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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16738 messages, Last post on Dec 03, 2009 at 10:07 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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you sound set. But is Chrysler gonna make it? What do you think? Will they? IMO they need to get the Hornet up and running and put out some fuel-efficient rigs soon. The Dodge Caliber is not winning any converts over with its reliability of powertrain issues. I am always favoring smaller rigs, but now smaller rigs are where its at, with high ghastly prices and all. Yeah, it was nuts to have Boeing send me packing after 19 years and 9 months of employment with them. But this one truly was a lemon turned lemonade for my wife and I and our five pets. We like it better in Arizona and I have a great boss and a small, rural hospital to work at that will only need to offer more services to the community as time moves along. I get paid better than my pay leaving Boeing, though my Boeing health and dental insurance was better than what I have now. The three of us Respiratory Therapists actually work for a sub-contracted RT service company and are in the process of breaking off from them and having the small hospital we work at buy out our contracts from them. We will then be direct employees of the hospital we work at and we hear that their insurance is much better than our contract company's is. I have heard that ER services we receive if we need help ourselves are paid for in full if we need them, for instance. So we shall see how that all pans out. In short, my wife and I are enjoying our lives more now in rural SE Arizona than we did when I was working my Boeing job and living in the crowded Puget Sound area of western Washington. Even though I was born in Seattle and the Puget Sound area is my homeland. We can thank St.Louis for giving us our first Drive-By Truckers rock show. It was in April of 2004 at Mississippi Nights on the waterfront. We gained a lot of enjoyment by seeing that show and finding a great talented rock band to enjoy from then on out. And that huge Arch is a trip to go up in, too. Missouri was a good experience, overall, for us. Well, tedebear, sounds like you'll be fine. I am not so sure about Chrysler, though, at this juncture.
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Jun 29, 2008 2:29 pm) The company should have started weaning themselves off their high profit trucks and SUVs several years ago, instead of waiting until now to begin thinking seriously about hybrids and smaller, higher mpg vehicles. They had the 30 mpg Neon but the SOHC had a bad reputation for quality issues and it affected the entire Neon name. We had two DOHC versions in our family that were fairly reliable. The "merge of equals" with MB didn't do Chrysler any good, either. 10 years ago Chrysler had one of the highest cash reserves in the auto industry. The leeches in Germany sucked that dry and when they saw that Chrysler could no longer support them they left. Chrysler's timing for the unveiling of the new Challenger could have been better. A 425 hp muscle car that is rated for 13/16 mpg isn't what a lot of people are shopping for lately. Some people have said that anyone who has an extra $40k for one of those isn't concerned about fuel economy anyway. Chrysler had a big gathering at their headquarters in Auburn Hills several days ago to honor Lee Iacocca and give him a lifetime achievement award. Lee mentioned that the company had been through tough times before and in his experience that's what motivated the employees to put forth their best effort. He said that things will work out. SE Arizona, eh? I used to fly down there each February with my bicycle for a weeklong loop through the desert for warm weather (usually) training. We started and ended in Tucson but stayed in small towns such as Globe, Safford, Douglas and Sierra Vista. |
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Replying to: tedebear (Jun 29, 2008 1:38 pm) If your job ever gets shaky you should think about locking in your UAW retirement and joining the IBEW. It only takes 5 years to be vested. Not sure of the SL local, but most places are good at job placement. We will ALWAYS need electricians. Though I understand your desire to stay in robotics. That would be a great field for the future also. You will be very employable as long as you want to work. That is not the case for most UAW workers. |
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Replying to: tedebear (Jun 29, 2008 1:38 pm) |
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not only the Fifth Avenue lemko mentions, but, my parents '73 Plymouth Gold Duster was one of the best American rigs I have ever driven. I drove that pup a lot when I got my license in the fall of '75. The Slant 6 was a great engine. Yep, I'm in one you may have not frequented much, if at all. Did you travel to Willcox? It's the home of famous Rex Allen, the singing cowboy. 
