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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16701 messages, Last post on Nov 20, 2009 at 3:39 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 06, 2008 4:29 pm) |
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I did not vote for any candidate that voted for the $700b bailout. It is the Democrat Congress that pushed for all the money for the banks and insurance companies. Republicans as a group were against the bailouts. A few were persuaded and noted. I say vote them all out next time they are up for election. This government and the next are not for the working middle class... "Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country." Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out." Whether it is 1 person or 200 or 2000 it hurts each individual. So no wonder Toyota sales are down 43%. There is a credit crunch that is killing the big3. Give them the loans and get on with fixing the overall economy so that hundreds of billions of dollars a year can be loaned to car buyers. That was then, this is NOW. Hopefully lenders will not do like they did in the past giving loans to people that could not pay them back. Or worse yet taking equity from their homes to finance that Tahoe they always wanted. Then could not afford the gas when it hit $4.50 a gallon. You give loans to the Big3 you could be liable for loans to the imports building here. Why is that fair market giving money to one competitor and not the other? Most of the country sees a bunch of overpaid and over-benefitted whiners who hold companies hostage until they get their way. That is the absolute truth. Auto mechanics work by the job. They get a percentage of the take. Warranty work is notoriously low pay. Same GM or Ford pays for that as pays the over priced UAW guys that left the screw out that caused the failure that ended up in the shop for repair. Remember it is the shop mechanics that see the flaws left by the UAW workers. They have good reason to despise the UAW. They feel the UAW is the reason for the loss of profit & market share over the years. How does he feel about the government who let the foreign makers come into the market without tariffs? I don't know, never asked him. I know how I feel. It gives US a much higher standard of living than the other countries. We buy a Jaguar for about 10 grand less than the poor bloke in the UK where it is built. That is what free trade buys US. You go into a 100 average homes in any foreign country, then do the same here. Tell me who has the most big flat screen TVs and a TV in every room etc etc... I can bet you won't find a country anymore affluent than here. I walked into homes built out of packing crates in the Arctic Eskimo villages. They had a TV that was half the size of the room and 10 family members huddled around it. Only in America. |
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1. What's wrong with Toyota being in the United States, employing American workers? How is that bad?..... unless you're unhappy that (like almost all of the rest of America), they're not UAW?. 2. a. UAW Retiree, "I'm having a wonderful day spending time with my children and grandchildren on this beautiful Sunday afternoon!" Toyota Retiree, "Welcome to Wal~Mart! Welcome to Wal~Mart! Welcome to Wal~Mart!" 2.b. UAW Employee- My company is bankrupt, and I'm out of work. Toyota Employee - My company is paying bonuses again! By the way, nobody except the UAW gets that nice pension, you're talking about anymore http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13359. GM hasn't been able to afford it since 2006. I just don't understand the mentality that says that it's better to drive the company out of business than to accept that you can't keep eating all the cake. But, UAW workers are special, and better than the other employees of GM, right? 3. The Japanese built their plants here because of tarrifs. However, they were doing just fine even when they were only importing cars. The government put limits on how many cars they could import, so the prices of their cars went up but people kept buying them. The government fixed the dollar so that the exchange rate made Japanese cars more expensive but people kept buying them. One of the things that I remember is expecting that the American companies would keep the prices of their cars down - or even lower them when the Japanese were forced to raise theirs. Lower prices would have given people a great reason to buy American. But they didn't - nope. Detroit just raised their prices too. Note that the Koreans are making big inroads and they are importing their cars. And kids, the Chinese are coming, maybe not for 5 years but they're coming. 4. You really want tariffs? you think that everyone in America should pay more for their cars - so you can keep your fat retirements? You really think that the rest of America is going to support that?. Anyhow, how is THAT going to work? Will the Daewoos that GM imports be exempt, but the Honda's built in Maryland be taxed? I really want American companies to succeed, but look what happened to the railroads. They were heavily unionized and the trucking companies nearly put them out of business. The big unionized Airlines... what happened to them? GM will follow their path, if they don't change. 5, The "Buy American" resort to patriotism is dead. It has just been used too many times... without the big 3 fixing themselves. Here's a NYT article from January 1992... