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Comments
Is all relative to the individual. Everything I have read and/or heard on NPR leads me to belive he is not that "open minded."
How much money did it cost you to dump the Maxima?
News flash, politics is about the convenience of the moment, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world. :P That why mixing politics and business always causes trouble.
It's pretty hard to take a down-and-out corporation like AMC and use the latest technology to build cars that were actually WORSE than the Pacer and Gremlin! But, somehow, they did it...
Politics and France's foreign policy had nothing to do with that fiasco.
as many of us do - if this is a primary motivation, however, those 'American' brands may actually pay fewer of those salaries, than some of those 'foreign' ones - so you might want to check it out. My personal daily drive is a Toyota Avalon, which has been a great car thus far and I honestly believe I put more money into our own economy buying it than I could have buying some of those 'American' cars in the same class. The car business, in many respects, ain't what it once was.
My current "Japanese" brand vehicle was built at a plant in Ohio from primarily US-sourced components, including the engine.
My former "American" brand vehicle? The engine was assembled in Germany, the transmission in France, and many smaller systems in Canada. Final assembly was in Mexico. Many, many less American salaries...
...While profits from sales benefit a company based in, has most of their resources/designers/engineers/executives in, and still get a majority of their parts for vehicles worldwide in Japan.
Whether or not the Fusion is assembled in Mexico, the $$$ still goes to a company that was FOUNDED and still BASED IN the United States.
Most of this is inaccurate and has nothing but opinion to support it. Have you ever done an analysis of the pricing elements of an auto?
Side note: When did US Steel move to Japan? I missed that article.
Next time I drive to town I'll take photos of vehicles broke down along the highway, lots of ford and GM vehicles.
If the car makers all go private courtesy of the hedge fundies (i.e., Chrysler), then what? Is a fund based in NYC that happens to hold a car company as one of many income generating assets in the same geographical league as a Detroit based "car" company?
Armament sales?
Drug sales?
Russian mafia?
Oil rich/cash flush potentates?
401k's?
China?
Who really 'owns' Chrysler? Subject for another forum.
This point is so obvious and so correct and ... blah I don't know what to say. Global economies are scary to some people.
This point is so obvious and so correct and ... blah I don't know what to say. Global economies are scary to some people.
Exactly...
Protectionist polices will do much more damage to our economy then global trade.
Even when you buy something built outside the country or owned by a company outside the country you are still supporting the US economy. That good had to be shipped here. It had to be unloaded. If it is a durable good it has to be serviced.
You can buy stock of Ford, GM, Toyota, Daimler, etc on the stock exchange...
Further, as GM's and Ford's market share decreases, and Toyota (built in Kentucky) and Honda (built in Ohio and Alabama) and Nissan (built in Tennessee) and Hyundai (built in GA and Alabama, I believe), the question boils down to: who is now employing more American workers and paying more American salaries in American dollars???
The answer is possibly the Japanese...
Simply to buy a Ford so the Ford family can become richer is a shallow reason, IMO...especially since Ford and GM are probably employing more Brazilians, Mexicans, etc. than you and I might know...
The areas around the US Japanese auto plants, and their suppliers, have probably caused more economic growth, non-unionized to boot, in the last decade than any US carmaker...
It is not so simple anymore to think that by buying Ford you are supporting Americans...but the few left that you ARE supporting are the UAW, and that is another topic altogether...:):):)
Since the car companies are mostly big multinationals, it's harder get too attached to where their home office is anymore.
My corporation, tis of thee,
Sweet land of Jeep Liberty.
What so proudly we hailed
at the taillights last gleaming?
O Chrysler, we stand on guard for thee.
Oh wait, I guess Chrysler already picked "I Drove All Night" as their anthem.
I didn't mean that as condescending when I said it was obvious, I was just trying to say that was one of the best comments so far in forum. I was excited to see I wasn't the only one on the planet that felt that way.
The answer is possibly the Japanese...
So the US workers are just the assemblers, while the real work (design and engineering) is done somewhere else?
Honda designed the current US accord specifically for the USDM. I am sure a lot of the design work was done here.
Don't forget all the workers who assemble the components HERE, which are then shipped to the final assembly point to become a "car"...example...Johnson Controls makes seats or dashboards to be dropped into the chassis when assembled...they are employees of Johnson Controls, but may realize their "employment" is from Toyota, since they make Camry dashboards...again, jobs created by Toyota but who do not literally show up on Toyota's payroll...
I think the portion of employment growth in the auto industry may be directly traced to the Japanese plants in this country, which, are now nonunion, and, if they wish to maintain any semblance of quality, will STAY nonunion until, say, the year 4007...:):):)
I want my binary solution with shades of gray too.
You don't have engineer in your screen name though, that kind of opens one up to ridicule :P Miss LilEgninnerBoy takes great pride in calling me out for being an engineer.
