Edmunds.com | Inside Line | Auto Observer Your Account | Help | Directory
You are here:
![[F]](http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/townhall/webxicons/site.gif){kind=small}
Forums
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
|
|
|---|---|
|
Replying to: gagrice (Dec 12, 2008 5:22 pm) I went to a parochial school in Chicago (is that Christian?), we weren't racist. Nor do we label all people by political association. We prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and thereby see their real character. As Jesus put it "whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me". Wave the flag you want, my daddy's coffin was draped by that flag. Patriotism doesn't mean that you must support unjust wars and or brutal murder of helpless people. The true patriots were those who opposed the Vietnam war and hastened its end. |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: tlong (Dec 12, 2008 5:50 pm) Last I looked Toyota stock was at a 52 week low. Half price. You are delusional if you consider that successful. Nothing they build appeals to me, it must be basic transportation for the masses. The Cadillac CTS is UAW Michigan and the hottest car out there. Show me a Toyota that even in the same class as a VETT. Solstice/Sky are killing the two seater market. Have you been looking at cars lately? I did like the two seater Lexus, but the price is outrageous. Other than that their cars are fugly. You have to go look at BMW to get anything better than the American hot sellers.
|
|
|
|
|
Replying to: lionsdenmother (Dec 12, 2008 5:49 pm) Republicans made become an endangered species within four years. No dimples or chads this past election. Just folks speaking their minds. It wasn't even close. |
|
|
|
|
During talks with GM, the UAW pointed out that while the automaker has complained that hourly wages and benefits are dragging it down, it has continued awarding bonuses to its top executives. GM CEO Rick Wagoner "earned" $9.3 million in salary and bonus in 2006, nearly double what he "earned" in 2005. While UAW members finish voting on a new contract with General Motors that includes a cost-of-living freeze, union negotiators have moved on to Chrysler, with Ford Motor (F) next. Chrysler's new CEO, Bob Nardelli, became a symbol of corporate excess when he left Home Depot early this year with a $210 million severance package. Ford's new CEO, Alan Mulally, got $27.8 million in salary and bonus in his first few months on the job, including an $18.5 million signing bonus. |
|
|
Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 12, 2008 4:43 pm) I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you blaming laissez-faire (not "laizze-fair", whatever that is) capitalism for the onset of the Depression? If you are, you should know that many economists would fault the Fed for keeping interest rates too low during the boom years of the late 1920s & then boosting rates after the 1929 market crash. Even if you don't think that Fed fumbling caused the Depression, you have to agree with almost every economist, Republican or Democrat, that sharp tariff increases, triggered by the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, dramatically deepened & lengthened the downturn. After we raised tariffs to keep out imports & protect our manufacturers, every other industrial country followed suit. As a result, global trade dried up & factories all over the world shut down. Bad government policy, not "greedy businessmen", transformed what would otherwise have been a 2-year recession into the legendary Great Depression. We actually were well out of the depression long before we entered WW2, Thanks to FDR. Not if you look at the unemployment numbers. Note that the unemployment rate in 1928, the last full year before the Depression began, was 4.2%. By contrast, the rate in 1940, which was the last year of FDR's 2nd term, was 14.6% - more than 3 times higher. Not until the wartime year of 1942 (Pearl Harbor was bombed in December, 1941) did unemployment approach the 1928 level. U.S. Unemployment Rates: 1920-2007 Clearly, the war effort put far more people back to work than FDR's New Deal programs did. Indeed, you could go a step further & argue, as I would, that WWII - not the New Deal - laid the groundwork for the prosperity that we enjoyed for the next 30 years. |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: jimbres (Dec 12, 2008 6:53 pm) So why was the reason to enact the Sherman Anti Trust Act? To imprison Eugene Debs? Is this the Darwinism of capitalism? I agree that any spending, which tariffs would hinder, fueling the economy, therefore social spending/public works must also fuel the economy. If you were alive then social spending was tabu. However, spending on the war machine allowed those robber barons profit, hence it was OK then. The American were on rations and sacrificing. The corporations were doing their part too, making money from the war.
