If GM goes bankrupt, they have no liability to the to the bondholders.
I think that is only for the unsecured debt. That is just a small part of the total debt GM is carrying right now. They are also trying to cut 50% of the VEBA payment that is due. That will put the monkey on the UAW's back to keep the retirees healthcare paid.
Gagrice, check the terms of your bonds or call your financial adviser. Once a company goes bankrupt debt holders go to zero and have to go to court to get paid back. Whey do you think CITI and BOA are fighting nationalization so much, the bond holders loose all their value. That is also why the head of PIMCO made a big fuss about nationalization.
I don't think there has been a vehicle 100% made in the USA since the 1970s. The last vehicle to be 100% USA made I believe was the VW Rabbit built in PA. You ran them off too What's with PA chasing all the manufacturing out of their state? Is it taxes, regulations or the workforce?
I don't think I have any bonds in my Fidelity 401K. I know stock becomes worthless. I have followed a couple companies into bankruptcy and am waiting till I need the write off to cash them in.
>LOL...I have been just dating her for 15 months and is the first female in my life I can call my best friend.
Just 15 months.....you call it "just"? I met my wife and married her in less than 2 months. What is the point in dragging things out?
Regarding UAW, I have been driving a loaner Pontiac G5 for a couple of days and my impressions are:
1. Awesome seats. very supportive and comfortable. Even my wife who drives a Lexus daily could not resist pointing that out +10 2. Dashboard and door plastic feels like a nail filer. I even tried to file my nails and succeeded some -10. 3. Better than expected Sound system. You could live with it if you are not an audiophile and you listen to FM/XM radio primarily. 4. Nice soft feel-2-touch radio buttons. +5 5. Steering system is too heavy and has absolutely no connectivity to the wheels. -10 6. Strong engine, smooth transmission and good mileage +10 7. Road noise damping/isolation felt weird. There was no uniformity in road noise/wind noise from different areas of the car. It felt the bottom of the car was over isolated making the top portion feel lot noisier. -10 8. Trip computer has all information one needs - mpg, oil life, tpms, outside temp. +10 9. Maintains composure over all types of road, even under spirited driving. +5 10. Even though it is FWD, and has gobs of low down torque, Torque steer is not felt at all when accelerating from a stop. +10 11. Finish not great. I could feel sharp parting lines on door handles and such. This is easy to take care of during manufacturing by a simple de-burring process, but GM is cost cutting here. -10 12. Unexpected luxury - Speed sensitive wipers. If set on intermittent, it will stay on intermittent when you are under 40mph. Once you speed up, the wiper speed goes up automatically to normal speed. +10 13. Trunk opening feels like a mailbox slot. More like the slot opening on a cereal box. Big box with a small opening. -5
You mean the re-badged "stylized" Chevy Cobalt with added cost. The car Edmunds calls a "throwback to that previous bare-bones tradition." The car with the solid rear axle? You wife must really love you as she does not want to dis on Pontiac. Hey, the G5 does have the same steering wheel as the Corvette. Or the Corvette has the same stewring wheel as the G5?
I read that any foreign country wanting to build cars in North America had to have 60 percent of all parts made and assembled in North America to have a factory here. I don't think the D3 are held to the same standards, because of the UAW costs.
I don't think that is the case. I don't think the BMW or Mercedes have more than 30% US content. It changes from year to year so it is hard to know for sure. I think the highest content vehicle today is the F150 at 85%. The Silverado is down the list at about 70% US content. We will see more and more foreign content as suppliers are forced into bankruptcy with the tough regulations and high cost of labor in the USA.
OK. I found that the G5t was quick, but engine refinement and fuel economy were unimpressive. Handling was secure, but the steering lacked feedback. The rear seat was cramped, and the routing for the front safety belts hurt rear access.
I love how union and anti-trade guys are always looking for excuses as to why they are not competitive. You know Bush added tariffs on foreign steel, in turn upping foreign car prices; that didn't save GM. How many excuses do you have to make for the fact that GM and Chrysler are going out of business. Fact is that they don't make competitive cars, their executives are slow, and they are poor negotiators.
Chrysler and GM have the biggest drop in sales year to date. Subaru and Hyundai are the only companies to have sales increase. Wait till Saturn and Hummer are dumped. Also Wagoner is a very poor CEO. I would not want him running my family business. From Fortune: "In very simple terms, if Ford had 15 percent of a 16 million vehicle market, they sell 2.4 million vehicles. If they have 18 percent of a 14 million vehicle market, they sell 2.5 million vehicles. They can sell more units in a smaller market by gaining market share, and that's one of the things being missed on the Street. Ford is at an advantage from a competitive standpoint." Read one of Alex Taylor III's stories on GM.
The bondholders' main rival in the ongoing GM negotiations is the United Auto Workers. The union is trying to reach its own agreement over a company payment to a retiree health plan. GM is supposed to hand over an estimated $20 billion for the plan. But under the terms of the federal loan, the retiree health plan is being asked to swap half of what it is owed for an equity stake.
While some bondholders have argued that the UAW should sacrifice more to save GM, the union has countered that it has already made sacrifices, including concessions in 2005 and 2007 that dropped the company's obligation to the retiree health plan by 40 percent.
"We think the bondholder position is ridiculous," said Alan Reuther, legislative director for the United Auto Workers. "Basically they've been saying go whack the retirees.
"These retirees gave their entire working lives to GM. They live on fixed incomes. The bondholders have wide-ranging portfolios. We just think it's fundamentally unfair."
What is unfair is the FACT that these UAW leaders secured their own fat cat pensions and health care and left the workers to fight with a dying company.
If my 401K had GM bonds in them I would expect the bond fund managers to hold out for all they could get. Just as I expect the UAW retirees to do the same. Notice again the UAW always blames some other entity for their screw ups.
Why won't Alan Reuther just admit his Uncle Wally had his head on backwards when they negotiated Pension and health care for retirees. It is the same now. Greed by the older workforce. They want more in their pockets NOW, and do not think about the future. We had guys like that in our Teamster Unit. They would rather have a dollar raise than to put another tax free dollar in the retirement.
Wait! If the Unions always give concessions, explain to me why the D3 are on their last legs again? Greed has nothing to do with any of the failures? Bad decisions all around have not affected their businesses?
If the UAW has NOTHING to do with the current state of affairs, who does??
GM screwed up a lot of ways. 40 years ago, GM was the Apple of automotive. They could do no wrong and were the boss of Detroit. Well, with success comes complatency. GM continued to promote managers who were thin skinned and narrow minded. When a brilliant guy like John Dellorian comes by they fire him. GM let unions get too powerful, RD fall by the wayside, racked up too much debt, all the while letting their competitors get better. How can Ford so quickly renegotiate with bondholders and the UAW? Meanwhile GM sits idly as their feet are in the fire. GM was betting that SUVs with wider margins would line their pockets. They ignored the common sense that rebranding was creating false competition. That employee pricing created an artificial market for cars. By going bankrupt, GM can start at ZERO. New managers, new contracts with bondholders and the UAW, and deletion of nameplates like Saturn, Hummer, Saab, GMC, etc. Wouldn't tax payer money be better sent going to troops in Iraq, funding continued education, making internet available to more people, helping the finance crisis? :lemon:
I love how union and anti-trade guys are always looking for excuses as to why they are not competitive.
I don't care what you do, I can find someone in China or India (Chindia) to do it for far less. So we have the so called race to the bottom. Even the AMA or other organizations whom protect their members interests are going to have to deal with this issue sooner or later. To assume the UAW is the only one in this sinking ship is just not reality. All of these special groups will and are currently seeking special interest on behalf of their members.
The transition period in which these third world countries are brought up to parity with developed countries and therefore can buy goods and services in reciprocity is an eon if these labor forces are kept oppressed. The American consumer is second to none in purchasing power in todays market. So to whom will these third world producers look to if in fact Americans can no longer buy because of under or unemployment?
