Just reading a bit of history of one of my favorites, no longer around, Studebaker. They had an organized workforce in the late 1800s. The workers were interested in keeping Studebaker as the NUMBER ONE Wagon maker in the World and cooperated with the company during tough times. Why is it so hard for the UAW to do the same for GM and the other UAW represented companies?
The worldwide economic depression of 1893 caused a dramatic pause in sales and the plant closed down for five weeks, but industrial relations were good and the organised workforce declared faith in their employer.
Interestingly Studebaker was working on an electric horseless carriage. Sound familiar? They gave up and went with the rest building gas powered.
In 1895, John M's son-in-law Fred Fish urged for development of 'a practical horseless carriage'. At first, Studebaker opted for electric (battery-powered) over gasoline propulsion.
Well, that's eventually what happened at my company. The unions, IBEW and IUE primarily, saw the handwriting on the wall and decided it was better to cooperate and have fewer jobs than no jobs at all.
Bill Gates must of also like the icon driven menu too. Thats the way it went and today Apple is the king in the IPOD business and also happens to make computers. How did Sony let the Walkman brand get away from them?
I think Bill got a chance to see an Apple Lisa someplace. He decided that GUIs were the way of the future. In the early days of Windows, there was a fair amount of litigation over some of the icons between MS and Apple (forgetting for the moment that Apple had appropriated much of the look and feel of the Lisa from Xerox) , the trash can being the one I remember the most. Why anyone could think, and have a court agree with them that a trash can as a metaphor for deleting something could be copyright is beyond me, but anyway that's why you don't see the trash can on MS Windows desktop.
Not exactly. We will continue to pay the legacy costs of millions of civil service retirees local, state and Federal. Pensions in the private sector are diminishing. We are just going to be paying the residual benefits via PBGC on any remaining defaulted Pension plans. It will probably be another 50 years before all the retirees and current people on defined pensions are gone in the private sector. I know many Unions, mine included are still collecting so much per hour going into a pension trust. The UAW along with the D3 were the only ones I know of that thought they could beat the odds on life time Health Care benefits. I know in the IBEW retirees in Alaska are now paying $800 per month to continue health care coverage to age 65. My partners wife pays almost half her pension into the health care plan. Not sure why as he is still covered under the Teamster's plan. It does end up covering 100% of any medical or dental costs.
Oh yea, I forgot about the government pensions! I mean in private industry they will go away.
Thanks for the clarity!
The retiree health care is a major problem that the government/industry will need to fix. That means both private industry and the government and the medical community need to work together to make it work.
I think the government (all levels) pensions are going to have to be re-thought also.
Friend of mine retired from the fed with over 40 years. He retired at something like 80% of his final average compensation (FAC). With COLA's, he is now making more than when he was working. This pattern will continue until he dies. I don't think taxpayers who only have a 401K plan are going to want to fund this sort of largess.
Agreed but the current administration will probably do little to reduce this. I believe here in NJ they talked about it but the resistance could have taken over the government of China :surprise:
I hear no such talk as the sponsor is buried under the NEW Giants Stadium!
Public sector pensions must be scrapped. They are going to be such a huge burden in the future, they cannot be allowed to exist. When the peak of the baby boom is retiring and believing they are entitled to 80% of their old salary plus other perks not seen in the private sector/real world, things will get messy.
The workers were interested in keeping Studebaker as the NUMBER ONE Wagon maker in the World and cooperated with the company during tough times. Why is it so hard for the UAW to do the same for GM and the other UAW represented companies?
You can blame Goldfinger for that. He has had at least two strategic options in leading the UAW and has pursued strategy#1 to the detriment of strategy#2:
Strategy #1 - Continuously work for greater benefits and compensation for existing union workers Strategy #2 - Continuously look out for the health of the union by preserving union jobs and helping unionized companies to be successful and competitive
Public sector pensions must be scrapped. They are going to be such a huge burden in the future, they cannot be allowed to exist. When the peak of the baby boom is retiring and believing they are entitled to 80% of their old salary plus other perks not seen in the private sector/real world, things will get messy.
Agreed. Here in CA the state is faced with a similar problem to GM, except that they can't declare Chapter 11. If you work for 25-30 years and plan for the benefits you are told you will get, then you should be able to expect to get those benefits or you are screwed. The problem is that those of us with 401Ks, etc. (my retirement savings is down almost 50% and I am in my 50's) are also screwed. So my taxes go up to pay for the budget shortfall while I can't retire for 5-10 years later than anticipated.
The UAW has the same challenge. If GM goes under then the retirees are screwed to some extent. Yet GM made poor promises it can't keep and stay viable. It's a tough situation all around. The upshot is that across the entire country, private and public pensions are going to die.
The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain. All other factors remaining equal, the store will have to charge higher prices for its merchandise, and its competitive position will suffer.
This is Economics 101, but no one wants to believe it, because it tells us that a legislative or unionized quick-fix is not going to work in the long term. If you want people to be wealthier, they have to create additional wealth.
To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?
O, Enchanted One, this fool has, again, blasphemed! I prostrate myself before thee and beg profusely for your omniscient mercy!
The ex presidents we had never were in favor of the unions. The working man in this society are looked down at. If all of the white collar creeps would look around I wonder who built all of their offices and such. The working class has a better chance with this President then the past ones. The working class should stand up and be proud of what the do for a living. If people would treat their job as a profession and not as a job,they would have to take a back seat to no one. The same people that cry about the woking class will watch a baseball game and think nothing of it give me a break. After being a crane operator for 38 years. I have a nice pension and a small insurance premium per month. Instead of knocking the working class we Americans should stand up and embrace them. They built America not the Chinesse and Japanese. Years ago the working class was looked up to not down at.
