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I understood that Korean unions were very strong and included Hyunda and Kia.
Also didn't the Korean government support their auto industries with money? And still do?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
But they wouldn't be there if it wasn't for massive help of the Korean government.
So following your logic, the US govt should give money to US automakers as long as they set up factories overseas?
Your position is very myopic. And this is coming from somebody who also thinks the UAW is bad.
I understood that Korean unions were very strong and included Hyunda and Kia.
I think the point was that in the US, Kia produces without unions. As do all of the import makes.
It's sort of funny that the unionized imports make vehicles here without union labor, but the US makes export their manufacturing out of the country to use non-union labor. This puts a boat anchor around the US makes.
Kia as an overall organization was built both with union labor and with federal intervention - not to mention any kind of bribes were given to have factories built in the US. If you hate these, you must also hold Kia to the same standard, no matter which government gave the aid or where the union is located. Which factory is in California, anyway? I am aware Hyunkia has R&D there, but not vehicle assembly.
Had the top few not abused the workers, unions wouldn't exist. I won't deny they can be abusive now, but they were born for one reason - executive idiocy.
Many groups steal money from the taxpayer - the military-industrial complex, criminal justice system. foreign aid recipients, corporate welfare addicts, and so on. GM is but a drop in the bucket, crying over spilled milk.
There is no free market anywhere.
Companies are definitely NOT getting what they pay for, relative to the foreign makes.
Interesting that Arpey, the former CEO of American Airlines, tried for 10 years to not go into Chapter 11, as the competitors slowly gained and surpassed AA in market share. He was originally put there with support of the unions. But then the unions ended up wanting him out. He left as AA declared Chapter 11, and refused to take a golden parachute. A CEO not playing by the big money rules. Yet the unions STILL didn't like the guy. They are a bigger problem than the CEOs these days.
I think Arpey at Airlines may be a bad example. Taking huge executive bonuses and pay increases shortly after shaking down the workers for big cuts doesn't seem to reflect very good leadership in my book. Under his command AA went from the largest, and one of the most profitable airlines to a third place weakling. The innovation and competitiveness under prior CEO Crandall seemed squandered. Pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and ramp agents didn't cause this by themselves.
Blaming the UAW for all of the auto industry ills is not really fair either. The UAW is largely responsible for non competitive work rules and protecting loser employees on the line that drives up labor and ovehead, but honestly more of the real problems at D3 seem to be the making of white collar decisions. Management, engineering and purchasing are reallly responsible for a lot of Detroit's ills. Also, in today's auto manufacturing sector more and more of the work is subcontracted out, so in effect UAW members have less impact on the final product, often merely installing pre-assembled kits or units. The vendors may or may not be union at their plants, and if union, it may or may not be the UAW.
Let's look at the recent Chevy Sonic brake pad issue. Whether resulting from incomplete vendor packages or improper Sonic assembly line procedures, the real issue is that GM didn't have the QA processes and statistical control to catch the problem quickly and upfront. It had to find out about it from dealer service shops. TQM should have caught this issue relatively early through inspection, acceptance and work or vendor control procedures before many units affected got released to dealers. You can't really lay the bulk of the blame on the union for this one.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the goals of TQM to design products and processes to eliminate the need for inspections? I remember working for a manufacturer of industrial products whose mantra was to simplify everything so that inspections could be eliminated.
I too am not blaming the union here because I could see that if the expectation of quality is 3.4 defects per 1 million products (six sigma), then the subassemblies didn't need to be inspected. IMHO, some assembly supplier is in big trouble.
Theoretically yes, but realistically I don't think it will abandon once in awhile random looks because math isn't 100% in statistics. To buy totally into no inspections IMO means people and processes can be made so static that both can continually opererate in the far edges 3 sigma out in a bell curve. Practcality tells me no way!
I believe the work was subcontracted out BECAUSE of the UAW in an attempt to make the product easier to assemble without so much UAW labor and the possibility of screwing it up...when the entire dashboard assembly comes to the line, then you don't give the UAW member a chance to put in the speedometer crooked, or leave out the radio, because it comes in as one piece...so, I see the subcontracting as a consequence of the UAW...while, at the same time, the UAW protects those loser employees (who can now cause less damage with their incompetence due to those subcontracted units) and those noncompetetive work rules that STILL continues to require more employees on the job than the imports use for the same quantity of vehicles produced...
While management certainly has its share of blame, I cannot find myself ever in a position to advocate or support anything the UAW does, or stands for, since about the 1940s...
While management has designed some lousy cars, or the look-alike cars of GM (where the Caddy and a Chevy looked the same, along with Buick, Olds and Pontiac), I still believe that the American carbuyers deserted the Big 3 not because of design problems (half the people who buy cars can barely find where the ignition key goes, they are not car-mavens like we are) but because our cars had degenerated to worthless crap with rattles, squeaks, missing parts, extra parts, hoods that didn't close and doors that did not line up when closed...those are the things that Joe Avergage sees and hears and it is what makes him think that the car is junk...