The UAW has an obligation and right to look after its own interest as all groups and individuals do in a capitalistic society. If AIG had gone into bankruptcy the contractual obligation to those bonuses would have been null and void. Just as they would null and void UAW contracts if any or all of the Big Three go into bankruptcy. So the 373 million of profit made by AIG in 1999 grew into over 5 billion plus in 2005 and their cost (compensation) was 80% of that 5 billion plus. This in an unregulated orgy of greed. In comparison the automakers have lowered cost and all the while increased output. From the value added stand point the auto industry is better operated. Unfortunately the demand for autos is on the decline and the supply side (automakers) need to downsize. However, we see even more upstarts and new players wanting a piece of this market.
Competition has losers and Wall Street is among them. Their STD has spread unto the entire economy and to say that Toyota didn't seek/get a bail out is just hiding your head in the sand. This is capitalisms darkest hour and bail out is no longer a dirty word.
Hey, the banking issue is a disaster and both administrations have handled it wrong; but you can't let those institutions fail. I personally feel that nationalization would be the best choice for CITI, BOA, and AIG. Other institutions that are too big to fail are the military, FAA, police organizations, schools. Also my Father is a programmer; naturally his job has been outsourced in a variety of ways over the years. At the same time he continually learned knew skills, added management experience, contracted, and lived within his means. While he doesn't get paid close to $150,000 and is periodically unemployed, he is personally wealthy and doing fine. And the UAW has no right to cripple a company's production and sap capital because they want job banks, legal benefits, and a guaranteed raise. If you don't like the job, get another one.
Descriptions of the working conditions of millions of workers, even in the 'modern and affluent" North, sound like a throwback to the days of the early industrial revolution. Consider this description of conditions at contract clothing shops in modern affluent San Francisco: Many of them are dark, cramped and windowless.... Twelve-hour days with no days off and a break only for lunch are not uncommon. And in this wealthy, cosmopolitan city, many shops enforce draconian rules reminiscent of the nineteenth century. "The workers were not allowed to talk to each other and they didn't allow us to go to the bathroom," says one Asian garment worker . . . Aware of manufacturers' zeal for bargain-basement prices, the nearly 600 sewing contractors in the Bay Area engage in cutthroat competition-often a kind of Darwinian drive to the bottom.... Manufacturers have another powerful chip to keep bids down Katie Quan, a manager of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in San Francisco, explains, "They say, 'If you don't take it, we'll just ship it overseas, and you won't get work and your workers will go hungry.'" In 1992 a [Department of Labor] investigation of garment shops on the U.S. protectorate of Saipan found conditions akin to indentured servitude: Chinese workers whose passports had been confiscated, putting in eighty-four-hour weeks at sub-minimum wages. The line between conditions in the South and the North as defined by geography becomes ever more blurred. Dorka Diaz, a twenty-year old textile worker who formerly produced clothing in Honduras for Leslie Fay, a U.S.-based transnational, testified before the Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives that she worked for Leslie Fay in Honduras alongside twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls locked inside a factory where the temperature often hit 100 degrees and there was no clean drinking water. For a fifty-four-hour week, she was paid a little over $20. She and her three-year old son lived at the edge of starvation. In April 1994, she was fired for trying to organize a union. When the black women who toiled over knitting machines in a Taiwanese-owned sweater factory in South Africa for fifty cents an hour made it known that with the election of Nelson Mandela they expected "a union shop, better wages and a little respect," the Taiwanese owners responded by abruptly closing their seven South African factories and eliminating 1,000 jobs. Low as the wages were, the cost of labor in South Africa is twice that of labor in Brazil or Mexico and several times that in Thailand or China. Noting that prospective foreign investors have turned wary of South Africa, the New York Times suggests, "There are doubts about the Government's long-term commitment to capitalism, about whether Mr. Mandela can contain the expectations of the impoverished majority." In the world of big money and multimillion-dollar compensation packages, greed is a worker who wants a living wage. In many Southern countries, to say that conditions verge on slavery is scarcely an exaggeration. China has become a favorite of foreign investors and corporations seeking cheap labor and outsourcing for offshore procurement at rock-bottom prices. Business Week described the prevailing conditions of Chinese factory workers: In foreign-funded factories, which employ about 6 million Chinese in the coastal provinces, accidents abound. In some factories, workers are chastised, beaten, strip-searched, and even forbidden to use the bathroom during work hours. At a foreign-owned company in the Fujian province city of Ziamen, 40 workers-or one-tenth of the work force-have had their fingers crushed by obsolete machines. According to official reports, there were 45,000 industrial accidents in Guangdong last year, claiming more than 8,700 lives.... Last month ... 76 workers died in a Guangdong factory accident. Although the Chinese government reportedly is trying to tighten up on standards, it has faced enormous problems of unemployment since its decision to free up market forces. Tens of millions of rural workers are streaming to the cities. Urban unemployment stood at 5 million in mid-1994, a 25 percent increase in a year. Two million workers lost their jobs in Heilongjiang province in 1993 alone. Millions more urban workers face pay cuts, and half of the government-owned enterprises that employ approximately half of the urban workforce are losing money, creating prospects of massive layoffs and plant closings. Government efforts to tighten up on standards in this "free-market miracle" are also hampered by skyrocketing rates of crime and corruption. In Bangladesh, an estimated 80,000 children under age fourteen, most of them female, work at least sixty hours a week m garment factories. For miscounting or other errors, male supervisors strike them or force them to kneel on the floor or stand on their heads for ten to thirty minutes. It isn't only in the garment industry. In India, an estimated 55 million children work in various conditions of servitude, many as bonded laborers-virtual slaves-under the most appalling conditions. Each child has his or her own story. A few months after his rescue from forced labor, Devanandan told a reporter that he had been coaxed to leave home by a promise of wages up to $100 a month for working at a loom two hours a day while going to school. When he agreed, he found himself locked up in a room where he ate, slept, and was forced to work knotting carpets from four in the morning till late evening for pennies in pay. Former Indian Chief Justice P. M. Bhagwati has publicly testified to observing examples of boys working fourteen to twenty hours a day: "They are beaten up, branded [with red-hot iron rods] and even hung from trees upside down." The carpet industry in India exports $300 million worth of carpets a year, mainly to the United States and Germany. The carpets are produced by more than 300,000 child laborers working fourteen to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Many are bonded laborers, paying off the debts of their parents; they have been sold into bondage or kidnapped from low-caste parents. The fortunate ones earn a pittance wage. The unfortunate ones are paid nothing at all. The carpet manufacturers argue that the industry must have child laborers to be able to survive in competition with the carpet industries of Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco, and elsewhere that also use child laborers.
There are already national labor laws in place. Also, if a company want to produce successful products they cannot treat labor like slaves. Toyota, Nissan, and Honda all have plants in Tennessee. I don't hear forced slave labor allegations down there. UAW is more worried about a decrease in the standard of living than anything else.
Bilateral negotiation is defined as "affecting reciprocally two parties; to arrange or bring about through conference, discussion and compromise." . Each leader interacts, meets and coordinates with partners on a regular basis. Each bilateral negotiation requires intelligence preparation, or "of the bilateral," in order to reach the intended outcome. Deliberate preparation by both the leader focused toward an intended outcome, provides the pathway to success. While prior preparation is vital toward reaching success, the post-bilateral effort provides the rewards of that success by synchronizing the follow-up actions to seal the agreement or further press the effort.
Low wage temps: a full one-third, or 10,000 Toyota assembly line workers, are low wage temp and subcontract workers who earn less than 60 percent of what full time workers do. Temps have few rights and are hired under contracts as short as four months. Overworked to death: Mr Kenichi Uchino died of overwork at Toyota’s Prius plant when he was just 30. He was routinely working 14-hour shifts and putting in anywhere from 107 to 155 hours of overtime a month—at least 61 ½ hours of which were unpaid. Toyota said the hours were “voluntary” and therefore not paid. Mr. Uchino left behind his young wife, a one-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. The Japanese people even have a word for being overworked to death: “karoshi.” An estimated 200 to 300 workers a year suffer serious illness, depression and death due to overwork. Sweatshops and human trafficking: Toyota’s parts supply chain is riddled with sweatshop abuse, including the human trafficking of tens of thousands of foreign guest workers—mostly from China and Vietnam—to Japan, where they are stripped of their passports and forced to work grueling hours seven days a week, often earning less than half the legal minimum wage. Sixteen-hour shifts, from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight are common. Linked to Burmese Dictators: Toyota—through the Toyota Tsusho Corporation which is part of the Toyota Group—is involved in several joint business ventures with the ruthless military dictators of Burma, which put revenues into the pockets of the dictators who use it to repress Burma’s 50 million people. Toyota criticized by the ILO: The UN/International Labor Organization points to Toyota’s suppression of freedom of association at its plant in the Philippines as “an illustration of how a multinational company, apparently with little regard for corporate responsibility, has done everything in its power to prevent recognition and certification of the Toyota Motor Company Workers Association.” (ILO Working Group, December 2003.) Toyota leads the Race to the Bottom: Toyota, now the largest auto company in the world, is using its size and success to impose its two-tier, low-wage model at its non-union plants across America, which will result in a race to the bottom with wages and benefits being slashed throughout the entire auto industry.