The kids all go to college and feel that is the correct thing to do. I would choose a job in the trades. Insurance and pensions not 401K it is just a glorified savings account.
but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain.
Come on, do a little thinking out of the box. You can do more with less. Its called technology. It goes way back to the wheel. Just look at the way 95% of the population were free from growing the food by technology. There are so so many examples. Wait till you see nano technology and genetics. I saw a young PHD holding a missile the size of a toy model. Then I saw a new tire, which needs no air, developed for the MULE (an advanced army weapon).
kipk: "Then I began to understand why the "[non-permissible content removed]" cars were so popular. The Toyota never broke. Never had to take it to a dealer for any type of warranty or other work. The 73 Chevy truck had been to the dealer, many times. I didn't "know" the service writers at the Toyota dealership like I did at the Chevy and Pontiac dealerships."
While your experience is the experience of one, you have, IMO, summed up the problem with UAW products since the 70s...my wife (girlfriend at the time) had a 1975 Toyota pickup,,,change oil, tune up, and replace tires for first 100K miles...camshaft and distributor after 110K, when the average Big 3 car was junk after 50K (yeah, I know, except lemko's cars which were new at the time and still running strong...and lemko is the only one...:):)...)...even back then, you could start to see the Japanese quality emerging, while they still had work to do, we were already on the downslide...kip, your statement summarizes the epitaph of the American UAW makers...
gagrice: what we have is someone defending 10-plus weeks off a year because they get dirty at work...forgive me, but every naive post is an expression from the "entitlement subconscious mind" that they are inherently worth what they have been able to extract thru extortion over the years...
The UAW, if it was populated by people who wanted to make a good, EFFICIENTLY made product, would have 1/3 the folks in any given plant, working 8 hours a day, not 2, at a reasonable pace for reasonable productivity...the UAW is the literal equivalent of the Georgia DOT, where one worker shovels dirt while 4 people watch...
rocky, those days are over...period...you didn't earn them in the last 50 years (even tho you extorted them) and you sure as heck don't earn them now...you simply lived like everyone else in Detroit Fantasyland, thinking that what you had was via Divine Right, and you were just damn lucky to have had it for so many years...now the Reality has set in, and those days are simply GONE...no more free healthcare with no copays or premium payments, no more junk out the front door cuz we ain't buying it with better alternatives elsewhere, no more work 2 hours and paid for 8, no more Jobs Bank which is a euphemism for welfare (don't even TRY to tell me they earned it, they don't)...the UAW has fooled the public for 50 years and, lucky for you, the charade has lasted so that 3rd grade dropouts who can't read could be paid more than their skills would ever permit, and now it is over...and all you can do is whine why they should be getting even more, and all I want to know is how do you ever justify in anyone's conscience how they should be paid ANYTHING with the trash workmanship they foistered on us all these years...missing parts, extra parts, windows that are not in their channels, doors that don't line up, the list goes on forever, and you simply ignore it and keep repeating that they earn it by showing up...
what you know about capitalism would fill...a short paragraph...just explain to me how the scam the UAW pulled for the last 50 years can continue with the Japanese and Koreans making better products, at least in the eyes of MANY Americans, or at least the ones buying cars...
The union helps the non union get better wages. Pension versus 401k forget the 401k
That stands to reason. Your stating the obvious. However, we have many here still living in the 50s 40s. Besides, why would folks pay more for a union made Harley? Why would Harley have a higher resale value than the rice burners? Are Harley's vibes also the preferred by women???
OK, how many have cable/dish TV? IPODs? DSL as oppose to dial up?
Well they must of spent their disposable income on something else or had quite a bit in the bank I would think because those steel mills in Gary, were good paying bluecollar jobs back in the day!!!
Yeah, he was paid well, and he saved money up to buy a vacation house in Florida and he and grandma saved their money. He liked his Buick's but he always kept them a while. I don't believe the steel mill guys were paid more than UAW workers though. My grandpa has 43 years of service when he retired in '79. I believe he was making around $11/hr at that time. He told me he had the highest hourly rate in the mill and I think he maid around $25k in '79. I'd guess that is probably inline with what the autoworkers were paid with similar seniority.
Well 25 years later you had Toyota's with engine sludge thus what's your point??? :confuse:
The point I was making is the cars back then were not nearly as reliable as your average car today and the vast majority of cars in the 70's rusted fairly quickly, whether it was a Ford, Dodge, Chevy, or Toyota. There was a reason every dealer sold the Ziebart rust proofing that may or may not have worked.
Technology in manufacturing is also going to happen. Just not in UAW shops as a result of their antiquated work rules. Ford did attempt to build a state of the art factory for UAW workers. They were shot down by WORK RULES. So they built it in Brazil. So Brazilian workers will have jobs and more UAW workers will be working at WalMart. It was a UAW choice and they blew again. You would think after losing over a million jobs in 30 years the UAW would figure it out.
Well 25 years later you had Toyota's with engine sludge thus what's your point???
Your sum total experiences of the cars you owned and the years you owned them in isn't exactly a very scientific methodology and or valid to draw any conclusion whatsoever. My wife, girl friend the time, had the 92 Camry from hell. The problems are way too many to list here.
