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Comments
Remember who is responsible for the crisis seen today.
No, lemko, this does not include you...
Further, GM did lose sales to Honda and Toyota, simply because Honda and Toyota kept improving their products, too...
That Stinking peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter.... :P
This minor recession is still far from as bad as the early 1980s. I can't eat a cucumber to this day. I got so tired of the cukes our neighbors gave us by the gunny sack full. Butchered our goat and two pigs Ralphy and Potsy. When the interest rate gets up to 20% as it was in 1978, we can discuss this recession being on a par. My credit rating is as good as it was in 1978 and I can borrow all I want for less than 7% today on my signature. Comparing this to the great depression is such a joke I cannot believe people would be that stupid.
When the states quit handing out money to all the deadbeats as CA has threatened you will hear some whining.
As we learn more about the troubles of GM and the other U.S.-owned car companies, we should reconsider what it means to be an American car company and look at which car companies are really benefiting our country, our workers and our communities.
BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota all have or are building auto manufacturing facilities in the United States. And not one of these has shuttered a plant during this recession or before. At a time when the domestic-owned car industry is in intensive care, with Chrysler and GM in bankruptcy, the rest of the domestic manufacturing industry is doing pretty well and continuing to benefit America and the communities in which their plants are located.
These foreign-owned plants are nothing less than the foundation of the new U.S. auto industry. In 2008, 3.1 million cars of the total 8.7 million sold, or just over a third, were produced by foreign-owned companies making their products here. That percentage is surely higher now, with the recent plant closings by American-owned car companies. And last year, plants for foreign-owned auto companies purchased $53 billion in parts from U.S. suppliers, further increasing the economic benefits to the U.S. of these vehicles being manufactured here.
Looking closely at the U.S. and non-U.S. content of vehicles sold here, the once-clear line between domestic and foreign autos becomes blurred. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Ford and GM as a whole had around 80% of domestic content in their vehicle lines in 2006 – but this was just barely ahead of Toyota (at 76.3% domestic)–which itself was actually ahead of Chrysler (at 71.3% domestic), see chart above.
There is a bright future for auto manufacturing in the United States–but only if you include foreign-owned auto plants located in the U.S., which have generated more jobs and helped sustain communities better in recent years than the domestic-owned auto industry.
Regards,
OW
"No cigar" doesn't even need to be applied here. Have a drink on Me!
Regards,
OW
Recessions need to be measured in more than GDP growth terms. Looking at real incomes and non-manipulated unemployment rates would be handy too - but the powers that be don't like such stats to be tabulated.
When you say deadbeats, do you mean the overpaid public sector workers (union workers?), or welfare recipients? Not much difference in many cases
Here's some evidence, superficial that it may be, that shows the gap between rich and poor may be closing. I looked up some federal gov't payscales online (basically just google GS pay scale and a ton of stuff comes up). Well, for the DC area, from 2007-2009, a GS1, step 1 salary increased by 9.5%, while a GS15, step 10, ony increased 6.5%.
However, don't shed too many tears for the higher-paid employees. The GS1, step 1 rate went from $19,722 to $21,592, while the GS15 step 10 went from $143,741 to $153,200! And then there's another payscale above the GS, called an SES. I have no idea where that one starts off at or how high it goes, but some of the managers around here are in it.
The Obama plan to provide unemployment to UAW workers for 3 years is WELFARE to the max. Gives them no incentive to get out and find a job or learn a trade that will feed and house them. Most welfare is pandering for votes. I wonder how much we would spend if ONLY INCOME TAX PAYERS were allowed to vote? That is the way this country was envisioned. We have wandered far from the system our forefathers died to leave US.
As far as workers on the public payroll. I think that could be cut in half. And still keep a good teacher student ratio and plenty of cops and firemen. One example is the EPA that spends billions and cannot come up with accurate mileage estimates for new cars. Department of Education could be disbanded completely as we were promised by Reagan. It is a TOTAL waste of tax payer money. They make the UAW look productive.
Skilled and proficient workers handling lug nuts are highly prized by team owners in NASCAR and IRL.