When GM closes that truck plant in Dallas, maybe you can fix the trucks.
You must be ignorant to the fact that the Arlington plant intends to add employees and expand. Otherwise, you certainly wouldn't have made such an uninformed statement. Besides, I work in aerospace/defense and business is good.
The company is already "in talks with a Japanese government-backed bank on possible lending," the AP reports, "underlining the serious woes facing the car industry amid plunging global sales. Toyota Motor Corp. said no details had been decided," but on the news, Japan's Nikkei index "flirted with 26-year lows."
The company is not alone, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Honda Motor Co. said it is seeking a government loan to help shore up funds at its U.S. operations, becoming the latest Japanese auto maker to ask for Tokyo's help in doing business abroad."
A separate Bloomberg report adds, "Mazda Motor Corp. is also considering a request for government loans, spokesman Toyota Tanaka said today."
So propaganda by the National Labor Committee is supposed to justify the UAW's fight for an archaic benefit structure? If you ask me, $50,000 for putting a car together is pretty good payment. Throw in health insurance and a matching 401k and that is pretty competitive. Heck, $25,000 for a part time worker isn't so bad either. Houses are going for $1,000 in Detroit, you should be able to live like a millionaire off of that. And yes GM maintains one truck/SUV plant in the U.S. But isn't that really just a token so they can say made in America on their commercials. Lets face it, GM is closing plants left and right. They are a global company. They will make trucks where it is cheapest just like they make Aveo in Korea and the G8 in Australia. This is a pattern that has played out in history before. Look at Bethlehem steel. You know what rose from those ashes to become the largest aluminum manufacture in the U.S.? Alcoa. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/business/24auto.html Look I don't work for a UNION yet I work hard. When 50 hours are needed after me I do it. In the mean time I take night classes to further my education. My job is not taken for granted and I don't need anyone negotiating for me to make sure I have benefits. :P
A government team won't get it right. An old fashioned bankruptcy should do the trick. That leads to a new Board of Directors hiring a new management team. How much would it cost to get Carlos Goshn over from Renault/Nissan. The man has done wonders with those companies. "When he joined the company, it had debt of $20 billion and only three of its 48 models were generating a profit. Ghosn was viewed as an outsider by the media and parts of Nissan. Ghosn promised to resign if the company did not reach profitability by the end of the year[2], and claimed that Nissan would have no net debt by 2005."
Look I don't work for a UNION yet I work hard. When 50 hours are needed after me I do it. In the mean time I take night classes to further my education. My job is not taken for granted and I don't need anyone negotiating for me to make sure I have benefits.
So what are you going to do when someone in China is willing to do your job for $5 a day?
You know what rose from those ashes to become the largest aluminum manufacture in the U.S.? Alcoa.
Alcoa was shaped during its half-century monopoly and transformed by increasing competition, first from new domestic firms then from abroad. Charles Hall’s key process patents, active from 1888 to 1909, were the firm’s technical and legal foundation. Smithdetails the Hall-Héroult process that permitted producers to transform aluminum from a luxury metal worth more than gold to a commodity priced less than copper. Hall’selectrolytic process of reducing aluminum ore (bauxite) first to aluminum oxide (alumina)and then to aluminum metal has remained unchanged for a century. Scale has not. Smith maintains that Alcoa’s vast expansion, funded by vast infusions of Mellon money, yielded“economies of scale” that secured the firm’s dominance; through 1945 Alcoa held 90 percent of the North American market. Smith’s evidence, however, rests uneasily with his argument. First, while Alcoa’s patents precluded domestic competition, stiff import tariffs excluded foreign competition. Moreover, Alcoa erected formidable barriers to entry through controlling sources of aluminum ore and electrical power--the two critical raw materials--in Canada, the Caribbean, and especially Dutch Surinam. As Naomi Lamoreauxhas shown for steel, such vertical integration can be independent from economies of scale or speed. Finally, even after a 1912 antitrust consent agreement barred Alcoa itself from the international cartels which “stabilized” world prices and market shares, its closely-held Canadian subsidiary participated fully in the cartels and brought Alcoa the benefits of such stability. Alcoa’s failure to replicate the German invention of Duralumin, an aluminum alloy as strong as mild steel, or to produce aluminum for airplanes during World War I,propelled the firm into research and development, which secured Alcoa even greater dominance in interwar markets for aluminum cooking utensils, wire, tubing, and castings.Around 1945 pivots the complex story of how Alcoa lost its monopoly. Sensibly, Alcoa built and managed the $672 million wartime effort that doubled America’s aluminum capacity. Simultaneously the Department of Justice won its eight-year antitrust case, a landmark in framing antitrust policy, against Alcoa. The firm was helpless against the late New Deal’s energetic trust-busting; nor was it exculpated by its long-standing ties withHoover’s conservative Treasury secretary Andrew W. Mellon. Here Smith follows not thepolitical analysis of Ellis Hawley but the economic criteria of Robert Bork, finding,unsurprisingly, antitrust is undesirable. The decision against Alcoa fit perfectly with the War Surplus Property Board’s disposal of the 50 federally-owned aluminum plants:
If someone wants to do my job for $5 dollars a day I applaud them. If they are good at it and work cheap it actually helps my company. I am resourceful and will move into a new line of work. As I am in consulting, a more accurate description may be some in Ireland working at a lower rate. As for Alcoa, that was an argument back in the '50s. Even Greenspan went on to say that Alcoa was a monopoly, but maintains that it was not a coercive monopoly and, hence, should not have been subject to anti-trust action. You are stretching to stick up for the UAW. GM and Ford will just move the factories overseas anyway. Jobs have been leaving for years. http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/detroitcrisis/index.html
How much would it cost to get Carlos Goshn over from Renault/Nissan.
Who cares? What would it take to get Peter Lynch away from Fidelity? Just who the hell is going to buy these cars?
Past performance is no assurance of future performance. Any village idiot can make ten years of great stock picks in the right environment. After the dot com bust all the auto makers were doing just fine with easy credit and a robust economy. However, Obama is the one whom is going to make the moves here. All the CEOs and retards on Wall Street are the reason for the status quo of the economy. How many TRILLIONS did these brilliant money managers lose? You would have better odds in Vegas. Fact is that few money managers beat the S&P and are way over compensated. Perhaps you would like to follow the Asian CEO compensation plan. Being it that you claim them superior. Then lets look at their employee for life mantra. Face it its not a very good time to be a CEO.
So should GM just continued to be bailed out? Is that your recommendation? No matter how much it costs? And I don't think the Asians are superior. The Porsche Group (VW, Audi, Porsche) make an amazing selection of cars. Ford has the best selling car in Europe and the best truck in America. Time has just shown that GM has a failing culture and Chrysler was bastardized beyond repair when Diamler owned them. :shades:
This quote is from the previously noted link about the Janesville plant...the bold print is my emphasis..."With consumers shifting rapidly to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, G.M. no longer needed to produce big S.U.V.’s in Janesville as well as in a plant in Texas.
Still, some Janesville workers felt G.M. broke a pledge in its 2007 contract with the United Automobile Workers to keep the factory running.
“We didn’t deserve this,” said John Dohner Jr., shop chairman at U.A.W. Local 95. “We’ve all put a lot of hard work into trying to secure a future here.”
So, SUVs are not selling, but plant workers LITERALLY expect the plant to stay open so they can collect their paycheck...just HOW does GM keep a plant running making products that do not sell???
