing the same jobs as the guys. I never griped because I seen what happened back than when a women complained about anything about their job. I was a machinist back when the female firefighter in New York that endured heavy sexual harrassment.

There was a company I worked for at the time that I was basically going through the same thing, when I left that company 2 of the several guys that I worked with there were decent enough that they gave me their name address and phone numbers and told me that if I ever decided to call a lawyer to have the lawyer give them a call and they would tell them everything that happened in that little plant. I did not do it because I liked the kind of work I was doing and knew if I did report my name would have been mud and I wouldn't be able to get a job anywhere.

General Motors is actually to fair on the pay because we all get the same pay but some people are not worth what they make but GM has been getting that problem remedied by offering buyouts, and the slugs are going away.

But at the same time GM needs to not reward so much to the upper management because they haven't been doing so well for a couple of years and the ceo pay has not gone down to reflect that in fact it has continued to soar, but isn't that the same as the financial sector ceo's

I say give them the help they need to keep things going through these difficult times but none of the bailout money should be used to reward themselves more money, in fact all of these ceo's should settle on no pay until they fully turn the company around. After all they have made really good pay for a few years they should be able to tighten their belts for a couple of years on all that money they have already took.

And as far as it goes why should hourly workers in any business sectors be taking the bite in the ass, after all hourly workers have know control on the company and how they spend monies.

Do people realize that if all of are biggest companies (which are top heavy anyways) took all of there upper exec management and lets say cut their pay in half they would not have to lay off any blue collar workers.