That is unthinkable. It wouldn't have happened in the previous administration. Look at Reagan and PATCO. Never underestimate what this political landscape is going to do to our country economically with all the control grabbing going on. Buy those votes. Buy those votes.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
The jobs bank evolved out of the contract problem where GM couldn't reduce numbers of employees or close plants with certain time frames of those contracts. To reduce workers, they came up with having the workers work in a holding plan.
Was the jobs bank UAW's invention or was it management's invention to get around the inability to "unemploy" workers whom they didn't need?
I think back and there have been many stories in the local paper about people who were losing their jobs at Delphi or GM and had sideline businesses they had started. Some were doing training to become skilled in other areas and intending to start new lives after GM. No all workers deserve the smear that they were relying on the jobs bank, while many do deserve the notation.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I am sure that is true. And I applaud those that did community service and took classes during their time in the Jobs bank. My contempt is toward the ones that sat day after day in a rubber room watching TV and reading comic books.
I am tired of hearing about teachers and class size...I grew up in NY, classes had 32-33 kids, we had no A/C (yes, NY gets hot in June and we had school until the last week of June), some of my books had no hardcovers as they were torn off or fell off...yet, my teachers taught and I learned...today, if someone isn't taught in a class under 20, in a climate controlled room of 70.2 degrees, they can't learn and they are considered "disadvantaged"...
Oh, and unlike the UAW, my teachers had no union...thank heaven for that!!!
But I suspect as she got in her cheaply made Toyota she might be thinking about things on the way home from her daughter's birthday party we had hosted.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I find this about NY's teacher unions dating from 1973 as cited in link below.
I always under NYC's teacher unions were among the strongest. In fact wasn't in the 70s or 80s that 60 minutes did a story about their janitors (floor sweepers in your terms) were paid over $100,000, way above even teachers. They also cited many techniques of being paid for work/time not done.
When did you attend school there?
Link below:
"In 1960, New York City social studies teacher Albert Shanker and Teachers Guild president Charles Cogen led New York City teachers out on strike. At the time, there were more than 106 teacher unions in the New York City public schools—many existing solely on paper, while others, like the Brooklyn Teachers Association, were real unions.
"The motives behind the strike were wages, establishment of a grievance process, reduced workloads and more funding for public education. But in order to win on these issues, Shanker and Cogen argued, the city's teachers had to be in one union. In early 1960 the Teachers Guild merged with a splinter group from the more militant High School Teachers Association to form the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)."
"Politically, 1973 was a pivotal year for NYSUT. The union adopted UTNY's Committee of 100 program, a group of many more than 100 members who agreed to lobby the state legislature in person twice each year. In 1967 NYSUT had created its own political action committee, VOTE-COPE, which was also melded into NYSUT. In 2005, the Committee of 100 counted several thousand members and VOTE-COPE raised more than $3 million in voluntary contributions.
"Over the years, NYSUT's political activism has led it to be characterized as 'the 800-pound gorilla of New York politics.' Some of the union's accomplishments include:
*
o In 1975, passage of a law guaranteeing tenure transfer rights and a maximum two-year probation period for teachers who switched districts;
o In 1976, a legislative override of a veto of a bill requiring a formula for average funding of New York City public schools (it was the first override of a governor's veto in 104 years);
o In 1977, a law providing for significantly enhanced enforcement powers for the state Public Employment Relations Board; and
o In 1978, repeal of the Taylor Law's mandatory penalty of one year's probation for any public employee who went on strike"
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
That may be true, but as we've discussed many times, the US make have not made much effort to sell competitive vehicles in other markets. In Japan it is small cars and right side drive. How many GM or C cars are competitive there? Also give the biggest market by far is the US, there's not going to be a lot of new sales in smaller markets (just mathematically speaking). The biggest foreign markets (Europe, China) - Ford is very competitive in Europe. GM is doing well in China. So the "other markets" argument is mostly a red herring.
We discussed the stodgy management at US makers interested in high pay for themselves and shareholders.
Absolutely correct.
We discussed the foreign makers employing large numbers of temps and part time workers more and more so they technically don't have layoffs--they just cut back. They also save a fortune in pay and retirements and benefits with the temporaries.
Do we have actual data to support those statements? And some use of temp/PT workers is a good thing, as it provides the business the exact flexibility that the D3 do not have.