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2D91631F935A15752C0A96495826- - - 0&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 The "Buy American" Slogan had worn thin aready then. Here's a quote from the article: It is the consensus that Detroit's products have improved vastly in recent years, but the Japanese cars have also improved so much that gaps remain. Big Three auto executives go one step further, insisting that their products are now comparable to Japan's. But American auto makers also claimed parity in the 1980's when, as Mr. Iacocca now admits, domestic vehicles were demonstrably inferior... Longer term, nationalistic enthusiasm for American vehicles won't help Detroit nearly as much as would matching Japanese competition. When Japanese politicians offered only grudging support for the Persian Gulf war, some surveys suggested that Americans, in a burst of patriotism, would be turning to Chevys and Fords. Yet during 1991 the Big Three lost market share and the Japanese gained. 6. Finally, before you start complaining about the Japanese keeping American cars out with tariffs, here's an article from 2002 that says that Japan has no tariffs on passenger cars. I believe that's been true for a lot longer than that/ http://edition.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/asia/09/12/japan.cars/index.html Japan itself already has no tariffs on passengers cars, trucks and parts, and although the United States, its major export market, also imposes no duties on cars, it has a tariff of 25 percent on trucks. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 06, 2008 8:07 pm) " I did not vote for any candidate that voted for the $700b bailout. It is the Democrat Congress that pushed for all the money for the banks and insurance companies. Republicans as a group were against the bailouts. A few were persuaded and noted. I say vote them all out next time they are up for election. This government and the next are not for the working middle class..." Verily they did, but alas they let financial hysteria take root.Darn expensive, perhaps to the power of 10. The Rtc was passed for 1/2 a trillion dollars, they spent 153 b on the S & l 'S.Don't get me wrong, congress spent all the money but on the S&l's alone only 153 b. This one will prove very expensive Financial hysteria costs much more than then our actual problem.If our dim witted house republicans had a inkling of economics they would comprehend cost: benefits but as they are false republicans, scarily even more lawyers they endorse budget deficits and inflation of the national debt. My horse for a true Republican, |
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 06, 2008 8:22 pm) 2006 article Toyota pays $10K bonuses - GM, Ford, $0 http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-workers-get-10000-bonuses-gmford-workers-get-- 0.html Some Asian automakers are showering U.S. plant workers with bonuses averaging up to $10,000 while Detroit’s two biggest carmakers have scrapped profit-sharing checks this year because of mounting automotive losses, reports the Detroit News. Toyota awarded each of its 5,600 hourly employees at its largest U.S. plant in Georgetown, Ky., an average of $10,131 for 2005. The plant builds the Camry, the best-selling car in the nation.
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 06, 2008 8:58 pm) http://www.japaneconomynews.com/2007/02/17/shunto-japans-spring-wage-offensive/ http://www.japaneconomynews.com/category/automotive/page/3/
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You make my point exactly - but we take the opposite side of the equation. General wage increases (GWI) keep on giving until you retire, compound with each GWI added, and a bonus is a one time thing. I rather have a $1 an hour raise or 3% increase than a $10,000 bonus. If you do the math its more than $2000 a year for many years and the bonus is a one time thing for one year. Any UAW member is better served with a GWI as opposed to a bonus. Now, you're the employer and you have hundreds of thousands of employees each getting the $2,000 a year - even when business is bad, Why, after a couple of decades of doing that, even the biggest company in the world could end up like GM ! |
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 06, 2008 9:55 pm) The UAW advantage will be history. MARK MY WORDS. It happens this coming year. Simple economics will prevail. A new age is already dawning in American Made Automotive Industry. Change is inevitable and everlasting. Regards, OW |
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 06, 2008 9:55 pm) Lokki replied: "Now, you're the employer and you have hundreds of thousands of employees each getting the $2,000 a year - even when business is bad, Why, after a couple of decades of doing that, even the biggest company in the world could end up like GM ! ". I agree 100%. To me a bonus is supposed to be a "Thank You" for a job well done and helping the company to make a profit for this time frame. GWI is stupid on the part of the company. Why would they want to continue paying a bonus in the form of GWI when the company is going in the toilet? And FWIW many corporations are getting away from pension plans and replacing them with good 401K matching plans. IBM was phasing in that direction when I retired in '96. Employees hired before a certain date were not affected, but those hired later were affected more and more according to hire date. Kip
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Replying to: kipk (Dec 07, 2008 5:19 am) The D3 never reallt made the right decisions and are at the brink in 2 weeks. There are many reasons why a bankruptcy is called for and a bailout only delays the inevitable. But the biggest one surrounds the inability to shed legacy costs at the same time as downsizing by 50% to return to profitability. Those who believe $34B will no doubt find more reasons to give after March more good $$$ after bad. You can't do it in 3 months and the systems are not set up today to make it happen even in 1 year. It's really too late but blinders will prevail as usual. Regards, OW |
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