When the UAW are "Out of the Box", US Auto will be ripe for profits again.
Agree on high technology and the gains we will be making. But for the Unions, the future is too costly. Remove them, and the "Out of the Union Box Thinking" becomes alive again.
Just not in UAW shops as a result of their antiquated work rules.
Here in the Dallas area (Arlington, TX) we have the GM honeycomb plant. Its state of the art and can crank out over 250,000 SUV's a year. They are UAW and proud of it. As soon as those Brazilians get enough cash, they will buy chain saws and start clear cutting the rain forrest. How stupid is that?
Here in the Dallas area (Arlington, TX) we have the GM honeycomb plant. Its state of the art and can crank out over 250,000 SUV's a year. They are UAW and proud of it.
SUV sales down over 40% in 2008...even the best team poorly lead will fail.
Read the fine print: GM is doomed until ALL of the legacy failures are removed. So much to do, so little time.
SUV sales down over 40% in 2008...even the best team poorly lead will fail.
They will be adding jobs at the Arlington Texas plant. United Emirates like SUV's.
The Arlington plant is GM's only full-size sport utility vehicle factory.
In an effort to increase production, GM has decided to cancel two of the weeks this year that the Arlington plant was supposed to be closed and increase the speed of the assembly line by 1.5 jobs per hour, effective March 9.
The Ford-Reuther Paradox: Henry Ford takes labor leader Walter Reuther on a tour of a newly mechanized factory in the late 1930s and crows,"Let's see you unionize these robots!" Reuther retorts, "Let's see you sell'em cars."
He continued his education in Michigan, first graduating from high school and then attending Wayne State University for three years. Victor and Roy joined him. In 1933, Roy was fired for union activity. He and Victor drew about $600 in savings from a bank a few days before it closed and started on a trip that was to take them around the world. For 18 months they worked in an automobile plant Ford had built at Gorki in Russia. The experience convinced their critics they were, at best, Communist sympathizers.
Reuther says it convinced him of the danger of totalitarianism. When Khrushchev visited the United States, Reuther arranged a meeting for him with labor leaders. A bareknuckle discussion took place.
"He asked me, 'How come I get along beautifully with the bankers and businessmen and you're challenging me?' I said, 'Well, it's because we know you better. We know why communism is dangerous and why we've get to fight it. It was after Mr. Khrushchev went back that he said I'm the chief lackey of American capitalism."
Walter and Victor returned to Detroit in 1935 and threw themselves into the labor movement. It was a time of vast social change. The late Rabbi Morris Adler said the yearning for a union was almost "a secular religion." Reuther said he felt "a sense of little people marching." He was a founder and first president of UAW local 174. He attended his first UAW convention with $5, the local's entire treasury. He hitchhiked to South Bend, shared a room with five other delegates and lived on hamburgers.
It was sold year[sic] later to Tenneco Inc and is still in business today.
Yep, and there's no longer an IH plant in Louisville because of the strike. That said, I do have a Cub Cadet Commercial ZTR mower. It starts every time. I think that's because it has a Kawasaki engine. If it makes you feel better, I did buy a Ford product- their synthetic manual transmission oil. It also works great. Probably because it's made in Germany...
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
They will be adding jobs at the Arlington Texas plant. United Emirates like SUV's.
Not until the price of oil goes back up.
according to figures released today, which show a 37% rise in GM sales in the UAE during the first half of 2008 compared to the same period last year.
How many did they buy after oil dropped from a $147 per barrel high? The important question is UAE sales first quarter of 2009. They were BIG losers in Citigroup.
2000 SUVs per month is not enough to pay the interest on the money they borrowed from US tax payers.
"Your sum total experiences of the cars you owned and the years you owned them in isn't exactly a very scientific methodology and or valid to draw any conclusion whatsoever"
No, it isn't any more scientific than using lemko's experience with Big 3 cars that have lasted for him over 20 years...BUT...the market has not agreed with lemko's opinion of Big 3 cars, or we would not see Detroit in the crisis mode it is in today...PLUS...
It is a small microcosm of what I saw that pretty much became reality in the last 10-15 years...I saw a Japanese product that held together better then any Big 3 car I had even seen, even before I knew who Toyota was (hers was the first Toyota I had ever been up close to, esp back in 1978 when we met, and her car was 3 years old then)...
Between 1985-1988 I bought 4 Hondas, whcih, IMO, were the most solid built cars I have ever driven...
As far as Toyota sludge, I have never implied that Japanese cars were perfect, Toyota screwed up on that one...but, compared to the absoluet sheer number of people who apparently have been screwed with Big 3 cars over the last 25 years, and the recent 50% market share of the "imports" in the last few years, what I saw in my wife's Toyota has apparently been "seen" by millions of Americans who have deserted Big 3 in droves...so, altho they did not sit in my Toy or any of my Hondas, they have obviously seen what I saw and you will probably NEVER see them back in a Big 3 car ever again...
So, my experience is hardly scientific...but the loss of sales of Big 3 over just the last decade IS absolute proof that SOMEBODY, or a whole lot of somebodies, have come to the same conclusion that I have, and the Toy sludge problem is apparently miniscule in causing too many folks to desert Toyota, but poor fitting doors, missing parts and windows that cannot stay in their channels (read: UAW) have caused millions to desert Ford, GM and Chrysler...and that is an indisputable fact...my opinions were just 20 years ahead of everybody else, as they eventually saw what I saw in a better product...
