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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
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 27, 2008 9:24 am) So then why is the UAW killing it's master companies rather than trying to help make the company successful together? Go long and look for the ball. Wouldn't the union not have striked GM even THIS YEAR if they had been going long and looking for the ball? The company was nearly insolvent yet the union had to strike at one of the most successful plants?  The union should "go long" and realize "we're all in this together". Unfortunately Goldfinger has not been doing that. Perhaps he needs to be replaced? |
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...Walter Reuther would make of Gettlefinger and Alfred Sloan would make of Wagonner? We are living in an age of midgets.
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 27, 2008 10:52 am) "among the union's biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union's neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis." Fox
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 26, 2008 1:22 pm) Bringing in one or two crackpot person's opinions of the AMA as being some sort of government controlling powerhouse and the implication of all doctor's being flawless super human's (although some think they are) that don't make mistakes, yet make an unbelievably high income serves no purpose here. It does a great job at distorting the reality of becoming a physician and maintaining credentialing using cherry picked opinions and pseudo-facts. Are doc's making too much? If so, when you need emergency surgery or a loved one gets cancer, call Oprah Winfrey or A-Rod.
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 27, 2008 6:07 am) The union in the past would strike only the most profitable GM plant, Janesville, Wis. Mgmt has now eliminated that plant The union would strike a key car part plant without which, a car could not be completed. Mgmt has outsourced all parts The union had half a million members Now they have about 50,000 Mgmt wants some concessions from the union to restore some of the competitiveness There has to be another place for GM to find competitiveness. I can't figure out what it could be Bankruptcy will only help if it relieves GM of it's pension and healthcare obgligations. The 1% savings from UAW wage concessions will not be enough to save GM. There are some factors that will turn in favor for GM but not until we climb out of the recession and start buying cars. Local dealer is advertising new 2009 Corolla's, Impalas or Malibus for 14,900. You have to be in a current GM lease and add destination charge so it would be $17,550 for me for the 2 Chevys. Not sure if the Corolla has $2k of the discount as a lease turn in too. But even these deals aren't getting people out to buy. |
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UAW retirees are dying at an unprecedented rate? Can you give a link or give some personal information that you know about this purported fact? Is it one of those things like the oldtimers at Boeing would always tell me? I'll tell you about it, it goes like this. "See him over there?" "Yep." "He's gonna die once he retires from the Lazy B!" "Oh yeah, why is that?", I would ask. "Because he needs to keep working. Once he stops working, it will be as if all of his self-worth and importance to others and himself will be gone. He'll just die." Scary thing is, as I worked more and more years at Boeing...and watched more and more of the people I knew retire, this played out to be true. Not always, though. Now I know that some of the UAW presently working are die-hards who love their job, and love to do a good job. Some of them will pass away when they retire. Trouble is, the present-day working crowd at GM of UAW's have stabbed the monster that is trying to feed them. What's nuttier is that GM management just went along with their bloated demands! That's the Gary Payton jumper that swished right through to beat the Bulls, people. They just went along with it, to their eventual early demise.
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It's a resort paid for by membership dues, all added to a price of a Detroit car and losing millions $ per year. link title
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 27, 2008 11:00 am) Another example of the stupidity in the UAW. You can remember when the AK Teamsters built that big hospital, Dental clinic, Rec center, headquarters building in Anchorage? They, the AK Teamster's leaders, being smarter that the UAW leadership, got rid of all those assets. I don't have the exact cost to build and what they were sold for. The bottom line the rank and file members are not supporting those extravagant buildings. They did build a huge resort in Indian Wells near Palm Springs. It was not even open to members of the Teamsters. We probably could not afford to join. The bottom line is our $13 million land investment with the Pension Trust money has netted to date over $450 million. What has the UAW done for their members lately, except drive jobs out of the country?
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Replying to: 04cad (Dec 27, 2008 8:43 am) many people in michigan have a passion for the automobile. if you have ever spent any time there, it is pretty obvious. from what i have gathered, the people installing the lug nuts on hondas and toyotas are getting paid about the same as their UAW counterparts. the difference is in the legacy costs. |
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on this Christmas weekend, hope all yours was happy... Saturn is not critical for the survival of GM...after reading a few books lately (Call Me Roger, Comeback), they document Saturn as a multi-billion dollar loser from the day it ran the first car off the line...what Roger Smith envisioned in his mind never became true...cost overruns, quality problems, made the division no different than any other GM division, like Chevy or Buick... As far as supplier bankruptcies following a GM bankruptcy, that may be the cost of fixing the whole shebang...because if GM does NOT file Chapter 11, than all you really are doing is, literally, maintaining the status quo of the last 30-plus years, by not forcing necessary change onto GM...it MUST shed, and destroy, the UAW, so it can relieve itself of its unmanageable debt that is, and will, kill it... To not force the change will simply mean that tomorrow will be no different than a day in 1982, 1993 or 2004, and the underlying problem will not change, so, like termites eating away at a wood foundation, all will look OK until the foundation is simply gone...it is gone as we speak, but a bailout will simply hide it for another moment in the future... You need to stop looking at contracts that were signed and obligations that were committed to...if the $$$ is not there to make it work, then the contract has no choice but to be breached... After all, every person or company that files for bankruptcy is, in effect, breaching every financial agreement they have committed to perform...but the reality is simple, like it or not...if the money isn't there, the money isn't there...so breach of contract becomes the ONLY viable option...you cannot get blood from a stone... Should management have agreed to all those provisions in past UAW contracts???...obviously, no...but, at the time they signed them, GM, Ford and Chrysler never dreamed that their market share would drop so low, and their sales would drop even lower...that, in itself, is an expression of the sheer arrogance of Detroit, as the Japanese automakers came in, made much better cars, and the Big 3 simply thought they were a flash in the pan... So, we can agree that management was stupid to sign the contracts, but that is now water under the bridge...they now have the ability to make millions more cars that they can/will sell, and they need to downsize by thousands of workers and a goodly number of factories, simply because we will not buy all they can make, as we have found alternatives that the American buying public simply believes are better made... So, after pointing fingers at stupid management, and union workers who simply can't count the number of bolts needed to hold a window regulator in place ( that, rocky, is what happens when all those "skilled workers" you refer to actually perform their jobs), and now union workers who will strike rather than compromise, they have no choice but to jettison the workers, jettsion the agreements, and move forward in a much smaller, but stronger, automaker... What many folks cannot imagine is simply a GM that was once a world power on its own, now a large player but not the power it once had...kinda like the old Soviet Union...previously a superpower, and now still a major player on the world stage, but not with the power it once had...GM will be like that...even a 20-25% market share will keep it a major player, just not the 65% market share it had in the 50s and 60s...
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