So, when he went over to Honda and closes a car door that sounds like a vault, and sees that the car doesn't rattle, that the hood closes solidly, and when the 4-cylinder engine is running it hums quietly instead of clanking, that impresses him with quality, and he buys it...now the Big 3 have to do a lot of work to bring him back when they spents years selling him products that finally sent him away...bringing him back will not be easy because he now believes,rightly or wrongly, that the import car is made better than the car made by his UAW neighbor...
Sorry to burst your bubble but the vast majority of tier 1 suppliers (the ones that provide complete sub-assemblies) are UAW shops. The reason to sub out the assembly work is to reduce overhead costs. Why pay for the building where seats are assembled when you can have your supplier deal with the overhead cost?
Now we have no idea of who supplied the sub-assemblies on the Cruze - typically that information is not released. As such, we don't know who to blame. But in any case, it shouldn't have happened.
The packs in the Volt are being manufactured at the Brownstown Battery Pack Assembly Plant in Brownstown Township outside Detroit. General Motors spent $43 million and five months retooling the plant. It sits on a 375-acre site in an industrial park near two airports, where the lithium-ion cells would arrive from Korea. The cells will be assembled into the 400-pound T-shaped pack that will power the Volt, then sent up Interstate 75 to the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant where the range-extended electric car will be built.
The Department of Energy awarded $106 million in grants in August to help refurbish the Brownstown factory under its $2.4 billion package to spur development of next-generation batteries and electric vehicles in the United States. That’s on top of the $266 million the feds have invested to support development of the Volt, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.
So far we the tax payers have over $70,000 invested in each Volt battery sold. I love this green energy business. If I was young I would get in on the ground floor.
Are you talking about the brake pad loaded caliper unit for the Sonic? not the Cruze?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Yes I meant the Sonic.
http://www.insideline.com/chevrolet/photos/chevrolet_det_ns_317112.html
40% US/Canadian
20% Korea
Engine Origin Austria
Transmission Origin Japan
A Chapter 11 filing could help Kodak shed some of those obligations, but the viability of the company's printer strategy has yet to be demonstrated, raising questions about the fate of the company's 19,000 employees.
Such uncertainty was once unthinkable at Kodak, whose near-monopoly on film produced high margins that the company shared with its workers. On "wage dividend days," a tradition started by Kodak founder George Eastman, the company would pay out bonuses to all workers based on its results, and employees would use the checks to buy cars and celebrate at fancy restaurants.
Former employees say the company was the Apple Inc. or Google Inc. of its time.
The obligation to cover pension and health-care costs for retirees could also be purged through bankruptcy proceedings, the people said.
Those obligations—which run to hundreds of millions of dollars a year
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577140841495542810.html?m- od=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
There is a lesson to be learned here. Trusting a company to always be profitable was the mistake GM made when agreeing to unsustainable wages and benefits. Here is a company that is older that most in the country headed for oblivion. having an individual retirement is to my way of thinking the best.
Rocky would always complain about 401K's, and say pensions were da bomb. Personally I'm glad I'm managing my own money in IRAs and 401ks. I'm a much better money manager than the federal government, or any company that needs to live longer than you do to ensure your pension doesn't run out. Lots of retirees are finding that out the hard way.
But yeah, as far as your 401K developments, for sure, manage them yourself. You can change those now really often yourself, and that is a good thing.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
But seriously, I can see where the retirees could really get shafted, depending on the funding level of the pension plan. Just look at what happened to Bethlehem Steel retirees.
I drove through Rochester a few months ago. Empty looking parts of town, but well maintained Kodak facilities were all over.
Whatever is left of Kodak is going to become a patent licensing firm, if they don't sell them all outright. Not much work for the union workers in that.
"Eastman Kodak said its U.S. pension plans remain fully funded despite recent market declines. "We are not at all concerned that the PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.) will need to become involved in the fulfillment of Kodak's U.S. pension obligations," a spokesman said. "None of our plan participants should have any concerns about Kodak's ability to meet its obligations."
That quote dates from January 2008. :sick: (MSN)
Another case where you can't blame the union for ruining the company.
Main difference I see in pensions vs 401Ks is that many who draw or will draw a pension have been given a much greater return than they could get playing the real world markets with a 401K or similar.
You have to wonder if the execs could envision a time when film would not be needed?
The pension fund being safe now does not make it safe after Chapter 11. What happens to the employee with 30 years invested in the company and not eligible to retire for another 15 years? How many 1000s of employees with just 5 years in were laid off over the last decade. All questions I would be thinking about if I was just heading into the volatile workforce today. I had 9 years into the AT&T pension plan and get $Zero. They had a 15 year vesting prior to ERISA.