I suspect as she got in her cheaply made Toyota she might be thinking about things on the way home from her daughter's birthday party we had hosted.
It's the expensively made GMs that have put them into BK. Too bad expensively made is not synonymous with a quality product.
The car interior looks and feels cheap. I helped her put the child seats in when she had her grandkids to take home. It's a light gray and the plastic all around along with the seat cloth screams, "Cheap." The gaps between parts of the dash don't look good either.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
http://www.topix.com/autos/toyota/2008/11/toyota-will-lay-off-temporaries
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
"Toyota is dangling incentives for workers to quit, scaling back work hours for others and cutting back on bonuses as it suffers along with Detroit Three automakers through the worst auto sales downturn in decades."
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
"The United Auto Workers union said Wednesday that trustees of its retiree health care fund have named former Michigan governor James J. Blanchard to the board of the new Chrysler-Fiat venture.
Blanchard, 66, served as Michigan's congressman from 1975 to 1983, helping to sponsor legislation to provide $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees to then-Chrysler Corp., which kept the automaker out of bankruptcy court."
AP
You beat me to it.
Using temps & part-timers is smart business. Well-run (non-union, of course) American businesses were doing this decades before the transplants came along.
Suppose you're a business owner who's seeing a sudden increase in your orders. You realize that you're short-handed, but you don't want to add full-time workers until you're sure that this isn't a temporary spike. By hiring part-timers or temps, you can fill the orders while keeping your costs down. You can also handle seasonal variations in order volume. Haven't department stores been doing this for the past hundred years? Nothing new here.
Some Western European countries actually banned the use of temps until a few years ago. The result: higher unemployment. Barred from hiring temps, companies didn't hire more full-timers. Instead, they just paid O/T to workers already on the payroll. As you might expect, these laws were repealed, since they were only adding to joblessness.
Would you invest your hard-earned dollars in a company that wasn't smart enough to use part-time or temp workers to hold down costs? I certainly wouldn't.
I think that's how it's supposed to work, but haven't companies also been doing things like getting rid of one full-time employee and then replacing them with two part-timers, so they don't have to pay benefits? Now on the surface that might sound smart because it saves money, but then it leads to morale problems, higher employee turnover, reduced quality of product, etc.
Just like everything in life, a balance has to be struck.
Agreed, but I'm against heavy-handed European-style legislation to achieve this.
Also, a part-time job is a chance to get your foot in the door & may give you a shot at something better. At least once in my working life that I can recall, part-time work led to an offer of full-time employment.
In other words, at the non-union plants of Toyota they are trying their hardest to reduce costs without closing plants or laying off full time staff. Seems that the non-union environment is providing much more job security. :shades:
What does it take to fire a teacher who has "tenure?"...treason???...murder???...
Second tier wage scale is more or less the transplants part timers. To say that the Big Three just close a plant is not accurate. All of Janesville, Wisconsin was in economic turmoil prior to the plant shutting down. Just how many plants have you been to? You need only go to the CTS plant in Flint Michigan to see the real deal (prosperity). Your generalization is not valid and only is hiding the fact that all the car makers are hurting.
The "real deal" is because FINALLY they decide to build a competitive Cadillac. Keep the Malibu and CTS plant and there you go! Prosperity. Because the product competes.
It hurts when the competition shows you the way.
All of a sudden, GM has religion. Hmmm.....
Regards,
OW
So we use the CTS factory as an example of GM's prosperity? :P
I had to convert that American wealth loss into potential lost GM sales.
The answer is 109 years of GM losing 40% of it's annual vehicle sales revenue!
Yet there are those who believe GM sales drops or market share losses of any amount represent a severe lack of quality.
Quality in design, durability, management and UAW decisions...yes, quality has been severely lacking since around 1970. :shades:
Regards,
OW
This is fine. I was hired by by New England Tel. in 1991 as an operator. Temporary. Our rules weren't the same as the regulars. If an reg. ft operator assigned to a Sunday wanted it off they would assign a temp to fill their spot. THAT is not the definition of temporary. I did not get made permanent until 1994, 3-1/2 years later. THAT is not the definition of temporary. Hell, people coming in off the street after me had better opportunities than I did.
But you dealt with it, because "you had your foot in the door".