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Jun 30, 2008 3:44 pm) From looking at my road atlas it appears that Willcox is near the center of a big loop we traveled around. We usually had lunch in Tombstone. Our lycra cycling attire and the cowboy hats and old west outfits of many others walking around were an interesting contrast. Back to the UAW, it was just announced several hours ago that the St. Louis Chrysler minivan plant will be closed indefinitely after October. The Dodge truck plant next door is cutting back to one shift in September. The minivan plant is where I've worked for over 24 years. Chrysler to Close Missouri Plant Indefinitely I guess it's time to see if anyone has an opening for an industrial electrician who specializes in robotics and Rockwell programming software. |
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I don't know if you were on this thread when rockylee was looking for work, but, we followed his plight for many a moon during that time. Last I heard he was selling cars but starting to look for something else. He and his family are pro-UAW to the max. You are absolutely loaded with work skills and there will be several companies that will not only want your skills but I'm thinking there will be some that will need your experience and skills. Keep us posted and I am one who is pulling for you. It is probably premature to think that Chrysler is done so maybe they can transfer you somewhere else. Then again, even if they could, you might not want to do that, eh? |
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"The United States has really been living in a fool's paradise, or a phony economy, probably for more than 20 years. But our economy has been growing and getting bigger and bigger. We have been able to convince the world to lend us money and to provide us with goods that we don't produce and that we can't afford to pay for with exports. And it has gotten to the point now where the problem is so big, especially since the real-estate bubble. We've now borrowed so much money from abroad. Our trade deficits are now very big, and our industrial base and our infrastructure have been allowed to decay for so long, that we are now at a point that we can only survive as an economy thanks to the charity of the rest of the world. They have provided us with all the goods that we can no longer produce because we lack the industrial capacity. And they have to lend us the money because we don't have any savings anymore." - Peter Schiff, June 2008 |
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Pick up anything in your house that's less than 20 years old and my bet is it was made overseas. We make hardly anything anymore. I call them corporate terrorists, super capitalists, the Gordon Geckos and the mysterious billionaire in the movie Network. America is just another place on the map to them. A place that, if you give them the opportunity, they will ruthlessly exploit for their own advantage. It's a game to them and the only thing that matters is whether they win or lose; and they only want to win. Capitalism is a good thing, but like government, it needs a system of checks and balances to work properly. And no folks, the 'free market' is not enough of a check. See monopolies, inside trading, deceptive advertising and price fixing as just a small sample of problems we humans bring to capitalism. A country can't remain properous if it doesn't MAKE things; manufacture stuff. Making things builds the social capital of a country. People figure out how to do stuff. Americans are mostly consumers now. We've brought along a generation (40 and under) that mostly doesn't know how to figure out stuff, (it's not their fault). Go figure. The real culprits are you those of you that purchase cheap foreign products from countries with no labor or environmental standards, the corporations that have lost any and all sense of civic duty, and, finally, the bought and paid for government that passed so-called "free trade" agreements with countries which the US could never fairly compete because of a lack of labor and environmental laws/standards. Simply put, no country can compete with another when the playing field is not level. If anything, then, the unions had the prescience and foresight to see this coming and did their best to prevent all the crap you are currently witnessing. And, as they originally intended, i.e. the so-called "free" traders, blame the unions. I find the hostility to unions here puzzling. Who outsourced jobs to foreign companies? The unions? No, the management. Saying the unions made them do it is like a young kid saying his sister made him hit her. And if the argument is that blue-collar workers should work for $1 a day, no health care, no benefits, and a ditch in the street for a sewage system, just like the people they're competing with jobs for, consider--would YOU? Henry Ford realized that unless he paid his workers a living wage, they wouldn't have enough money to buy his products. Corporations have forgotten that since then.
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Replying to: lemko (Jul 03, 2008 5:58 am) I was visiting with the Mexican fellow that helps keep my place weeded yesterday. His wife does not have a work visa or green card and cannot come to the US and work. She works in a factory in Tijuana that makes printed circuits for Sony. She makes less than $20 per day. She does have health care insurance and the reason she keeps her job there. Almost every Japanese Company has factories in Tijuana. They are taking advantage of NAFTA. Make the product, stick it in a Mexican truck with a low paid Mexican driver and deliver it anywhere in the USA. Eventually it will even out. I think the US worker will have to go down further than the Mexican worker will come up. No candidate is addressing this issue with any strong rhetoric. |
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