That is why I harp on what I see as the child-like intelligence expressed by what some call "skilled" UAW workers...they don't want the product you make, but you expect the compant to keep the plant open...so...are they supposed to take the SUVs and just drop them in the ocean while they pay you???...does ANYONE in the UAW understand that it could take hundreds of millions of $$$ to convert an SUV plant to something else, and the something else, if it is selling, is already made in another plant???...are UAW people simply THAT STUPID that they cannot see that as cars pile up in lots, unsold, that they don't need to make more???
Which proves my theory that these idiots think that GM exists so they have jobs...not the capitalist model that it exists to make a profit, and out of profit comes jobs...no, they just think that they have the divine right to simply show up and get paid...
rocky, is this what your family taught you???...do you have any idea why Janesville closed???...do you actually think that the plant should stay open, paying workers not to work, or, worse yet, paying workers to make something that no one wants to buy???...are you that infected by the entitlement mentality that you actually believe that crap???...I hope not...
An earlier poster asked why stuff was easily affordable 40 years ago but not now...depending from which side you view this will slant your opinion...
Side One: average wages have not kept up with inflation, so it takes more of your dollars and more hours worked to buy a house or a car...
Side Two: that average wages have kept up with inflation in the GENERAL sense (non-economic terms by Bob), but the only two items that have increased in price FAR above inflation are houses and cars...computers, food, gasoline (not counting the recent $4/gal gas) and other items of living are, inflation adjusted, just as affordable or more affordable than before, taking fewer work hours to buy them...
So, the reason families are "falling behind" is because they want to buy a house for $500K which, in reality, is far outside their income level, but they "stretch" to try and make it...obviously, this family will always be behind the 8-ball because they should have bought a $100K house, but no one can tell them that...
Further, people wanted to buy a $40K car when their income will really justify a $20K car...so, once again, the person who has bought too much house and too much car cannot keep up with inflation, which is bunk...he simply refuses to live within his means...THAT is why Momma had to go out and get a job...because Dad wanted all his toys, like too much house (but I can sell it in 10 years for a great capital gain), too much car (I deserve a Benz S600 'cuz I look good in it) or the newest VCR, DVD, plasma TV, jet-ski (2 of them), vacation house on the coast, 2 Harleys for weekend jaunts, etc., etc., etc.
They could have cut the cost of the car in half by buying one year old vehicles, moved into a house that one income could afford, a house that was NOT 6 bedroom, 7 bath on 17 acres, with weekly tennis lessons, piano lessons for 2 kids, and a membership in the local swimming club...
In other words, I really wonder if incomes really lagged inflation, or if housing prices shot thru the roof as more and more luxuries were added to the cost of the basic home and Dad was not smart enough to stay within his budget, so, trying to keep up with the Joneses, they overspent and spent 30 years trying to pay off something that was too much from Day One...
It's not that incomes failed to keep up, it was that housing prices were leaping up far faster than inflation, and buyers did not know when to say "stop" or they simply bought more house than they could afford...but, from the builder's point of view, if the idiots will buy more than they can afford, let's make the houses bigger and even MORE expensive, and wait and see who else buys...it them becomes a slef fulfilling cycle, and the economist says that income failed to keep up with inflation, when, simply, the two biggest purchases in your life, home and car, rose much faster than inflation and you overbought for your budget...now, with the payments straining your last penny, you went out and bought the jetski, piano lessons and MORE junk you could not afford, so now it loosk like the "population" cannot keep up, when the population simply lived outside its means from the beginning...
Smaller house, used car (or less expensive new car, not everyone needs a Benz, you know), no jet ski or vacations to Spain, no ski trips to Idaho, no plasma TV, no DVD recorder, etc.
Maybe sanity will return after all, but more UAW plants must close as they have the ability to make many more cars then we are willing to buy...
Sidenote: today's local paper had a dealer selling a 2008 STS for $29,900...assuming that last year it sold new for well over $50K (probably mid-50s), this may be a bargain...wait until Sep when the 2010s come out, it will be 2 (model) years old, may pick it up for mid-low 20s...super luxury car for less than my Crown Vic...
rocky (again)...it is time to finalize your divorce so you can get on with your life...marrying this woman with a conservative viewpoint may bring some sanity into your life... :P ...I realize that opposites attract, but I would truly find it difficult to marry someone from a UAW family or UAW supporter, as their entire outlook on life would be wrong...er, different from mine... ...if she was anything close to a Democrat (wanting higher taxes, strict gun [citizen) control, more welfare, more social programs for those who refuse to work, oppressive capital gains rates,and just plain liberalism), I probably could not get past the second date, she would drive me nuts, and vice-versa...
She could be my friend, as I have friends with opposing views...but for a mate to share my life, we have to be close to the same page...NOT identical, as that would be boring, but similar views of life...how James Carville and Mary Matalin do it is beyond me...
Past performance is no assurance of future performance.
And yet all we see are long historic citations used by you to prove points that are at best marginally related. So how about let's just talk about the current situation? I don't really care about Japanese labor systems in Japan, or the Japanese health care system, or the making of clothing in India. I care about how we can be competitive again in auto production. And the UAW is killing it in the US.
The non-US nameplates have been doing fine in this country with non-union labor. Growing while the D3 outsource their jobs to Mexico. What a wonderful union the UAW is, helping US jobs go abroad and domestic auto dealerships to close down.
By your title I'd have to disagree. The UAW did not lay you off. Besides, you have a lot better layoff benefits (SUB pay fund, etc.), which were negotiated by the UAW, than most everyone else who is currently laid off.
I was offered a layoff or buyout by Chrysler after working for them for a quarter of a century. I took the buyout and quickly found a similar job with another company in the same area at approximately the same wage scale.
As I recall, I could have put in for a transfer to any other Chrysler facility anywhere in the U.S. when/if an opening became available. I did not want to move and it's one of the main reasons why I switched companies.
I see you are still deflecting from the real issues. The UAW Legacy costs negotiated by both the UAW and the lame leadership at GM are bankrupting the company. Copying & pasting 20 year old stories about sweat shops in SF and labor issues in Japan have NO relevance. As long as there are more people in the Wolrd willing to do menial jobs like sewing, building cars, toys and airplanes there will be managers looking for the cheapest labor. That is good business. Like it or not we are in a global economy. Either compete or die. Life is not always easy and the Constitution of the USA does not guarantee that it will be so. The UAW workers lived the high life for many years. It was built on false promises and goon tactics. Time to pay the piper.
She could be my friend, as I have friends with opposing views...but for a mate to share my life, we have to be close to the same page...NOT identical, as that would be boring, but similar views of life...how James Carville and Mary Matalin do it is beyond me...
Don't you know that men and women can't be "friends?" Ever listen to a Left-Coast guy named Tom Leykis? He is an FM talk show DJ from, oh, I think L.A., that truly believes that men and women can not be best friends. Ya know why, because of the strong human sex drive. Tom Leykis would come on in the afternoon while I was working at Boeing. There was another Bryan who spelled Bryan with a "y" like I do working in my Illustration group. He'd put Leykis on in the late afternoon for our listening pleasure.
Tom Leykis would say that if you're good friends with a woman then you're just a little light in the loafers. Surely you've heard this line of reasoning before. I don't have time for a lot of friends in my life. My friends are at church, work and online here at Edmunds, eh?
An "eh" for you up there in the Pacific NW, fintail, my former home.
I'm some 1,800 miles south of Seattle now!
Anyway, to tie in the UAW to this goofy post I'm sputtering out here, let me just say this about that. I believe as gagrice and marsha7 do, that the UAW leadership(and long-time members)are not dealing with an intelligent enough deck. Read gagrice's posts very, very carefully, rockford and dallas, and you'll see where these people barked up the wrong tree.
And no, dallas, all American jobs(yes, I'm now thinking my new career, Allied Healthcare)are not going to be out-cropped to India. According to the guy working for the company that our hospital hires to bring us our benefits, our hospital gives out the best benefits in southern Arizona. I believe this guy, any question my wife and I brought up was answered intelligently and honestly. And this guy should know his stuff, he is the one that presents the hospital's benefits to hospital workers sitting there in meetings. He is an outside source that doesn't gain by lying to anyone. He makes great pay for himself, I am sure of that, too.