So, my own conclusions are insignificant, but when millions of American consumers come to the same conclusion, on their own, without a gun to their head, willing buying Japanese cars, my conclusion was correct, altho I did not know it at the time, anyone who sat in a Japanese car could tell the quality and ergonomic difference from the git-go...
As soon as those Brazilians get enough cash, they will buy chain saws and start clear cutting the rain forrest. How stupid is that?
Yes, how stupid a question is that? They will likely buy a new Ford that they are happy to have built. Brazil is one of the emerging markets if you had not noticed. It is outsiders that are cutting down the rain forest at an alarming rate. Nice try at deflecting from more UAW ignorance. That new factory is a well documented case of UAW stupidity. Face it you are aligned with a bunch of morons. From Reuther the commie up to Gettlefinger the retard.
Hey Rocky, we love ya, but there's a problem with your scenario. You want it "like the 60's", where we have little foreign trade and are pretty-much self-sufficient internally. You see that this will preserve our standard of living.
It would and I'll explain later in the post......
The problem is that today's cars use many foreign components. Where will you get the control computers that run today's engines? Are we going back to carburetors? How about the CD or MP3 player? The GPS system? Antilock brake controls? And even more importantly, where is the gasoline coming from? You seem to want it all internal except for what we NEED from outside. And that's not going to work. Just on gasoline alone, if we started producing 60's-era cars again and did no foreign trade, only half of us would be able to drive since we would have so little fuel!
All those empty Delphi, plants you see across the country would in my vintage 1960's like world would be filled with UAW, workers making those parts like they did a decade ago!!! All those Johnson Controls Plants would be making car interior parts because in my domestic content law society is what you sell here has to be made here!!! We will trade with other nations but like them you will have to pay a import tariff for that foreign import!!! As far as gasoline goes that technology is so out dated it's not even funny. I would invest billions of dollars into small business to create biodiesel plants and instead of giving american farmers subsidies to grow nothing well I would sit down with agriculture scientist across the nation and grow ethanol producing crops. I also would turn garbage, tires, etc, into fuel as the technology DOES exist!!! Anyone that takes oil lobby money would get a noose and a trap door!!!
So pick your choice - half the driving with 60's era cars, or today's technology with globalization. Hint: you can't go backwards.
I haven't because I can have my cake and eat it too!!! Tesla, and other car companies have proven electric cars are realistic. The technology for hydrogen, cold fusion, solar, are there. I've studied these technologies and with each passing day they are becoming more efficient and more realistic. The reason why these technologies haven't came to the market is because we have too many politicians in both parties that are baught and paid for by big oil. Our last president and his crooked buddy were oil men!!! I think the Volt, and like cars will finally bring a new technology to the market and the future looks better than ever for us getting rid of oil as a main energy source!!!
Who gets 10.5 weeks off a year??? There you go again gagrice, believing everything you read!!! The CAW, might get 10.5 weeks off after 20 years but my UAW father, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandfathers, never got 10.5 weeks off of vacation EVER unless it was due to a lay-off!!! :confuse:
That is why we need to invest now and lay the foundation so we can at some near term juncture tell em' all to pound sand!!! It's called having a plan or goal thus remember they need us a lot more than we need them!!! We hold the cards and they don't!!!
I was trying to bipartisan, but those other articles said their is a obvious connection that crime goes up during tough times!!! Do you honestly believe during tough times crime isn't going to go up??? A person loses his job and is about to lose everything but if they go sell this bag of weed or cocaine it will solve there problems if they don't get caught!!! Please don't tell me that you aren't aware of this especially since you live in the drug capital of the U.S. in California, where illegals and the drug cartel are smuggling drugs every day through the border and I just watched a program the other day about all the pot plants growing in state forests in California, gagrice. However I gotta remember whom I'm speaking too also thus the bad economy and drug and other crimes might not connect the dots like it would for most people!!! :confuse:
It is not BS, It is the UAW leaders themselves. The rules say when you have produced a given amount you may go home. Not hardly 8 hours work for 8 hours pay.
WOW!!! You really don't know what you are talking about. UAW workers aren't allowed to just go home early after producing there quota for the day. You also are forgetting the lean manufacturing theory of "just in time delivery" and building extra parts is over producing and isn't tolerated thus machine maintainence, etc, is performed during slow times. The only time a "work slow down" has ever been used is during "contract" talks to not build so many extra parts that you are out of a job for months. Delphi, stockpiled a bunch of parts during the last contract negotiation and in fact had the UAW workers working overtime. I don't expect you to understand the manufacturing industry as your union job and work had little competition for outside sources and what little competition you had based on what you told me was from higher paying non-union, domestic sources thus due to those circumstances it is hard for "others" who aren't factory workers to "comprehend" just what in the hell goes on in a factory. Reading about it or hearing it from Rush, doesn't make it so!!! I've been in those plants on several ocassions. I use to deliver industrial chemicals to Delphi and other supplier plants and worked at JCI. I also was allowed to go inside my Delphi Coopersville and the Wyoming "Burlingame" Valve Lifter Plant on a few ocassions for tours and family picnics.
