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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16706 messages, Last post on Nov 30, 2009 at 12:18 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: mikefm58 (Dec 11, 2008 6:23 am) As for the mother and son who worked for Delphi, at least they're going back to college to get degrees, to make themselves marketable. I always used to think that if I ever lost my job, I could go back to delivering pizzas or waiting tables or something. Heck, back in my heyday, on an hourly basis, my takehome pay delivering pizzas was more than what it is now at my regular job! (however, I also have health insurance and 401k taken out of my regular job's paycheck, something the part time job didn't have to fund). But, in a recession, that type of work becomes less profitable, and it could very well be less so this time around. One of my friends works full-time as a waiter/bartender, and he just got cut back from 5 days per week to 4. I'm sure with this economy, there are plenty of people applying for jobs like that, all the while business at restaurants, bars, pizza joints, etc, is diminishing. My uncle works in construction...I guess if I lost my job, couldn't find a similar one, and things got really bad, I could try getting a job with his company. Although working a desk job all these years has gotten me lazy. I'm sure my body would have a violent reaction to that kind of manual labor! That, and getting up at 4 in the morning. 
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 10, 2008 7:14 pm) Public works programs did not end the Great Depression, or even alleviate it. And the idea that the federal government did "nothing" after the stock market crash in 1929 until the Roosevelt administration is a myth. President Hoover supported public works and even approved the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to bail out failing companies (sound familiar)? The total tax burden - local, state and federal - also increased from 1929 to 1932. Yet unemployment still hit 25 percent by 1932. The main difference between candidate Roosevelt and President Hoover was that Roosevelt favored direct relief to individuals (what we today call welfare). President Hoover opposed this. The Great Depression was "great" because of ham-handed government monetary policy, the Hawley Smoot Tariff enacted by the U.S. in 1930, Roosevelt's foolish tax policies that sought to punish the wealthy and businesses, and silly measures like Roosevelt's National Recovery Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court mercifully declared unconstitutional. Unemployment was in the double digits well into the 1930s, and the 1938 "recession within a depression" was also quite severe.
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Replying to: grbeck (Dec 11, 2008 7:06 am) Looks a lot like UAW contracts to me. Signed by GM management with NO CLUE as to how they would be able to keep going if the economy ever took a turn for the worst.
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 11, 2008 6:43 am) We ( the wife and I ) eat out every Sunday after Church with some members of our Sunday School class. Favorite places are Wendy's, Zaxby's Chicken, Stevie B's Pizza all you can eat for $3.40 (Seniors) and occasionally at a local Buffet all you care to eat for $6.13. Not very extravagant, but the food and company are always good! When the kids were growing up, a big deal for us was McDonalds once a month. We have a stove a refrigerator and we did and still do use them. So in effect our life style hasn't changed since I have retired. Our home and land is paid for as well as our 03 Pilot and CR-V, and we have savings enough to last, unless something really caste strophic happened. I never made the money or had the bennefits of UAW worker friends, Delta Air Line friends, and others. But we didn't spend like they did either. Now many of those friends and relatives are near or at retirement age and still have a house and car note. People tend to spend every penny they make for instant gratification and put away nothing for hard times. But, I recon they have their memories! I just don't know how those memories could be any better than teaching a son how, and watching when he caught a mess of trout from a mountain stream, cleaned them in that stream, and learned to cook them for supper that night. Then telling stories around a fire and sleeping under the stars. So many wonderful memories that cost so little , but were priceless. Kip
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 11, 2008 8:00 am) I don't think they had a clue even if the economy stayed strong. They have been loosing market share and money for many years. Kip
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Replying to: kipk (Dec 11, 2008 8:10 am) We also eat out once or twice a week. Most times at one of the local Mexican places. My wife and I rarely spend more than $10 total for a nice Mexican lunch. On special occasions we may go to the Marine Room in La Jolla and pretend we are wealthy. Maybe once or twice per year. I can tell you if we were on a tight budget we would not be wasting money eating out. Most of our friends and family had jobs as good as ours. They made choices that have left them in a less desirable position than my wife and I are in. We also spent many years doing without things that these same relatives felt they had to have. When you read stories like the one above and the UAW forklift operator that was distraught because his overtime was gone and he no longer makes $118,000 per year. That is the reason so many in this country have no sympathy for the Big 3 and the UAW workers. Can you imagine only working two years and getting a $40k severance package. That is criminal. Maybe not to the extent of Ovitz and his $140 million dollar parachute from Disney. It is a wonder that any company is making money when they waste so much from top to bottom.