Honesty? Hey, gagrice, do you think UAW members and/or leadership is being totally honest about the car market, union bene's, strained relationships, blood, sweat and cheers, droning alcoholism and drug abuse, broken marriages, etc.? I think they're raising the poker hand 2 large ones when they only have one pair of 2's. :shades:
Dudes, train immediately outside of the automotive field! Oh, BTW, I have read a "first-drive" review of the new world order 2010 Chevrolet Camaro and it is said to be hot-hot-hot, smokin' hot! Great handling, acceleration, looks, engine and tranny, etc., etc. Beats the new Stangs. They only compared it to the Ford, though, reviewers didn't want to bring the new Dodge Challenger in to the sandbox to play. :surprise:
>So, SUVs are not selling, but plant workers LITERALLY expect the plant to stay open so they can collect their paycheck...just HOW does GM keep a plant running making products that do not sell???
Exactly on point. Oddly, when the GM Moraine plant was slowing down production over the last years and IUE workers were being interviewed, none expressed the concept that their deserved the job as an entitlement. Many felt they had worked to make a quality product (SUVS) and were sad to see the plant slowing and eventually being closed. Many said they hoped GM would convert the plant to produce another product since it is "new" (built to produce S-10 trucks originally). However none seemed to feel GM owed them the jobs. I consider that a good attitude.
The IUE was in that plant because it was legacy from Frigidaire production in Dayton when it was owned by GM.
Wow, so everybody can lose their jobs, constantly go to school to forever learn a new skill set which will soon be done by some foreign guy willing to do it for less. And we're expected to constantly repeat this cycle only for the benefit of our coporate masters? Sounds like a recipe for a heart attack, stroke, or nervous breakdown.
Believe me, if some IDIOT was willing to do your job for $5 a day, you'd scream! Why the heck do you care about your company when they obviously don't care enough about you to hire some joker to do your job for such an abyssmal pay?
I'm sure there's some unemployed guy out there thinking, "Oh, my boss moved my job to China. I lost my house. My wife died because we no longer had health insurance. My kids are sick and starving, and I've just been diagnosed with cancer. But not to worry! It actually helps my former company!"
Sidenote: today's local paper had a dealer selling a 2008 STS for $29,900...assuming that last year it sold new for well over $50K (probably mid-50s), this may be a bargain...wait until Sep when the 2010s come out, it will be 2 (model) years old, may pick it up for mid-low 20s...super luxury car for less than my Crown Vic... \
Sure! Sounds like a bargain - that is until you find out this particular STS was an ex-rental that plunged off a pier and spent a month at the bottom of the Delaware River! Screamer ads still bring 'em in!
Lemko, as I sit here at work, I can safely say I would not be upset if they found a guy to do my job for $5 a day. Also lay-offs have effected my life. Both my father and uncle are laid off and are struggling to find jobs. They have adapted and hold a skill set broader than installing a lug nut and will find other work. When my father first got laid off after 20 years of work in 2001, my mother found work as a cafeteria lady at the local school providing health insurance for my family. Later when she got terminal cancer, that job as a lunch lady covered her health insurance. My father is much happier moving away from that dying company and has been able to succeed even though he was lied off.
Comments
I think that is only for the unsecured debt. That is just a small part of the total debt GM is carrying right now. They are also trying to cut 50% of the VEBA payment that is due. That will put the monkey on the UAW's back to keep the retirees healthcare paid.
Just 15 months.....you call it "just"? I met my wife and married her in less than 2 months. What is the point in dragging things out?
Regarding UAW, I have been driving a loaner Pontiac G5 for a couple of days and my impressions are:
1. Awesome seats. very supportive and comfortable. Even my wife who drives a Lexus daily could not resist pointing that out +10
2. Dashboard and door plastic feels like a nail filer. I even tried to file my nails and succeeded some -10.
3. Better than expected Sound system. You could live with it if you are not an audiophile and you listen to FM/XM radio primarily.
4. Nice soft feel-2-touch radio buttons. +5
5. Steering system is too heavy and has absolutely no connectivity to the wheels. -10
6. Strong engine, smooth transmission and good mileage +10
7. Road noise damping/isolation felt weird. There was no uniformity in road noise/wind noise from different areas of the car. It felt the bottom of the car was over isolated making the top portion feel lot noisier. -10
8. Trip computer has all information one needs - mpg, oil life, tpms, outside temp. +10
9. Maintains composure over all types of road, even under spirited driving. +5
10. Even though it is FWD, and has gobs of low down torque, Torque steer is not felt at all when accelerating from a stop. +10
11. Finish not great. I could feel sharp parting lines on door handles and such. This is easy to take care of during manufacturing by a simple de-burring process, but GM is cost cutting here. -10
12. Unexpected luxury - Speed sensitive wipers. If set on intermittent, it will stay on intermittent when you are under 40mph. Once you speed up, the wiper speed goes up automatically to normal speed. +10
13. Trunk opening feels like a mailbox slot. More like the slot opening on a cereal box. Big box with a small opening. -5
Hey, the G5 does have the same steering wheel as the Corvette. Or the Corvette has the same stewring wheel as the G5?
How many excuses do you have to make for the fact that GM and Chrysler are going out of business. Fact is that they don't make competitive cars, their executives are slow, and they are poor negotiators.
From Fortune:
"In very simple terms, if Ford had 15 percent of a 16 million vehicle market, they sell 2.4 million vehicles. If they have 18 percent of a 14 million vehicle market, they sell 2.5 million vehicles. They can sell more units in a smaller market by gaining market share, and that's one of the things being missed on the Street. Ford is at an advantage from a competitive standpoint."
Read one of Alex Taylor III's stories on GM.
Especially girls named Beth that are smart enough to be conservative.
Rocky, is she Pro UAW or believes like myself, that unions have their place if they exist in a symbiotic relationship with the company?
While some bondholders have argued that the UAW should sacrifice more to save GM, the union has countered that it has already made sacrifices, including concessions in 2005 and 2007 that dropped the company's obligation to the retiree health plan by 40 percent.
"We think the bondholder position is ridiculous," said Alan Reuther, legislative director for the United Auto Workers. "Basically they've been saying go whack the retirees.
"These retirees gave their entire working lives to GM. They live on fixed incomes. The bondholders have wide-ranging portfolios. We just think it's fundamentally unfair."
What is unfair is the FACT that these UAW leaders secured their own fat cat pensions and health care and left the workers to fight with a dying company.
If my 401K had GM bonds in them I would expect the bond fund managers to hold out for all they could get. Just as I expect the UAW retirees to do the same. Notice again the UAW always blames some other entity for their screw ups.
Why won't Alan Reuther just admit his Uncle Wally had his head on backwards when they negotiated Pension and health care for retirees. It is the same now. Greed by the older workforce. They want more in their pockets NOW, and do not think about the future. We had guys like that in our Teamster Unit. They would rather have a dollar raise than to put another tax free dollar in the retirement.
If the UAW has NOTHING to do with the current state of affairs, who does??
Regards,
OW
Well, with success comes complatency. GM continued to promote managers who were thin skinned and narrow minded. When a brilliant guy like John Dellorian comes by they fire him.
GM let unions get too powerful, RD fall by the wayside, racked up too much debt, all the while letting their competitors get better.
How can Ford so quickly renegotiate with bondholders and the UAW? Meanwhile GM sits idly as their feet are in the fire. GM was betting that SUVs with wider margins would line their pockets. They ignored the common sense that rebranding was creating false competition. That employee pricing created an artificial market for cars.
By going bankrupt, GM can start at ZERO. New managers, new contracts with bondholders and the UAW, and deletion of nameplates like Saturn, Hummer, Saab, GMC, etc.
Wouldn't tax payer money be better sent going to troops in Iraq, funding continued education, making internet available to more people, helping the finance crisis? :lemon:
I don't care what you do, I can find someone in China or India (Chindia) to do it for far less. So we have the so called race to the bottom. Even the AMA or other organizations whom protect their members interests are going to have to deal with this issue sooner or later. To assume the UAW is the only one in this sinking ship is just not reality. All of these special groups will and are currently seeking special interest on behalf of their members.
The transition period in which these third world countries are brought up to parity with developed countries and therefore can buy goods and services in reciprocity is an eon if these labor forces are kept oppressed. The American consumer is second to none in purchasing power in todays market. So to whom will these third world producers look to if in fact Americans can no longer buy because of under or unemployment?