So you have a problem with a UAW, worker making $50 or $60K a year because some truck mechanic is making $19 an/hr. with no benefits. Well is this truck mechanic got any certificates and if so perhaps he should try to organize his workplace. I don't know who this truck mechanic is but perhaps he has a skill but a criminal record a mile long or is a illegal alien, has a poor work record. I have a hard time believing in the state of california a fully certified truck/diesel mechanic is only pulling down $19 an/hr. with no benefits and if he is well he needs to either organize or find a better shop or relocate to Michigan, because we are paying them a lot better than that with benefits!!!
Toyota, isn't the strongest global manufactuer today as that would still be General Electric!!!! General Electric, is the biggest corporation in the world and owns a stake in more area's than any other company!!!!
The UAW, has organized some mechanics at some dealerships thus they were the highest paid. The positive side was that dealership certainly got the cream of the crop whenever an opening became available!!!
Well the globalist are playing you as a fool if you believe lawyers are included in their one world government. You want to talk about a fantasyland look no further than the neocon capitalist you embrace!!! 500-5000 times there workers pay and you are going to try to convince me "they earned it" marsha7??? Making slaves and exploiting people might be something you and your globalist buddies might embrace but when things go south I don't want you sitting on your millions asking me and UAW workers to take up arms to fight your global war. The commies will back stab you in a NY second!!! Russia and China, have taken over certain manufacturing facilites in their country for periods of time. GM, had a plant over in Russia, I think last year taken over by Putin, and his cronies and I said it serves them right!!!
Your one world government or socialism for the rich has showed it's head and when the UAW workers and other union and non-union workers all lose there jobs to globalism and you have another quarter of the workforce unemployed and people are starving and rioting at your door well you my friend will just have to deal with the consquences. Just like the UAW, your portfolio will be done also. This country will go into shambles as there will be nobody left to buy stuff to keep the wheels turning in your serf n' elite society. It will be a sad place and time as it will only get worse with time UNLESS we do something to change the course of this sinking ship!!! :sick:
Well I think lemko's cars are perfect examples of how much better domestic cars were than japanese back in the 80's as far as rusting goes!!! The Japanese, didn't have to enriched iron ore of the U.S. to use on their cars back then. There steel was sort of brittle and because they had gutless engines they used paper thin sheet metal to keep weight down and no the ziebart, didn't work but the stuff we have today actually does work!!!
General Electric, is the biggest corporation in the world and owns a stake in more area's than any other company!!!!
According to Wikipedia, GE is 10th by market capitalization. Ahead of it are 9 other companies, including Microsoft and your favorite, Walmart, not to mention 3 Chinese-based firms.
I'm glad you think cold fusion, a concept that you claim to have "studied" has been discredited by every peer reviewer that looked at it, is going to save the US :P .
The other side of that coin is the fact that people cannot afford drugs during down times. I agree that the drug problem is caused by the US. It was a common saying that Cocaine was god's way of telling people they are making too much money. Follow the money. I know in Alaska the drugs were everywhere when the state was going gangbusters. If you think that high paid Union types are not purchasers of illegal drugs you are naive.
Again to point out your lack of understanding of the situation. There are literally 1000s of mechanics out of work due to the downturn. Here is a job listing for a Union diesel mechanic. I know my wife's nephew owns a shop that repairs semi tractors and he pays his mechanics $19 non union. And he is close to going under here in San Diego.
Diesel Mechanic Job Description: Anticipated Opening! Apply early as this job may be removed or filled prior to the closing date. Work Location:Roseville, CA Closing Date:October 31, 2008 Salary:$22.45/hrStarting pay is approximately $21.69 per hour. The terms of the collective bargaining agreement shall apply.
When the guy reaches top Union scale he will be making $46k per year. That in a place that the average home is currently selling for $390K.
Comments
The worldwide economic depression of 1893 caused a dramatic pause in sales and the plant closed down for five weeks, but industrial relations were good and the organised workforce declared faith in their employer.
Interestingly Studebaker was working on an electric horseless carriage. Sound familiar? They gave up and went with the rest building gas powered.
In 1895, John M's son-in-law Fred Fish urged for development of 'a practical horseless carriage'. At first, Studebaker opted for electric (battery-powered) over gasoline propulsion.
I think Bill got a chance to see an Apple Lisa someplace. He decided that GUIs were the way of the future. In the early days of Windows, there was a fair amount of litigation over some of the icons between MS and Apple (forgetting for the moment that Apple had appropriated much of the look and feel of the Lisa from Xerox) , the trash can being the one I remember the most. Why anyone could think, and have a court agree with them that a trash can as a metaphor for deleting something could be copyright is beyond me, but anyway that's why you don't see the trash can on MS Windows desktop.
JD Power is only one rag guide. They are a dime a dozen.
Regards,
OW
I never sa-sug-a off base post!
Regards,
OW
Not exactly. We will continue to pay the legacy costs of millions of civil service retirees local, state and Federal. Pensions in the private sector are diminishing. We are just going to be paying the residual benefits via PBGC on any remaining defaulted Pension plans. It will probably be another 50 years before all the retirees and current people on defined pensions are gone in the private sector. I know many Unions, mine included are still collecting so much per hour going into a pension trust. The UAW along with the D3 were the only ones I know of that thought they could beat the odds on life time Health Care benefits. I know in the IBEW retirees in Alaska are now paying $800 per month to continue health care coverage to age 65. My partners wife pays almost half her pension into the health care plan. Not sure why as he is still covered under the Teamster's plan. It does end up covering 100% of any medical or dental costs.
Thanks for the clarity!
The retiree health care is a major problem that the government/industry will need to fix. That means both private industry and the government and the medical community need to work together to make it work.