The pension fund would be picked up by the feds if it went bust, per that MSN link I posted. For vested employees.
Seems like 5 or 7 years is the norm for vesting these days; no idea if that's regulated.
Assuming the employer doesn't go bankrupt and your pension doesn't get hacked through the PBGC. Which can happen depending on years worked and age. My FIL lost 1/2 of his pension benefits when LTV went belly up.
The Enron 401k plan allowed and encouraged members to invest 100% of funds into company stock (very bad idea). Employees didn't have to, but many chose to. Even at that time, mine and my wife's employers never allowed more than 10% to be invested in company stock (which I believe most plans are that way today).
Another thing that happened to Enron employees was Enron was in the process of changing their 401k plan at the time the company essentially failed. Employees were given warning that the 401k system would be frozen for a set amount of time during the change. When the company went bankrupt, there was no way for employees to make changes to their holdings. The media made it appear that the company purposely locked them out of their accounts w/o notice, but according to the book "Conspiracy of Fools" it was documented that wasn't the case.
My wife's employer did the same thing late last year. They changed companies that managed the 401k system and added more investment options. We were given a several month heads up telling us the system would be inaccessible for up to a week. Which it was.
The company is largely using the low-wage benchmark set by the United Auto Workers (UAW) at its US plants to impose American-style wage and benefit cuts on Canadian workers. During the 1990s the UAW betrayed a series of bitter strikes, and last year it pushed through a six-year deal that slashes wages for new workers. Caterpillar is boasting that wage rates at its Muncie, Indiana plant are half as high as London, and it is not burdened with “antiquated work rules that make the London operation inefficient.”
Caterpillar locks out Canadian workers (World Socialist)
Similar story from a MSM site:"
CAW seeks strike OK at Caterpillar plant (Yahoo/Reuters)
I think the problem with 401k's is simply that most people aren't knowledgeable enough on how the stock market and economy work, and find ways to screw themselves over. And people don't put enough in, take out loans, cash out when they switch employers, etc.
My Mom was in the federal gov't for 42 years, and if it wasn't for a survivor benefit for my stepdad, she'd be getting 80% of her best three years. I think she had to put in something like 9-10% of her gross income to pay for that retirement, and then there was whatever the gov't contributed towards it.
I'd like to think if the average worker was able to save 9-10% of their gross income, over the course of 40+ years, it should grow to be a pretty nice nest egg.
Now some pensions are downright abusive, like those police/fireman/state employee pensions you hear about where they let you pad your final few years with a lot of overtime, then throw on a disability or two, and you end up making more in retirement than you did while working!
With a 401k though, it takes a LOT of discipline, especially when you're young, to start investing. Heck, I wish I had done it at a younger age. I could have started contributing when I was 22, but didn't sign up until I was 27.
Also, people often react too knee-jerk. They see their investment drop, and instead of just riding it out, they end up selling at a big loss. Then, when the market rebounds, they try to jump back in, often at a higher price than what they had been in to begin with!
I bet those executive pay packages were the first thing CAT cut when they decided to save money.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Missed it by that much...
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
Probably was back in its heyday. Then again, so was the old AT&T (Ma Bell), IBM, Hewlett Packard, Xerox, GM, US Steel, ...
But not funny ha ha. I'm flashing on executive washrooms. Hope Kodak shuttered the executive dining room too.
I think it does, so long as it's not funded with Kodak stock. Pension funds are generally off limits in bankruptcy proceedings. Kathy, Bob, or someone else probably knows for sure.
Problems come about when the fund is underfunded when C11 comes about.
You left out the COLAs she gets. Depending on how long she's been retired for, she may be bringing in more in retirement than she was when she was working. I know that's the case for a friend of mine who also retired with around the same number of years as your mom.
I'd like to think if the average worker was able to save 9-10% of their gross income, over the course of 40+ years, it should grow to be a pretty nice nest egg.
Yes, but nowhere near what a lifetime payout from a plan like your mom had is worth.
Think about it. What's the present value that would be needed to provide 80% of her final (highest?) 3 years, plus ~3% increases for the rest of her life? $2 million? $3 million?
What I bet very few people, outside the company itself, know is that EK’s pension liabilities could torpedo the company into bankruptcy and send the stock to significantly lower levels. In the Footnotes of the company’s recently-published 10-K, we found that EK’s pension obligations are underfunded by $2.6 billion, about 3 times the company’s market value. That’s right, the company is on the hook for $2.6 billion in obligations to its employees that, right now, it has no way to pay. Notably, this situation reminds me of analysis we did on General Motors (GM) for the Forbes’s article “Paychecks on Steroids” in spring 2005. We pointed out to Forbes that GM’s underfunded pension liabilities, about $70 billion, were nearly 5 times the company’s market value, about $15 billion, at that time.
http://blog.newconstructs.com/2011/03/22/dead-company-walking-sell-eastman-kodak- -ek/