The UAW has an obligation and right to look after its own interest as all groups and individuals do in a capitalistic society. If AIG had gone into bankruptcy the contractual obligation to those bonuses would have been null and void. Just as they would null and void UAW contracts if any or all of the Big Three go into bankruptcy. So the 373 million of profit made by AIG in 1999 grew into over 5 billion plus in 2005 and their cost (compensation) was 80% of that 5 billion plus. This in an unregulated orgy of greed. In comparison the automakers have lowered cost and all the while increased output. From the value added stand point the auto industry is better operated. Unfortunately the demand for autos is on the decline and the supply side (automakers) need to downsize. However, we see even more upstarts and new players wanting a piece of this market.
Competition has losers and Wall Street is among them. Their STD has spread unto the entire economy and to say that Toyota didn't seek/get a bail out is just hiding your head in the sand. This is capitalisms darkest hour and bail out is no longer a dirty word.
The UAW doesn't build houses, or operate banks. GMAC hasn't a single UAW employee and managed to get themselves into the sub prime quick sand.
Also my Father is a programmer; naturally his job has been outsourced in a variety of ways over the years. At the same time he continually learned knew skills, added management experience, contracted, and lived within his means. While he doesn't get paid close to $150,000 and is periodically unemployed, he is personally wealthy and doing fine.
And the UAW has no right to cripple a company's production and sap capital because they want job banks, legal benefits, and a guaranteed raise. If you don't like the job, get another one.
Many of them are dark, cramped and windowless.... Twelve-hour days with no days off and a break only for lunch are not uncommon. And in this wealthy, cosmopolitan city, many shops enforce draconian rules reminiscent of the nineteenth century. "The workers were not allowed to talk to each other and they didn't allow us to go to the bathroom," says one Asian garment worker . . . Aware of manufacturers' zeal for bargain-basement prices, the nearly 600 sewing contractors in the Bay Area engage in cutthroat competition-often a kind of Darwinian drive to the bottom.... Manufacturers have another powerful chip to keep bids down Katie Quan, a manager of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in San Francisco, explains, "They say, 'If you don't take it, we'll just ship it overseas, and you won't get work and your workers will go hungry.'"
In 1992 a [Department of Labor] investigation of garment shops on the U.S. protectorate of Saipan found conditions akin to indentured servitude: Chinese workers whose passports had been confiscated, putting in eighty-four-hour weeks at sub-minimum wages.
The line between conditions in the South and the North as defined by geography becomes ever more blurred. Dorka Diaz, a twenty-year old textile worker who formerly produced clothing in Honduras for Leslie Fay, a U.S.-based transnational, testified before the Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives that she worked for Leslie Fay in Honduras alongside twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls locked inside a factory where the temperature often hit 100 degrees and there was no clean drinking water. For a fifty-four-hour week, she was paid a little over $20. She and her three-year old son lived at the edge of starvation. In April 1994, she was fired for trying to organize a union.
When the black women who toiled over knitting machines in a Taiwanese-owned sweater factory in South Africa for fifty cents an hour made it known that with the election of Nelson Mandela they expected "a union shop, better wages and a little respect," the Taiwanese owners responded by abruptly closing their seven South African factories and eliminating 1,000 jobs. Low as the wages were, the cost of labor in South Africa is twice that of labor in Brazil or Mexico and several times that in Thailand or China. Noting that prospective foreign investors have turned wary of South Africa, the New York Times suggests, "There are doubts about the Government's long-term commitment to capitalism, about whether Mr. Mandela can contain the expectations of the impoverished majority." In the world of big money and multimillion-dollar compensation packages, greed is a worker who wants a living wage.
In many Southern countries, to say that conditions verge on slavery is scarcely an exaggeration. China has become a favorite of foreign investors and corporations seeking cheap labor and outsourcing for offshore procurement at rock-bottom prices. Business Week described the prevailing conditions of Chinese factory workers:
In foreign-funded factories, which employ about 6 million Chinese in the coastal provinces, accidents abound. In some factories, workers are chastised, beaten, strip-searched, and even forbidden to use the bathroom during work hours. At a foreign-owned company in the Fujian province city of Ziamen, 40 workers-or one-tenth of the work force-have had their fingers crushed by obsolete machines. According to official reports, there were 45,000 industrial accidents in Guangdong last year, claiming more than 8,700 lives.... Last month ... 76 workers died in a Guangdong factory accident.
Although the Chinese government reportedly is trying to tighten up on standards, it has faced enormous problems of unemployment since its decision to free up market forces. Tens of millions of rural workers are streaming to the cities. Urban unemployment stood at 5 million in mid-1994, a 25 percent increase in a year. Two million workers lost their jobs in Heilongjiang province in 1993 alone. Millions more urban workers face pay cuts, and half of the government-owned enterprises that employ approximately half of the urban workforce are losing money, creating prospects of massive layoffs and plant closings. Government efforts to tighten up on standards in this "free-market miracle" are also hampered by skyrocketing rates of crime and corruption.
In Bangladesh, an estimated 80,000 children under age fourteen, most of them female, work at least sixty hours a week m garment factories. For miscounting or other errors, male supervisors strike them or force them to kneel on the floor or stand on their heads for ten to thirty minutes.
It isn't only in the garment industry. In India, an estimated 55 million children work in various conditions of servitude, many as bonded laborers-virtual slaves-under the most appalling conditions. Each child has his or her own story. A few months after his rescue from forced labor, Devanandan told a reporter that he had been coaxed to leave home by a promise of wages up to $100 a month for working at a loom two hours a day while going to school. When he agreed, he found himself locked up in a room where he ate, slept, and was forced to work knotting carpets from four in the morning till late evening for pennies in pay.
Former Indian Chief Justice P. M. Bhagwati has publicly testified to observing examples of boys working fourteen to twenty hours a day: "They are beaten up, branded [with red-hot iron rods] and even hung from trees upside down." The carpet industry in India exports $300 million worth of carpets a year, mainly to the United States and Germany. The carpets are produced by more than 300,000 child laborers working fourteen to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Many are bonded laborers, paying off the debts of their parents; they have been sold into bondage or kidnapped from low-caste parents. The fortunate ones earn a pittance wage. The unfortunate ones are paid nothing at all. The carpet manufacturers argue that the industry must have child laborers to be able to survive in competition with the carpet industries of Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco, and elsewhere that also use child laborers.
Toyota, Nissan, and Honda all have plants in Tennessee. I don't hear forced slave labor allegations down there.
UAW is more worried about a decrease in the standard of living than anything else.
Low wage temps: a full one-third, or 10,000 Toyota assembly line workers, are low wage temp and subcontract workers who earn less than 60 percent of what full time workers do. Temps have few rights and are hired under contracts as short as four months.
Overworked to death: Mr Kenichi Uchino died of overwork at Toyota’s Prius plant when he was just 30. He was routinely working 14-hour shifts and putting in anywhere from 107 to 155 hours of overtime a month—at least 61 ½ hours of which were unpaid. Toyota said the hours were “voluntary” and therefore not paid. Mr. Uchino left behind his young wife, a one-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. The Japanese people even have a word for being overworked to death: “karoshi.” An estimated 200 to 300 workers a year suffer serious illness, depression and death due to overwork.
Sweatshops and human trafficking: Toyota’s parts supply chain is riddled with sweatshop abuse, including the human trafficking of tens of thousands of foreign guest workers—mostly from China and Vietnam—to Japan, where they are stripped of their passports and forced to work grueling hours seven days a week, often earning less than half the legal minimum wage. Sixteen-hour shifts, from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight are common.
Linked to Burmese Dictators: Toyota—through the Toyota Tsusho Corporation which is part of the Toyota Group—is involved in several joint business ventures with the ruthless military dictators of Burma, which put revenues into the pockets of the dictators who use it to repress Burma’s 50 million people.
Toyota criticized by the ILO: The UN/International Labor Organization points to Toyota’s suppression of freedom of association at its plant in the Philippines as “an illustration of how a multinational company, apparently with little regard for corporate responsibility, has done everything in its power to prevent recognition and certification of the Toyota Motor Company Workers Association.” (ILO Working Group, December 2003.)