Regards,
OW
Friend of mine retired from the fed with over 40 years. He retired at something like 80% of his final average compensation (FAC). With COLA's, he is now making more than when he was working. This pattern will continue until he dies. I don't think taxpayers who only have a 401K plan are going to want to fund this sort of largess.
I hear no such talk as the sponsor is buried under the NEW Giants Stadium!
Regards,
OW
You can blame Goldfinger for that. He has had at least two strategic options in leading the UAW and has pursued strategy#1 to the detriment of strategy#2:
Strategy #1 - Continuously work for greater benefits and compensation for existing union workers
Strategy #2 - Continuously look out for the health of the union by preserving union jobs and helping unionized companies to be successful and competitive
Agreed. Here in CA the state is faced with a similar problem to GM, except that they can't declare Chapter 11. If you work for 25-30 years and plan for the benefits you are told you will get, then you should be able to expect to get those benefits or you are screwed. The problem is that those of us with 401Ks, etc. (my retirement savings is down almost 50% and I am in my 50's) are also screwed. So my taxes go up to pay for the budget shortfall while I can't retire for 5-10 years later than anticipated.
The UAW has the same challenge. If GM goes under then the retirees are screwed to some extent. Yet GM made poor promises it can't keep and stay viable. It's a tough situation all around. The upshot is that across the entire country, private and public pensions are going to die.
This is Economics 101, but no one wants to believe it, because it tells us that a legislative or unionized quick-fix is not going to work in the long term. If you want people to be wealthier, they have to create additional wealth.
To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?
O, Enchanted One, this fool has, again, blasphemed! I prostrate myself before thee and beg profusely for your omniscient mercy!
Regards,
OW
Not good enough. A first-born sacrifice wold be more in order
If people would treat their job as a profession and not as a job,they would have to take a back seat to no one. The same people that cry about the woking class will watch a baseball game and think nothing of it give me a break.
After being a crane operator for 38 years. I have a nice pension and a small insurance premium per month.
Instead of knocking the working class we Americans should stand up and embrace them. They built America not the Chinesse and Japanese.
Years ago the working class was looked up to not down at.
The kids all go to college and feel that is the correct thing to do. I would choose a job in the trades. Insurance and pensions not 401K it is just a glorified savings account.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
Come on, do a little thinking out of the box. You can do more with less. Its called technology. It goes way back to the wheel. Just look at the way 95% of the population were free from growing the food by technology. There are so so many examples. Wait till you see nano technology and genetics. I saw a young PHD holding a missile the size of a toy model. Then I saw a new tire, which needs no air, developed for the MULE (an advanced army weapon).
While your experience is the experience of one, you have, IMO, summed up the problem with UAW products since the 70s...my wife (girlfriend at the time) had a 1975 Toyota pickup,,,change oil, tune up, and replace tires for first 100K miles...camshaft and distributor after 110K, when the average Big 3 car was junk after 50K (yeah, I know, except lemko's cars which were new at the time and still running strong...and lemko is the only one...:):)...)...even back then, you could start to see the Japanese quality emerging, while they still had work to do, we were already on the downslide...kip, your statement summarizes the epitaph of the American UAW makers...
gagrice: what we have is someone defending 10-plus weeks off a year because they get dirty at work...forgive me, but every naive post is an expression from the "entitlement subconscious mind" that they are inherently worth what they have been able to extract thru extortion over the years...
The UAW, if it was populated by people who wanted to make a good, EFFICIENTLY made product, would have 1/3 the folks in any given plant, working 8 hours a day, not 2, at a reasonable pace for reasonable productivity...the UAW is the literal equivalent of the Georgia DOT, where one worker shovels dirt while 4 people watch...
rocky, those days are over...period...you didn't earn them in the last 50 years (even tho you extorted them) and you sure as heck don't earn them now...you simply lived like everyone else in Detroit Fantasyland, thinking that what you had was via Divine Right, and you were just damn lucky to have had it for so many years...now the Reality has set in, and those days are simply GONE...no more free healthcare with no copays or premium payments, no more junk out the front door cuz we ain't buying it with better alternatives elsewhere, no more work 2 hours and paid for 8, no more Jobs Bank which is a euphemism for welfare (don't even TRY to tell me they earned it, they don't)...the UAW has fooled the public for 50 years and, lucky for you, the charade has lasted so that 3rd grade dropouts who can't read could be paid more than their skills would ever permit, and now it is over...and all you can do is whine why they should be getting even more, and all I want to know is how do you ever justify in anyone's conscience how they should be paid ANYTHING with the trash workmanship they foistered on us all these years...missing parts, extra parts, windows that are not in their channels, doors that don't line up, the list goes on forever, and you simply ignore it and keep repeating that they earn it by showing up...
what you know about capitalism would fill...a short paragraph...just explain to me how the scam the UAW pulled for the last 50 years can continue with the Japanese and Koreans making better products, at least in the eyes of MANY Americans, or at least the ones buying cars...
That stands to reason. Your stating the obvious. However, we have many here still living in the
50s40s. Besides, why would folks pay more for a union made Harley? Why would Harley have a higher resale value than the rice burners? Are Harley's vibes also the preferred by women???OK, how many have cable/dish TV? IPODs? DSL as oppose to dial up?