Honestly, its not our fault. All though college they program us to think a certain way and develop solutions. I think philosophy was one of the most frustrating courses for me because of the lack of resolution.
I would consider myself an anomalie with respect to other engineers because of the field I am in and my social science background.
That said, I still do things like using Excel to track inputs and outputs of our newborn to make sure he is getting enough food and not dehydrated, etc. :shades: I mean, how else would someone keep track of that stuff? :P
Now I sell cars...
Politics and car sales man if I just had my law degree I would be the MOST hated man on the planet.
I am with you on Excel although I prefer Minitab. I keep track of my sales, grosses, bonuses on a spread sheet. I used to keep track of all my car maintance and fuel usage on a spreadsheet too but now that I don't have a personal car I don't bother. Ok I admit it that I write everything out long hand on green engineering paper first then transfer it to the computer. I am teh uber dork.
I tried to keep track of my wife's stuff for her but her hyper organization skills do not translate to her car AT ALL.
Now I sell cars..."
Of COURSE you do! What else with a major like that?
I was an English major...... :sick:
Man are we off topic :P
The answer is possibly the Japanese...
Wrong. While it is true that employment is down at the big 3, and employment up at the foreign companies, the Big 3 employ about 2-3 times as many as the foreigners. Toyota has increased it's imports from about 750,000 to 1.2 mil in the last few years.
As far as supporting the "UAW", at least they can keep their standard of living stable. What recourse do those hard working Toyota employees at Georgetown Ky. have if Toyota decides to cut their pay from $30/hr to " no more than 50% more than the average manufacturing job in the area ($18/hr, I believe)".
Don't think that "non-unionized" is all it's cracked up to be. Whomever runs your company cares about one thing: The bottom line. No matter how good it is, it can always be better. They wont even blink if they thought they could send your work elsewhere on the cheap w/o repercussion.
My wife's grandmother was talking about how her father bought a house in the late '20's for $3,000, all on a paltry salary of $16/wk, and how tough it was to survive. Well, here in R.I., the average house is OVER $300,000, and I know NOBODY who makes a single salary of $1,600/wk. Even my union wage, which I'm sure you think is too much, is "ONLY" $1,295/wk. (If you notice, the prices are an even multiple of 100, so $1600/wk is on par w/ paying $300,000 for a house, as opposed to 80 yrs ago). Something has to give, so that we can be assured of being able to make a liveable wage in this country.
I remember my folks buying a house with 4 car garage and 2 apartments on a corner lot for under $8k in 1972.
I would rather give my money to toyota than make the UAW bosses any richer and get stuck with junk.
I have had jobs that paid much higher, oil spill make $5,000 to $8,000 per week, but isn't a very dependable job, had friends on one cleanup job where making over $2,000 per day.
most union jobs cost companies way too much,if it is union add 50% to the cost. in construction union automatically wants 30% extra materials and usually wasts 40% to 50% requiring purchase of more materials.
Once the Big 3 started to make "boat anchor junk" in the 70s and beyond, the union only served to keep drunk and stoned workers on the assembly line, paving the way for the japanese quality invasion of 1980s...
In the 90s, the automakers consented, probably in a moment of drunken stupor, to the "jobs bank" which basically pays UAW folks their full salary to sit on the buns, like welfare recipients, and get paid for doing NOTHING, absolutely nothing...if that isn't a reason to send work overseas, I cannot think of a better one...
The union became too powerful for its own good, and it is refreshing to watch it wither on the vine...I will be standing graveside when they bury it for the next century or two...
To put it bluntly, workers ARE more expendable than entrepreneurs...back in the 20s, 300,000 workers could be replaced in a heartbeat, but one Henry Ford was irreplaceable...while workers DO the work, the work would not be possible if not for the Henry Fords, Bill Gates', Steve Jobs, etc.
Workers work because irreplaceable employers create jobs out of profit...no profit, no jobs...while workers pat themselves on the back and demand profit sharing, there would be no profit if the entrepreneur had not created their jobs to begin with...
Nor would the work be possible if nobody has the money to purchase their goods, because all the work is overseas, and the workers left in this country are all burdened with 100-150k in college loans
Be careful what you wish for....
As if poisoned pet food wasn't enough, Chinese tires failing now
Posted Jun 25th 2007 7:34PM by Sam Abuelsamid
Filed under: China, Plants/Manufacturing, Recalls/TSBs, Safety
In recent years, products made in China have gained more renown for being cheap than for the quality control behind them. Up until now, inexpensive sneakers that fall apart after a few weeks or DVD players that work erratically have been more of an annoyance and an economic threat as opposed to a physical one. Recent headlines would suggest that might be changing, however. The contaminated pet food that killed dozens of cats not long ago and the video of a Chinese car collapsing in on itself during a European crash test bring the issue of potentially hazardous Chinese imports to a whole new level.