Toyota leads the Race to the Bottom: Toyota, now the largest auto company in the world, is using its size and success to impose its two-tier, low-wage model at its non-union plants across America, which will result in a race to the bottom with wages and benefits being slashed throughout the entire auto industry.
http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=562
You must be ignorant to the fact that the Arlington plant intends to add employees and expand. Otherwise, you certainly wouldn't have made such an uninformed statement. Besides, I work in aerospace/defense and business is good.
They do?????
The company is not alone, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Honda Motor Co. said it is seeking a government loan to help shore up funds at its U.S. operations, becoming the latest Japanese auto maker to ask for Tokyo's help in doing business abroad."
A separate Bloomberg report adds, "Mazda Motor Corp. is also considering a request for government loans, spokesman Toyota Tanaka said today."
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/090304-Toyota-Honda-- Mazda-May-Ask-for-Government-Bailout/
If you ask me, $50,000 for putting a car together is pretty good payment. Throw in health insurance and a matching 401k and that is pretty competitive. Heck, $25,000 for a part time worker isn't so bad either. Houses are going for $1,000 in Detroit, you should be able to live like a millionaire off of that.
And yes GM maintains one truck/SUV plant in the U.S. But isn't that really just a token so they can say made in America on their commercials. Lets face it, GM is closing plants left and right. They are a global company. They will make trucks where it is cheapest just like they make Aveo in Korea and the G8 in Australia.
This is a pattern that has played out in history before. Look at Bethlehem steel. You know what rose from those ashes to become the largest aluminum manufacture in the U.S.? Alcoa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/business/24auto.html
Look I don't work for a UNION yet I work hard. When 50 hours are needed after me I do it. In the mean time I take night classes to further my education. My job is not taken for granted and I don't need anyone negotiating for me to make sure I have benefits. :P
The current state of affairs in the US auto industry, please...not the overall economy.
Q#2...do you think a Govt Auto Team will get it right???
Regards,
OW
How much would it cost to get Carlos Goshn over from Renault/Nissan. The man has done wonders with those companies.
"When he joined the company, it had debt of $20 billion and only three of its 48 models were generating a profit. Ghosn was viewed as an outsider by the media and parts of Nissan. Ghosn promised to resign if the company did not reach profitability by the end of the year[2], and claimed that Nissan would have no net debt by 2005."
So what are you going to do when someone in China is willing to do your job for $5 a day?
You know what rose from those ashes to become the largest aluminum manufacture in the U.S.? Alcoa.
Alcoa was shaped during its half-century monopoly and transformed by increasing competition, first from new domestic firms then from abroad. Charles Hall’s key process patents, active from 1888 to 1909, were the firm’s technical and legal foundation. Smithdetails the Hall-Héroult process that permitted producers to transform aluminum from a luxury metal worth more than gold to a commodity priced less than copper. Hall’selectrolytic process of reducing aluminum ore (bauxite) first to aluminum oxide (alumina)and then to aluminum metal has remained unchanged for a century. Scale has not. Smith maintains that Alcoa’s vast expansion, funded by vast infusions of Mellon money, yielded“economies of scale” that secured the firm’s dominance; through 1945 Alcoa held 90 percent of the North American market. Smith’s evidence, however, rests uneasily with his argument. First, while Alcoa’s patents precluded domestic competition, stiff import tariffs excluded foreign competition. Moreover, Alcoa erected formidable barriers to entry through controlling sources of aluminum ore and electrical power--the two critical raw materials--in Canada, the Caribbean, and especially Dutch Surinam. As Naomi Lamoreauxhas shown for steel, such vertical integration can be independent from economies of scale or speed. Finally, even after a 1912 antitrust consent agreement barred Alcoa itself from the international cartels which “stabilized” world prices and market shares, its closely-held Canadian subsidiary participated fully in the cartels and brought Alcoa the benefits of such stability. Alcoa’s failure to replicate the German invention of Duralumin, an aluminum alloy as strong as mild steel, or to produce aluminum for airplanes during World War I,propelled the firm into research and development, which secured Alcoa even greater dominance in interwar markets for aluminum cooking utensils, wire, tubing, and castings.Around 1945 pivots the complex story of how Alcoa lost its monopoly. Sensibly, Alcoa built and managed the $672 million wartime effort that doubled America’s aluminum capacity. Simultaneously the Department of Justice won its eight-year antitrust case, a landmark in framing antitrust policy, against Alcoa. The firm was helpless against the late New Deal’s energetic trust-busting; nor was it exculpated by its long-standing ties withHoover’s conservative Treasury secretary Andrew W. Mellon. Here Smith follows not thepolitical analysis of Ellis Hawley but the economic criteria of Robert Bork, finding,unsurprisingly, antitrust is undesirable. The decision against Alcoa fit perfectly with the War Surplus Property Board’s disposal of the 50 federally-owned aluminum plants:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:P52Y2ITlq74J:www.tc.umn.edu/~tmisa/reviews/S- mith_Monopoly.pdf+Alcoa+and+foreign+competition&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
As I am in consulting, a more accurate description may be some in Ireland working at a lower rate.
As for Alcoa, that was an argument back in the '50s. Even Greenspan went on to say that Alcoa was a monopoly, but maintains that it was not a coercive monopoly and, hence, should not have been subject to anti-trust action.
You are stretching to stick up for the UAW. GM and Ford will just move the factories overseas anyway. Jobs have been leaving for years.
http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/detroitcrisis/index.html
Who cares? What would it take to get Peter Lynch away from Fidelity? Just who the hell is going to buy these cars?
Past performance is no assurance of future performance. Any village idiot can make ten years of great stock picks in the right environment. After the dot com bust all the auto makers were doing just fine with easy credit and a robust economy. However, Obama is the one whom is going to make the moves here. All the CEOs and retards on Wall Street are the reason for the status quo of the economy. How many TRILLIONS did these brilliant money managers lose? You would have better odds in Vegas. Fact is that few money managers beat the S&P and are way over compensated. Perhaps you would like to follow the Asian CEO compensation plan. Being it that you claim them superior. Then lets look at their employee for life mantra. Face it its not a very good time to be a CEO.
Still, some Janesville workers felt G.M. broke a pledge in its 2007 contract with the United Automobile Workers to keep the factory running.
“We didn’t deserve this,” said John Dohner Jr., shop chairman at U.A.W. Local 95. “We’ve all put a lot of hard work into trying to secure a future here.”
So, SUVs are not selling, but plant workers LITERALLY expect the plant to stay open so they can collect their paycheck...just HOW does GM keep a plant running making products that do not sell???
That is why I harp on what I see as the child-like intelligence expressed by what some call "skilled" UAW workers...they don't want the product you make, but you expect the compant to keep the plant open...so...are they supposed to take the SUVs and just drop them in the ocean while they pay you???...does ANYONE in the UAW understand that it could take hundreds of millions of $$$ to convert an SUV plant to something else, and the something else, if it is selling, is already made in another plant???...are UAW people simply THAT STUPID that they cannot see that as cars pile up in lots, unsold, that they don't need to make more???
Which proves my theory that these idiots think that GM exists so they have jobs...not the capitalist model that it exists to make a profit, and out of profit comes jobs...no, they just think that they have the divine right to simply show up and get paid...
rocky, is this what your family taught you???...do you have any idea why Janesville closed???...do you actually think that the plant should stay open, paying workers not to work, or, worse yet, paying workers to make something that no one wants to buy???...are you that infected by the entitlement mentality that you actually believe that crap???...I hope not...
An earlier poster asked why stuff was easily affordable 40 years ago but not now...depending from which side you view this will slant your opinion...
Side One: average wages have not kept up with inflation, so it takes more of your dollars and more hours worked to buy a house or a car...
Side Two: that average wages have kept up with inflation in the GENERAL sense (non-economic terms by Bob), but the only two items that have increased in price FAR above inflation are houses and cars...computers, food, gasoline (not counting the recent $4/gal gas) and other items of living are, inflation adjusted, just as affordable or more affordable than before, taking fewer work hours to buy them...
So, the reason families are "falling behind" is because they want to buy a house for $500K which, in reality, is far outside their income level, but they "stretch" to try and make it...obviously, this family will always be behind the 8-ball because they should have bought a $100K house, but no one can tell them that...
