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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16705 messages, Last post on Nov 25, 2009 at 6:56 PM
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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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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 06, 2008 9:36 pm) What about the company that is not making enough to pay that buck an hour more? I watched the culinary workers in the oilfields lose 30% of their wages when the price of oil went in the toilet. The IBEW electricians lost 20% during that same time in Alaska. When has the UAW ever given back wages when the Big 3 were losing money. I am not referring to this last lame agreement where they dumped the losses on new hires and kept the gold for the senior employees. When GM lost $72 billion over the last 4 years and $38 b just last year. Did the workers volunteer to take a $5 per hour cut in pay? The biggest UAW rip-off is tacking retiree benefits to the members wage package. IF the UAW was looking out for the workers they would have insisted and rightly so that the Big 3 have a pension plan that is fully funded. So in the event of one or more automakers going broke those retirees would be covered. That is what you have a Union for. To protect your interest on the job and after you retire. I get my check from a Teamster Trust that has current and past Union members on the board. They look out for me and my retirement. I would hate to think that lame brained bunch I worked for was holding control of my retirement. GM and the UAW do not deserve to survive. They have been inept at doing what they are supposed to do for decades. And now the poor tax payer and future tax payers will be burdened with the mess they have made. |
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 06, 2008 9:55 pm)
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 06, 2008 8:22 pm) Thank you for setting the record straight on tariffs. That has been the hue and cry of the UAW whiners. They want a level playing field. Well then we need to drop our 25% tariff on trucks and make it level. Japan is far and away the biggest importer of cars to the USA. Yet our automakers have not been able to keep up. Admitting defeat is not an American tradition. The UAW would like the deck stacked against any competition so they can keep on featherbedding as they have for the past 40 or more years. The more I learn about that lame Union the more I agree with the rest of the US workforce. They do not deserve to survive. As a pensioner, I feel for those retirees. I do believe they had the obligation to see that they were in good financial condition when they were making more money than 99% of the manufacturing workforce in America. If GM fails and they lose part of their pension and benefits they may have to join millions of other retirees in low paying part time jobs, like greeters at WalMart. Two of my neighbors that are retired are looking for work due to the 401K crash. Another already went back to his part time yard maintenance business that he retired from 10 years ago. Two of them are past 70. Nothing is 100% for sure...
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when would they finally realize they were killing the master that feeds them? And the answer is...almost never. It comes down to the next day or so for them to decide to give concessions. I'd rather have 20 more years at $15 an hour than only 3 more weeks of a better paying job, but that is not how the UAW think. To give up jobs bank is to give up nothing. That does nothing to bring health to GM. They actually think that they could consider this as a major concession. I think it needs to be the tip of the iceberg. I hope the UAW take a 30% wage cut and extract 2000 pages from their union contract. The alternative of bankruptcy and then Asia owning everything is what I call colonization. We have a $15 an hour job. Japan is busy designing a robot to replace us. Many parts suppliers that send parts to the car assembly plant are Japan owned. Record profit growth at our company from which a tiny bit is given to us and the rest stays in Japan. |
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 06, 2008 4:25 pm) This is good business to build plant here by Toyota/Honda. They are closer to the consumer, we buy most of the cars produced, and they save big time on labor. So why don't they just shut down the plants in Japan which have wages much higher than here in America? Almost a third of the cost of an import is put back into Japan to run such things as health care and other govt expenses. By their own accounts they have the highest paid employees in Japan. By custom they pay an extra months wages in the form of bonus aka the 13th month. They know they lack natural resources and look to bring in industries to support the mother land. They seek every advantage and know the India, Korea, China, and many others are out there wanting these same industries. We have all but given up textiles, steel, machine tools, and now autos are at stake. Is it just envy that drives our nation? Can we not see that unions are the folks who brought us weekends (to both union and non union) along with other countless, taken for granted, benefits through out the years? If that union job goes away we all lose the multiplier effect of those wages spent in the economy. Therefore, we lose more than one union job, we lose countless other jobs as demand decreases. Not to mention that most big corporations calculate pay by the prevailing wage in a given area. Hence, a union job would drive up the average wage in any given area. Certainly you can believe that these benevolent corporation would pay any more than they had to. They only need to be competitive enough to attract that next best job candidate from their competition. Its in our nations history, that men worked in the steel mills. 364 days a year, for 12 hours a day. A tater was the common lunch, if he fell into the molten steel vat, the family had no safety net, they more than likely went to the almshouse if they lost their bread winner. Somebody fought the battle to end this madness. For a man to work so hard for life's bare needs (food, shelter, and clothes) is today considered less than civilized. If it not for organized labor, there would be no consumerism. Much like that child who makes Nike shoes and cannot afford to buy a pair of them, we would be working for the needs of the elite class. "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
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This is the big issue in a nutshell, A. if the big 3 fails now it will really hurt the US and obliterate Michigan. B. If you save the big 3 you will be saving and institution that needs to be replaced by more efficient UNION FREE auto makers. - LOOK TO TUCKER. Preston Tucker made an automobile, back in the 1940s, that was innovative even by today's technological standards. The big three bribed congressmen and the SEC to shut him down (see capture theory and "Preston Tucker: A Generation Too Late", by Gregory Rehmke). In his farewell speech, Preston warns the US public that some day the Germans and the Japanese will crush the American Auto makers by building a better mousetrap (read: car). Well the chickens have come home to roost, and the big three lost their IMMENSE advantage and are now going broke, and because we eliminated the true bad asses (like Tucker and all the other innovators who JUMPED out or NEVER went in the auto making business after watching Tucker get hauled in front of the SEC and congressional committees) are not around to take up the vacuum/slack. Remeber the big three are so inept that even though Japan and Germany and Korea came out of utter desimation and destruction they were still able to overcome the US/victors industrial might. |
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