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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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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 15, 2008 6:15 pm) Saw White Christmas (musical play) at Fox. Only half full but last year was packed. All 3 are completely restored and were doing well. While a lot of Detroit city is old and not doing well there actually was a lot of new homes going up. Tearing down of whole neighborhoods and very nice houses gong up.
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Replying to: 62vetteefp (Dec 15, 2008 7:06 pm) So the housing boom of the 21st Century has had some pluses for Detroit. I think the pics of all the old buildings falling apart was taken in the 1990s.
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what about the 650000 retirees? The whole setup was based on continued growth in car sales. Of course they tanked faster when sales fell off abruptly in June of 2008. How can the sales growth that ended in late 70's ever return? Funny how Toyota claims to offer the best value in the industry 20 different times during the Giants-Dallas game last night. They state 'low rates' for full price cars as their reason. meanwhile Nissan advertised 0% interest, Ford is offering employee prices, and Chevy has $5750 discounts on base Malibus. With sales down 40%, Toyota is only willing to adjust the interest rate down a tiny bit and they call it the Toyotathon? Maybe Mulaly makes 7 million a year, but that is maybe one weeks worth of Toyota's additional advertising, compared to Ford's.
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Replying to: dave8697 (Dec 15, 2008 8:57 pm) What about them? Their pension is funded if GM goes belly up. They will have to go on Medicare like the rest of US retired folks. GM and the UAW screwed them with those contracts that pay as you go rather than setting aside for the future. It is a sad reality. UAW was set up like a government job without the printing press to just print more money. Now they are broke and no way out of their dilemma. The retirees should file a class action suit against the UAW for agreeing to that kind of an agreement.
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 15, 2008 9:15 pm) "What about them? Their pension is funded if GM goes belly up. They will have to go on Medicare like the rest of US retired folks. GM and the UAW screwed them with those contracts that pay as you go rather than setting aside for the future. It is a sad reality. UAW was set up like a government job without the printing press to just print more money. Now they are broke and no way out of their dilemma. The retirees should file a class action suit against the UAW for agreeing to that kind of an agreement. " Walter Reuther would be shedding tears.
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The talk from the congress action (oxymoron) is that the sticking point is UAW being required to accept equal pay to the "foreign" brands assembly folk. The problem with this is the method of comparing. Are they using the bloated cost factor which includes the cost of the retirees' checks and healthcare? Or are they going to use what the worker gets in their check to take home? I didn't hear that stated (not that it wasn't stated). Does anyone here know? The statements keep being put out the current pay is less, slightly, than the foreign brands workers' pay. What's the real data on that?
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Replying to: imidazol97 (Dec 16, 2008 3:55 am) Does anyone here know? Either the southern Republicans did not know or do not care. They are using any stick to shut down the north. They have thrown their lot in with the import transplants in their states. By the time the final negotiating was going on they knew that the UAW wages were at parity if not lower. Job banks would have been dead. Health care was planned to be self paid by the UAW but the domestics have to put in large amounts of cash and I think that was the sticking point. At the first hearing it was obvious our representatives were as unprepared as the CEO's. CEO's had no idea that what was going to be thrown at them and most of the reps had no idea what they were talking about. The South will rise again! At least until they run out of water.
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Over in Toyota 2009 there's talk about how the noncompletion of the Toyota plant in Mississippi is going to affect the economy there. They've even lost 2000 jobs from Cooper Tire moving out to China. Poor babies. The folks in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky all feel sorry for them having lost a few jobs like that. Imagine if they were in OH, IN, MI, or KY with all the jobs lost through the last decade. |
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I really don't see any way of of this for GM except Bankruptcy. While we can argue about whether the UAW workers are overpaid or not, and whether management is inept or not, I think we can all agree that the current situation is unsustainable. Frankly, I don't think the economy is going to recover fast enough for a few billion to keep GM's suppliers afloat. Remember, it's never about money in the bank, it's about cash flow. You can run a company on a negative net income for a long, long time, if you have cash flow. But, if the cash stops coming in, even for a day - it's trouble in Motor City. So, what's the answer? Let's look at cost cutting measures. You can stop development but that has long term consequences and should be avoided.... and it doesn't have much immediate impact on costs. Bad Idea, especially when your competitors are producing new products. You can stop producing product, but that only saves material costs for GM; since they have to pay their workers the same amount even if they are not working, the labor costs continue The single largest controllable (sic re GM) expense for any employer is labor. The best way to proceed is to increase productivity per worker. However, current work rules prevent that, and, in any case, no one is buying the product, so increased efficiency really gains nothing in the short run. This takes us to reducing current costs by reducing work force. You can cut management staff, and engineering staff, and this should be done. It's a desperation move to cut engineers (they're your future) but in this situation -they've gotta go. In most companies management employees are a cost to the company disproportional to their number as each is more expensive than the hourly paid worker. However the market salary for an engineer is the market salary for an engineer, even in GM. They're well enough paid but not getting rich. In this case, what has happened to GM is that the pay of the average worker has risen to be the equivalent of a lower level manager or engineer. Combine this with the fact that a. the workers are replaceable with comparatively short training periods (they don't need to go get engineering degrees to do their jobs). b. You need to stop producing product that isn't selling. c. These workers in GM are an expense even if they are only sitting in the Jobs Bank playing cards. The only way for GM to shed workers (given the Jobs Bank) is to either get the UAW to change its tune and permit it, or to go through bankruptcy to force the UAW's hand. The UAW won't agree to work force cuts. Even if there were work rule changes to improve productivity, it won't help when you have to keep paying the unproductive workers. Ergo - Bankruptcy is the only answer. 
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Replying to: lokki (Dec 16, 2008 5:02 am) The UAW won't agree to work force cuts. Even if there were work rule changes to improve productivity, it won't help when you have to keep paying the unproductive workers. Job banks are already pretty much gone and soon to be out of the picture. Currently, Chrysler has 711 workers in the jobs bank, GM has 1,404 and Ford has 1,476. "It's not gone yet but it's almost gone," Gettelfinger said. "We're on the verge of eliminating that provision." And new language in the 2007 contract stripped it to a "mere shadow of what it used to be." Gm has been getting rid of hourly employees since at least 2006 with UAW concurrence. 2006 In one of the largest buyout plans in U.S. corporate history, General Motors (GM) will offer money to about 126,000 hourly employees at its plants and at supplier Delphi (DPHIQ) to quit their jobs.GM will offer buyouts to all its United Auto Workers employees, about 113,000, a crucial step toward saving itself financially. The world's largest automaker said in November that it wants to shed 30,000 blue-collar workers. About 35,000 hourly workers at General Motors Corp. have taken buyout or early retirement offers, surpassing the company's expectations as it tries to cut costs by paring its hourly work force, GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said Monday. 2008 General Motors offered buyouts to all of its 74,000 US hourly employees as the automotive giant continues to downsize operations in response to declining US market share and massive financial losses. With the collaboration of the United Auto Workers union, the automaker plans to push out tens of thousands of higher-paid senior workers, replacing most of them with new hires making half the wages and far fewer benefits. More than 18,000 of GM’s U.S. hourly workers or about a quarter of its American blue-collar work force have accepted the automaker’s buyout packages, the company announced today. Most of the employees are expected to be gone by July 1, 2008. So by July it looks like UAW went from 126,000 employees in 2006 to 56,000. BUT GM has been hiring new UAW employees at greatly reduced wages and benefits.
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