Reasonable Compensation

Due to the recent auto industry bailouts offered by the Canadian and U.S governments there's been a lot of talk about an auto worker's hourly rate. There's a good blog post here debunking the $70/hour wages and benefits rate as quoted by the New York Times. But what is a fair hourly rate?

Personally, I feel that the the wage (for all fields) should be related to the importance of work being done. Of course, there are a bucket of issues here on who decides what's important and how does that compare to other professions. In my mind education and health care are two of most important and essential professions/industries in Canadian society and as such I feel the people working in these essential fields should be compensated accordingly. I'm pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with me.
And yet...

Profession and its Average Hourly Rate

Auto Worker - $34
Registered Nurse - $29.55
Teacher (Secondary School) - $27.60
TTC Operator - $26.58 (starts at $20.86 with yearly raises to $26.58 after 30 months)
Teacher (Elementary) - $26.40
Social Worker - $26.05

Sources:
The Auto worker is the average CAW wage at Ford and I took that from this CBC article.
The Nurse, Teachers and Social Worker wages came from the City of Toronto website.
I took the TTC wage directly from the Local 113 ATU Collective Agreement.