Somewhere, SOMEBODY has to stick up for those employees, and force a company to call a spade a spade. You can't hire people as "temps" for 3, 4, 5 years and claim them to still be "temps".
GM's wheels came off back in the 1980s. If cheap gasoline hadn't touched off the truck/SUV craze of the 1990s, GM would have gone out of business years ago.
I had to convert that American wealth loss into potential lost GM sales.
That comes out to about $36,300 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. I WISH that's all I lost in 2008.
Supposedly another $1.3 Trillion evaporated in the first quarter of 2009. That's another $4333.
Permit me to ask the obvious question: why did YOU put up with this? I know that I wouldn't have tolerated this. Was a temp position with this particular employer better than a permanent job with another company? Why didn't you just take your talents elsewhere - to a more appreciative employer?
If you willingly allow others to use you as a doormat, you have no grounds for complaint.
But you dealt with it, because "you had your foot in the door".
As frustrating as it was, it ended up worth it, as I have a pension and 401K coming to me, as well as a good paying job.
While I agree that some employers will abuse the concept of temp employees, I'm also dead set against legislative remedies. Tie a company's hands when it comes to hiring practices & that company will respond by hiring fewer workers - both temps & full-timers.
That is nothing new. The local Anchorage Telephone company that was represented by the IBEW, would allow temporary operators to be jacked around for a lot longer than that back in 1970. They did make more money to cover the difference in no retirement or other benefits. They also made shorter time temps permanent based on racial quotas.
The individual person has to decide if a job is worth the hassle. No matter what level you are at. I do not think there is such a thing as a perfect job or workplace. At least I did not find it in 46 years.
Her cheaply made Toyota!! If they are made cheap..then what are GM,Ford, and C.
mark
An intelligent company has the absolute right to hire people any way it wants to...if the entire staff is part time or temporary, so be it...no one has the right to "protest" how the compnay hires its people...if one does not like it, they should vote with their feet and leave...
No compnay "owes" anybody anything when they hire them except to pay them for each hour that they work...any more that the company offers is gravy...if they want 5000 part-timers, no one can complain...
You wanted your foot in the door and you apparently got it...I am happy for you...
Perfect recipe for some bloodshed. Next time the movment might not be simple organization of labor..
Governments can't be trusted to manage such issues properly...but a society where corporations control all is not a bit better.
I wouldn't complain if I weren't subsidizing the part-time employees.
Data Show Wal-Mart Employees in Maine Rely Heavily on Public Assistance (New Rules)
"Kokomo’s Chrysler plants are showing signs of life. According to sources within the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 1166, that union’s membership began getting called back to work this week at the Kokomo Casting Plant, and more employees are expected to return to the job over the next two weeks.
At the same time, UAW Local 685 president Rich Boruff reported that the company has told him to expect to have his members back on the job by June 29. A return date for Indiana Transmission Plants I and II has not been set, however."
BREAKING NEWS: Chrysler headed back to work (kokomoperspective.com)
That article is a spin piece to slam Wal-Mart. It's factually true but it makes false implications through use of the data. I really hate these kind of slur pieces. I'm not a big fan of WalMart but that article is from an organization with a big axe to grind.
Here's another spin using the same data in the article and nothing else, just to show how that game is played.
Wal-Mart has 25 outlets in Maine, including its three Sam's Club stores.
Only 751 employees of the more than 7500 employed by Wal-Mart in Maine receive public assistance. More than a dozen other states have reported large numbers of big-box employees and their dependents relying on health and welfare programs. Hannaford Supermarkets, Maine's largest employer, which came in second in terms of number of employees receiving benefits, with 527.
The data suggest that Wal-Mart is willing to employ people who rely on public assistance - far more than other companies on the list, including other retailers.
From a different source - by the most recent count Maine has 37500 people receiving welfare. It is sixth worst in the nation in per capita terms. 2.842 per 100 people
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/eco_wel_cas_tot_rec-economy-welfare-caseloads-t- otal-recipients
From a third source - Maine is ranked 39th out of 50 (Letter Graded as D-) in it's anti-poverty success.
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/23498/No_119_Welfare_Reform_after_Ten- _Years_A_StatebyState_Analysis_summary.html
Now look what you've made me do.... defend !@%! Walmart and I don't even shop there!