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 10, 2008 6:37 pm) My wife and I use smart phones ourselves, at this point, I couldn't imagine giving up my laptop and only using a smart phone. I'll use my smartphone when on the road, but certainly not when I have my laptop handy. For one, I don't live in an area that has 3G wireless access so web access is slow to almost unusable depending where I'm located. 2nd lots of software that I use and many businesses use can't be run on a Iphone or other smart phones. If all you do is get RSS news feeds, minor web browsing, and access email, then a smart phone will probably do everything you need. Still lots of websites that are not mobile friendly. Last, while I can type pretty fast on my smartphone, it would be frustrating to have typed this entire post on it. My thumbs would be sore.
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Replying to: kipk (Dec 11, 2008 8:13 am) The Japanese were non-existent; VW was simply 'not a real car that americans would buy in any numbers'; and the only other competitors were the French and English cars which need not even be discussed. So, the math worked. The model WAS sustainable..... until the 1970's. By that time the mentality was so ingrained that GM couldn't change it. They tried but major strikes by the UAW made them decide to knuckle under...... the rest is history. |
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 11, 2008 9:46 am) A look back at the 1998 strike will clear up some questions about GM, UAW worker featherbedding. DAVID BRADLEY, J.P. Morgan: Let me step back for a minute and just talk about the issue of export of jobs. From what—from my perspective I don’t see export of jobs as really being an issue in the strike. The strike originated at the stamping plant in Flint, and stampings virtually are never made overseas and shipped back to the U.S.. It looks as if the Delphi East strike is really a sympathy strike supporting that strike. But it’s really about its productivity and competitiveness. Because of that, Flint has been the hotbed of union radicalism for many, many years. Over the years many very arcane work rules have worked their way into the GM factories, making them extremely inefficient. Take for example the stamping plant at Flint. There are 3,000 workers— ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I’m going to interrupt you just one second. Explain what a stamping plant does. DAVID BRADLEY: A stamping plant has large metal presses to stamp out sheet metal that goes on to form the body of a car, so that one press will make a hood, another press will make a door, and so forth. So returning to the point I was making, the stamping is never done overseas. It’s always done contiguous to the plant in question, as close as possible to the plant in question. But what we have here is a plant with 3,000 workers doing the work that probably 1500 or maybe even 1200 workers could do. At the Ford plant down the road a similar size facility would be using 1500 workers. That’s largely because of featherbedding and arcane work rules. We have a plant where workers on average work four hours a day and get paid for eight hours a day. And, remember, $44 an hour is the total low-end cost for the eight hours, so we’re looking at $88 an hour if we consider they’re only working four hours. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How do they work four hours a day and get paid for eight? How does that work? DAVID BRADLEY: Well, I think the union has a negotiated a deal whereby the number of hits per hour that the presses make or hits per minute is only five when it’s actually—the press can run at ten. So then they speed the press up to ten, and they finish early and get to go home. That’s essentially the story at Flint. General Motors, because of it’s relatively uncompetitive on costs, compared to the other auto makers, needs to do something to fix its cost structure. It’s going to start in places like this Flint plant that are working at only half of the rate they ought to be working, and it’s trying to get the workers there to agree to a change in work rules that will allow them to speed up the line and allow—make people put in an eight-hour day. Because of the resistance there, certainly there will be some job losses at the end of the day, and it’s unfortunate, but we’re not talking about jobs going to Mexico here. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june98/gm_6-19.html
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