Foreign Tire Sales, Inc. of Union, NJ is suing China's Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. over a series of catastrophic failures of tires they manufactured that resulted in a fatal car crash in Pennsylvania. Hangzhou has been manufacturing tires sold by FTS and other distributors that left out an extra layer of rubber between the steel belts, causing them to overheat and have tread separation similar to the Firestone tires that failed on Ford Explorers several years ago. The tires may need to be recalled and FTS doesn't have the financial resources to deal with something like that, so it's suing the Chinese company to cover the expenses since they built the tires in a way that differed from what was specified. The Wall Street Journal's report on the matter contains additional details, and is well worth a read.
Thanks to Mike for the tip.
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
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And NO, Firestone is no longer an American company.
Be VERY careful what you wish for.
Or is it like the old Soviet Union..."we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us"...:):):)
There's a lot of vitriol about the jobs bank. I don't like the idea of worker ants sitting and not having anything to do but look for jobs in the paper and online and take college classes either. But didn't those come about because the eggheads with all the knowledge at the companies agreed to them as a way of reducing the number of workers in plants but earlier they had agreed to keep a certain number of jobs in certain plants for a certain number of years as part of their agreements with various unions. Since the auto manufacturers wanted to reduce/move numbers of jobs in plants, the workers who had been guaranteed jobs but now had none were reporting to do the work they ahd been been guaranteed?
It sounds to me like job banks are the fault of the overpaid hundreds of entrepreneurs (NOT) that we're painting here as saviours of the worker ants who are so unnecessary. I have to disagree with the concept coming out here that the upper management types are the gods of the world because of their great expertise and they should be paid hundreds or tens of millions while worker ants should have third world pay scales. If Henry Ford is exemplified in all the hundreds of highly paid upper management in GM or Ford, then perhaps they're worth the pay rate. Otherwise the Japanese have the right ideea that the steps between levels of workers in the company should be reasonable, small, and justifiable.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
It has always amazed me that union members expect their own fortunes to be independent of those of the companies for which they work. The only guarantee in life is death.
If p then q.
P is true.
Therefore q is the result.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Toyota looked at building their new factory in Arkansas for several years but leaned towards Tupelo and Chattanooga because those locales had better community college systems, and thus a larger pool of better trained workers (and the ability to quickly gear up for Toyota specific classes).
The old saw about foreign manufacturers is that they would put the line workers on other tasks in slow periods (maintenance, painting, cleaning and other busy work) so they could keep the trained work force around. GM probably can't do a lot of that because of OSHA rules, if the labor contracts let them in the first place.
As far as the wonders of big corporations, I suspect that the mom and pop entrepreneurs who hire 2 or 3 employees are the real economic drivers of our economy, not the Bill Gates and Alan Malallys.
But the Georgetown plant has lots of parttime workers. How does that fit with the stated policy of keeping trained workers. I don't think they really want "educated" workers on their lines. If so, they would have employed laidoff workers with experience in the Big 3 auto plants and their management types who have college experience and even college degrees and associate diplomas.
>case knowledgeable management got sales cooking again
Oxymoron alert. Knowedgeable and management don't _always_ go together. Your example of the small entrepreneur being the employers of note is true.
>Chattanooga because those locales had better community college systems...and the ability to quickly gear up for Toyota specific classes
Lots of companies have used "free" training offered by local political divisions along with tax breaks as lures for plants to locate in their area. Of course the taxpayers pay more to subsidize the real costs of building and running the plant. I.e., the water entity east of Cincy allowed the Ford transmission plant to be built without paying the tap in fee for water--$500,000. They worried about the $1.50 late fee because they received a payment late from me (I mailed it early) when I sold the condo that use the same water entity. The water users for that region paid for the tap in costs that Governor Rhodes wanted forgiven. I heard they're closing the plant now.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
My guess is that if they are laid off, lots will move out here to Boise where we're still building houses like crazy. :shades:
I like the way you picked up on knowledgeable management so fast.
As far as the jobs bank, the problem is the union contract which the Big 3 foolishly signed onto...basically, if you were hired to install wheels on the left side, they cannot make you install wheels on the right side...VERY strict definition of job description, came back to bite automakers hard...
Japanese saw stupid handwriting on the wall, and they hire you to work for Toyota, Honda, doing whatever they need you to do...today, install wheels, tomorrow, install windshields...simple matter of cross training so they can place you where they need you...plus, one would expect that the worker is better utilized from a mental state simply because monotony is reduced, if not eliminated...
The unions are so crooked, when they finally breathe their last gasp, they won't just be buried, they will have to be screwed into the ground...
That's your tax dollars at work (1992 American Automobile Labeling Act).
Most people either don't care or aren't aware of the labels. There's more here. (NHTSA)