Further, people wanted to buy a $40K car when their income will really justify a $20K car...so, once again, the person who has bought too much house and too much car cannot keep up with inflation, which is bunk...he simply refuses to live within his means...THAT is why Momma had to go out and get a job...because Dad wanted all his toys, like too much house (but I can sell it in 10 years for a great capital gain), too much car (I deserve a Benz S600 'cuz I look good in it) or the newest VCR, DVD, plasma TV, jet-ski (2 of them), vacation house on the coast, 2 Harleys for weekend jaunts, etc., etc., etc.
They could have cut the cost of the car in half by buying one year old vehicles, moved into a house that one income could afford, a house that was NOT 6 bedroom, 7 bath on 17 acres, with weekly tennis lessons, piano lessons for 2 kids, and a membership in the local swimming club...
In other words, I really wonder if incomes really lagged inflation, or if housing prices shot thru the roof as more and more luxuries were added to the cost of the basic home and Dad was not smart enough to stay within his budget, so, trying to keep up with the Joneses, they overspent and spent 30 years trying to pay off something that was too much from Day One...
It's not that incomes failed to keep up, it was that housing prices were leaping up far faster than inflation, and buyers did not know when to say "stop" or they simply bought more house than they could afford...but, from the builder's point of view, if the idiots will buy more than they can afford, let's make the houses bigger and even MORE expensive, and wait and see who else buys...it them becomes a slef fulfilling cycle, and the economist says that income failed to keep up with inflation, when, simply, the two biggest purchases in your life, home and car, rose much faster than inflation and you overbought for your budget...now, with the payments straining your last penny, you went out and bought the jetski, piano lessons and MORE junk you could not afford, so now it loosk like the "population" cannot keep up, when the population simply lived outside its means from the beginning...
Smaller house, used car (or less expensive new car, not everyone needs a Benz, you know), no jet ski or vacations to Spain, no ski trips to Idaho, no plasma TV, no DVD recorder, etc.
Maybe sanity will return after all, but more UAW plants must close as they have the ability to make many more cars then we are willing to buy...
Sidenote: today's local paper had a dealer selling a 2008 STS for $29,900...assuming that last year it sold new for well over $50K (probably mid-50s), this may be a bargain...wait until Sep when the 2010s come out, it will be 2 (model) years old, may pick it up for mid-low 20s...super luxury car for less than my Crown Vic...
rocky (again)...it is time to finalize your divorce so you can get on with your life...marrying this woman with a conservative viewpoint may bring some sanity into your life...
wrong...er, different from mine...She could be my friend, as I have friends with opposing views...but for a mate to share my life, we have to be close to the same page...NOT identical, as that would be boring, but similar views of life...how James Carville and Mary Matalin do it is beyond me...
Let's just say that rapid responsiveness has not been a strength of GM's for, about 40 years. :P
And yet all we see are long historic citations used by you to prove points that are at best marginally related. So how about let's just talk about the current situation? I don't really care about Japanese labor systems in Japan, or the Japanese health care system, or the making of clothing in India. I care about how we can be competitive again in auto production. And the UAW is killing it in the US.
The non-US nameplates have been doing fine in this country with non-union labor. Growing while the D3 outsource their jobs to Mexico. What a wonderful union the UAW is, helping US jobs go abroad and domestic auto dealerships to close down.
I was offered a layoff or buyout by Chrysler after working for them for a quarter of a century. I took the buyout and quickly found a similar job with another company in the same area at approximately the same wage scale.
As I recall, I could have put in for a transfer to any other Chrysler facility anywhere in the U.S. when/if an opening became available. I did not want to move and it's one of the main reasons why I switched companies.
Have you put in for a transfer yet?
I see you are still deflecting from the real issues. The UAW Legacy costs negotiated by both the UAW and the lame leadership at GM are bankrupting the company. Copying & pasting 20 year old stories about sweat shops in SF and labor issues in Japan have NO relevance. As long as there are more people in the Wolrd willing to do menial jobs like sewing, building cars, toys and airplanes there will be managers looking for the cheapest labor. That is good business. Like it or not we are in a global economy. Either compete or die. Life is not always easy and the Constitution of the USA does not guarantee that it will be so. The UAW workers lived the high life for many years. It was built on false promises and goon tactics. Time to pay the piper.
Don't you know that men and women can't be "friends?" Ever listen to a Left-Coast guy named Tom Leykis? He is an FM talk show DJ from, oh, I think L.A., that truly believes that men and women can not be best friends. Ya know why, because of the strong human sex drive. Tom Leykis would come on in the afternoon while I was working at Boeing. There was another Bryan who spelled Bryan with a "y" like I do working in my Illustration group. He'd put Leykis on in the late afternoon for our listening pleasure.
Tom Leykis would say that if you're good friends with a woman then you're just a little light in the loafers. Surely you've heard this line of reasoning before. I don't have time for a lot of friends in my life. My friends are at church, work and online here at Edmunds, eh?
An "eh" for you up there in the Pacific NW, fintail, my former home.
I'm some 1,800 miles south of Seattle now!
Anyway, to tie in the UAW to this goofy post I'm sputtering out here, let me just say this about that. I believe as gagrice and marsha7 do, that the UAW leadership(and long-time members)are not dealing with an intelligent enough deck. Read gagrice's posts very, very carefully, rockford and dallas, and you'll see where these people barked up the wrong tree.
And no, dallas, all American jobs(yes, I'm now thinking my new career, Allied Healthcare)are not going to be out-cropped to India. According to the guy working for the company that our hospital hires to bring us our benefits, our hospital gives out the best benefits in southern Arizona. I believe this guy, any question my wife and I brought up was answered intelligently and honestly. And this guy should know his stuff, he is the one that presents the hospital's benefits to hospital workers sitting there in meetings. He is an outside source that doesn't gain by lying to anyone. He makes great pay for himself, I am sure of that, too.
Honesty? Hey, gagrice, do you think UAW members and/or leadership is being totally honest about the car market, union bene's, strained relationships, blood, sweat and cheers, droning alcoholism and drug abuse, broken marriages, etc.? I think they're raising the poker hand 2 large ones when they only have one pair of 2's. :shades:
Dudes, train immediately outside of the automotive field! Oh, BTW, I have read a "first-drive" review of the new world order 2010 Chevrolet Camaro and it is said to be hot-hot-hot, smokin' hot! Great handling, acceleration, looks, engine and tranny, etc., etc. Beats the new Stangs. They only compared it to the Ford, though, reviewers didn't want to bring the new Dodge Challenger in to the sandbox to play. :surprise:
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Exactly on point. Oddly, when the GM Moraine plant was slowing down production over the last years and IUE workers were being interviewed, none expressed the concept that their deserved the job as an entitlement. Many felt they had worked to make a quality product (SUVS) and were sad to see the plant slowing and eventually being closed. Many said they hoped GM would convert the plant to produce another product since it is "new" (built to produce S-10 trucks originally). However none seemed to feel GM owed them the jobs. I consider that a good attitude.
The IUE was in that plant because it was legacy from Frigidaire production in Dayton when it was owned by GM.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Believe me, if some IDIOT was willing to do your job for $5 a day, you'd scream! Why the heck do you care about your company when they obviously don't care enough about you to hire some joker to do your job for such an abyssmal pay?
I'm sure there's some unemployed guy out there thinking, "Oh, my boss moved my job to China. I lost my house. My wife died because we no longer had health insurance. My kids are sick and starving, and I've just been diagnosed with cancer. But not to worry! It actually helps my former company!"
Sure! Sounds like a bargain - that is until you find out this particular STS was an ex-rental that plunged off a pier and spent a month at the bottom of the Delaware River! Screamer ads still bring 'em in!
Also lay-offs have effected my life. Both my father and uncle are laid off and are struggling to find jobs. They have adapted and hold a skill set broader than installing a lug nut and will find other work.
When my father first got laid off after 20 years of work in 2001, my mother found work as a cafeteria lady at the local school providing health insurance for my family.
Later when she got terminal cancer, that job as a lunch lady covered her health insurance.
My father is much happier moving away from that dying company and has been able to succeed even though he was lied off.