Yeah, he was paid well, and he saved money up to buy a vacation house in Florida and he and grandma saved their money. He liked his Buick's but he always kept them a while. I don't believe the steel mill guys were paid more than UAW workers though. My grandpa has 43 years of service when he retired in '79. I believe he was making around $11/hr at that time. He told me he had the highest hourly rate in the mill and I think he maid around $25k in '79. I'd guess that is probably inline with what the autoworkers were paid with similar seniority.
Well 25 years later you had Toyota's with engine sludge thus what's your point??? :confuse:
The point I was making is the cars back then were not nearly as reliable as your average car today and the vast majority of cars in the 70's rusted fairly quickly, whether it was a Ford, Dodge, Chevy, or Toyota. There was a reason every dealer sold the Ziebart rust proofing that may or may not have worked.
Amen
Well 25 years later you had Toyota's with engine sludge thus what's your point???
Your sum total experiences of the cars you owned and the years you owned them in isn't exactly a very scientific methodology and or valid to draw any conclusion whatsoever. My wife, girl friend the time, had the 92 Camry from hell. The problems are way too many to list here.
Agree on high technology and the gains we will be making. But for the Unions, the future is too costly. Remove them, and the "Out of the Union Box Thinking" becomes alive again.
Regards,
OW
No, they must continue to bleed until the excesses gained are reduced to the status quo of the non-union industry wages and benefits.
This is not Rocket Science or Brain Surgery...its Union Surgery!
Regards,
OW
Here in the Dallas area (Arlington, TX) we have the GM honeycomb plant. Its state of the art and can crank out over 250,000 SUV's a year. They are UAW and proud of it. As soon as those Brazilians get enough cash, they will buy chain saws and start clear cutting the rain forrest. How stupid is that?
SUV sales down over 40% in 2008...even the best team poorly lead will fail.
Read the fine print: GM is doomed until ALL of the legacy failures are removed. So much to do, so little time.
BTW, does a robot have to pay union dues??
Regards,
OW
http://www.tenneco.com/news/press/archive/press_2008/05302008.html
http://investor.shareholder.com/tenneco/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=343614
http://labor.net.au/news/1948.html
http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/news/news.asp?sou- rceFilter=all&symbol=TEN
They will be adding jobs at the Arlington Texas plant. United Emirates like SUV's.
The Arlington plant is GM's only full-size sport utility vehicle factory.
In an effort to increase production, GM has decided to cancel two of the weeks this year that the Arlington plant was supposed to be closed and increase the speed of the assembly line by 1.5 jobs per hour, effective March 9.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/classifieds/news/automotive/latestne- ws/stories/012709dnbusgm.34424ae.html
http://news.infibeam.com/blog/news/2008/07/21/gm_uae_sales_grow_37_during_first_- half_of_2008.html
BTW, does a robot buy a car???
He continued his education in Michigan, first graduating from high school and then attending Wayne State University for three years. Victor and Roy joined him. In 1933, Roy was fired for union activity. He and Victor drew about $600 in savings from a bank a few days before it closed and started on a trip that was to take them around the world. For 18 months they worked in an automobile plant Ford had built at Gorki in Russia. The experience convinced their critics they were, at best, Communist sympathizers.
Reuther says it convinced him of the danger of totalitarianism. When Khrushchev visited the United States, Reuther arranged a meeting for him with labor leaders. A bareknuckle discussion took place.
"He asked me, 'How come I get along beautifully with the bankers and businessmen and you're challenging me?' I said, 'Well, it's because we know you better. We know why communism is dangerous and why we've get to fight it. It was after Mr. Khrushchev went back that he said I'm the chief lackey of American capitalism."
Walter and Victor returned to Detroit in 1935 and threw themselves into the labor movement. It was a time of vast social change. The late Rabbi Morris Adler said the yearning for a union was almost "a secular religion." Reuther said he felt "a sense of little people marching." He was a founder and first president of UAW local 174. He attended his first UAW convention with $5, the local's entire treasury. He hitchhiked to South Bend, shared a room with five other delegates and lived on hamburgers.
http://www.wvculture.org/history/labor/reutherwalter01.html
Yep, and there's no longer an IH plant in Louisville because of the strike. That said, I do have a Cub Cadet Commercial ZTR mower. It starts every time. I think that's because it has a Kawasaki engine. If it makes you feel better, I did buy a Ford product- their synthetic manual transmission oil. It also works great. Probably because it's made in Germany...
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
Not until the price of oil goes back up.
according to figures released today, which show a 37% rise in GM sales in the UAE during the first half of 2008 compared to the same period last year.
How many did they buy after oil dropped from a $147 per barrel high? The important question is UAE sales first quarter of 2009. They were BIG losers in Citigroup.
2000 SUVs per month is not enough to pay the interest on the money they borrowed from US tax payers.
No, it isn't any more scientific than using lemko's experience with Big 3 cars that have lasted for him over 20 years...BUT...the market has not agreed with lemko's opinion of Big 3 cars, or we would not see Detroit in the crisis mode it is in today...PLUS...
It is a small microcosm of what I saw that pretty much became reality in the last 10-15 years...I saw a Japanese product that held together better then any Big 3 car I had even seen, even before I knew who Toyota was (hers was the first Toyota I had ever been up close to, esp back in 1978 when we met, and her car was 3 years old then)...
Between 1985-1988 I bought 4 Hondas, whcih, IMO, were the most solid built cars I have ever driven...