|
|
|
I just read, in succession, On a Clear day you Can See General Motors, the John DeLorean book, and then Call Me Roger, about Roger Smith's tenure as CEO...oddly, altho the books are "unrelated", DeLorean tells about GM from 1956 to the late 1970s, and, for different reasons, the next book covers Smith from 1981 to 1990...read the books and they will explain in perfect detail why GM is in trouble...written 20 and 30 years ago, they could have been written yesterday...they are on point for the GM problems of this hour... GM has wasted hundreds of billions $$$ on the payroll of people who never should have had jobs to begin with...It would be like a Mom & Pop hardware store in a small town, where, instead of 2-4 employees, they had 50 and wondered why they can't make any money...GM should have jettisoned thousands of middle managers whose sole job was to aggravate those below them and push worthless paper forms around to look busy... The only shame is that those workers about to be jettisoned have made their lives around GM (Ford, too) but they will become the casualties of war...however, rather than see them for what they lost, you could also say that they had some mighty fat years in a job that never should have been created from the beginning... The automakers will now slim down to become half its size...Michigan will slowly work thru this but will still become a ghost town compared to what it was, and what ti was was an overemployed money waster... Kinda like a school system which grows from 1000 to 2000 students...you hire new teachers for the growing student body, but once the "boom class" graduates and the school shrinks back to 1000, you can eliminate the extra teachers as they are unnecessary...cruel to the teachers???...maybe, but when a system does not need you, it is criminal to keep somebody on payroll solely because "they have been there"...for the system it is an evolution, for the individual it is a revolution... The workers will be eliminated as they simply are no longer needed...the re-training they will be offered will be charity from us, but they better get motivated as there is no time to shed tears, life goes on... Monday of this week I spoke to the other lawyers in my office, saying that the Big 3 must go Chapter 11 now, to junk all their unnecessary debt and contracts...they ALL reminded me about the "ripple effect" to which I replied that the ripple effect does not matter, we cannot pay people to make (Big 3) cars that no one wants to buy...that was Monday... Today, after hearing that the UAW will not budge an inch until 2011, despite the possibility of bankruptcy, they ALL came in and said that the UAW can go to hell, and they ALL said that GM/Ford should file for bankruptcy TODAY and stick in up the UAW's collective behind... As time goes on, the whole UAW strategy may backfire, as folks who make much less than a UAW member may become quite resentful about buying a car made by someone who makes much more than they do...few cared while times were good, but now that the UAW is front and center on the news, even the average guy may get fed up... Then there really only WILL be 2 people who will buy Big 3...lemko and rockylee... |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: jimbres (Dec 12, 2008 6:53 pm) Clearly, the war effort put far more people back to work than FDR's New Deal programs did. Indeed, you could go a step further & argue, as I would, that WWII - not the New Deal - laid the groundwork for the prosperity that we enjoyed for the next 30 years. They have doctored the unemployment rate, just as they have doctored the CPI (consumer price index). Its like comparing the steroid ball players of today to those of by gone eras. The rules of even baseball have been changed. Mounds lowered after the last 30 game winner, designated hitter, and many more. To conclude that Nixon era inflation was prosperity is insanity. S&L bail outs by Reagan. You just have to define prosperity and find the real driver in these metrics. I can argue and will argue that unions, which include the UAW, are responsible for the largest middle class in history. Free trade, pollute all you want zones like Hong Kong envy our middle class, as does China and their exploitation of workers, child labor, and God knows what else.
|
|
|
|
|
Replying to: marsha7 (Dec 12, 2008 7:08 pm) I feel an executive order from our commander and chief, President Obama. |
|
|
Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 12, 2008 7:05 pm) You've lost me, my friend. Are you PWI'ing again? My previous post was a response to points that you had made about the New Deal - specifically about how New Deal programs had purportedly pulled the economy out of the Depression. But the Sherman Act was passed in 1890, more than 40 years earlier, & is thus unrelated to the earlier discussion. If there's a point buried in this post, I'm afraid that I don't see it.
|
|
You are here:
Forums
Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
New? Join Now!
Forum Tools
Search Forums
Browse by Vehicle
Browse by Board
Browse by Topic
Today's Chats