As far as Toyota sludge, I have never implied that Japanese cars were perfect, Toyota screwed up on that one...but, compared to the absoluet sheer number of people who apparently have been screwed with Big 3 cars over the last 25 years, and the recent 50% market share of the "imports" in the last few years, what I saw in my wife's Toyota has apparently been "seen" by millions of Americans who have deserted Big 3 in droves...so, altho they did not sit in my Toy or any of my Hondas, they have obviously seen what I saw and you will probably NEVER see them back in a Big 3 car ever again...
So, my experience is hardly scientific...but the loss of sales of Big 3 over just the last decade IS absolute proof that SOMEBODY, or a whole lot of somebodies, have come to the same conclusion that I have, and the Toy sludge problem is apparently miniscule in causing too many folks to desert Toyota, but poor fitting doors, missing parts and windows that cannot stay in their channels (read: UAW) have caused millions to desert Ford, GM and Chrysler...and that is an indisputable fact...my opinions were just 20 years ahead of everybody else, as they eventually saw what I saw in a better product...
So, my own conclusions are insignificant, but when millions of American consumers come to the same conclusion, on their own, without a gun to their head, willing buying Japanese cars, my conclusion was correct, altho I did not know it at the time, anyone who sat in a Japanese car could tell the quality and ergonomic difference from the git-go...
I guess I am just a visionary....
Yes, how stupid a question is that? They will likely buy a new Ford that they are happy to have built. Brazil is one of the emerging markets if you had not noticed. It is outsiders that are cutting down the rain forest at an alarming rate. Nice try at deflecting from more UAW ignorance. That new factory is a well documented case of UAW stupidity. Face it you are aligned with a bunch of morons. From Reuther the commie up to Gettlefinger the retard.
It would and I'll explain later in the post......
The problem is that today's cars use many foreign components. Where will you get the control computers that run today's engines? Are we going back to carburetors? How about the CD or MP3 player? The GPS system? Antilock brake controls? And even more importantly, where is the gasoline coming from? You seem to want it all internal except for what we NEED from outside. And that's not going to work. Just on gasoline alone, if we started producing 60's-era cars again and did no foreign trade, only half of us would be able to drive since we would have so little fuel!
All those empty Delphi, plants you see across the country would in my vintage 1960's like world would be filled with UAW, workers making those parts like they did a decade ago!!! All those Johnson Controls Plants would be making car interior parts because in my domestic content law society is what you sell here has to be made here!!! We will trade with other nations but like them you will have to pay a import tariff for that foreign import!!!
So pick your choice - half the driving with 60's era cars, or today's technology with globalization. Hint: you can't go backwards.
I haven't because I can have my cake and eat it too!!! Tesla, and other car companies have proven electric cars are realistic. The technology for hydrogen, cold fusion, solar, are there. I've studied these technologies and with each passing day they are becoming more efficient and more realistic. The reason why these technologies haven't came to the market is because we have too many politicians in both parties that are baught and paid for by big oil. Our last president and his crooked buddy were oil men!!! I think the Volt, and like cars will finally bring a new technology to the market and the future looks better than ever for us getting rid of oil as a main energy source!!!
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
WOW!!! You really don't know what you are talking about. UAW workers aren't allowed to just go home early after producing there quota for the day. You also are forgetting the lean manufacturing theory of "just in time delivery" and building extra parts is over producing and isn't tolerated thus machine maintainence, etc, is performed during slow times. The only time a "work slow down" has ever been used is during "contract" talks to not build so many extra parts that you are out of a job for months. Delphi, stockpiled a bunch of parts during the last contract negotiation and in fact had the UAW workers working overtime. I don't expect you to understand the manufacturing industry as your union job and work had little competition for outside sources and what little competition you had based on what you told me was from higher paying non-union, domestic sources thus due to those circumstances it is hard for "others" who aren't factory workers to "comprehend" just what in the hell goes on in a factory. Reading about it or hearing it from Rush, doesn't make it so!!! I've been in those plants on several ocassions. I use to deliver industrial chemicals to Delphi and other supplier plants and worked at JCI. I also was allowed to go inside my Delphi Coopersville and the Wyoming "Burlingame" Valve Lifter Plant on a few ocassions for tours and family picnics.
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
Your one world government or socialism for the rich has showed it's head and when the UAW workers and other union and non-union workers all lose there jobs to globalism and you have another quarter of the workforce unemployed and people are starving and rioting at your door well you my friend will just have to deal with the consquences. Just like the UAW, your portfolio will be done also. This country will go into shambles as there will be nobody left to buy stuff to keep the wheels turning in your serf n' elite society. It will be a sad place and time as it will only get worse with time UNLESS we do something to change the course of this sinking ship!!! :sick:
-Rocky
-Rocky
According to Wikipedia, GE is 10th by market capitalization. Ahead of it are 9 other companies, including Microsoft and your favorite, Walmart, not to mention 3 Chinese-based firms.
I'm glad you think cold fusion, a concept that you claim to have "studied" has been discredited by every peer reviewer that looked at it, is going to save the US :P .
http://www2.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=06018ef6-08fa-4c60-b524-7a- a909bf1c62
Diesel Mechanic Job Description: Anticipated Opening! Apply early as this job may be removed or filled prior to the closing date. Work Location:Roseville, CA Closing Date:October 31, 2008 Salary:$22.45/hrStarting pay is approximately $21.69 per hour. The terms of the collective bargaining agreement shall apply.
When the guy reaches top Union scale he will be making $46k per year. That in a place that the average home is currently selling for $390K.