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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16738 messages, Last post on Dec 03, 2009 at 10:07 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 30, 2008 5:57 pm) CEO earns more because the job requires more skill, more knowledge than a UAW job. It affects tens of thousands of people, probably millions. The CEO's decisions directly affect billions of dollars. I don't disagree however that the CEOs, Wagoner in particular, are grossly overpaid. But the position is still worth far more than a union job. The other problem is that even at a $10M salary, $10M x 1 CEO = $10M. For 100K union jobs, $25K in excessive compensation each (as an example) = $2.5B per year. So while it is easy to gripe about CEO salaries, the real drag on the company is the compensation of the average employees if that compensation is well above the competitors. |
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 30, 2008 6:32 pm) Unfortunately, productivity tends to differ for different industries. In the Auto industry it is possible that Japan is better (I do not have any specific data to prove this, but I have a friend who works for Toyota and was based in the US for some time - he felt that the factory level labor in the US was not as skilled in the use of numbers as their Japanese counterparts, and this was a critical requirement for Toyota's TQM system, since it is heavily dependent on statistical analysis), but in some other services (e.g. Finance, Marketing, software) Japan lags far behind the US - And thus "imports" such workers from the US. Go to the Financial district in Tokyo, and you will see (a number of Americans in senior positions). By the way, I drive a US made Acura TL, and it is flawless. So even in the Auto industry, US labor is competitive. I cannot say the same about UAW protected labor.....
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Replying to: manegi (Dec 31, 2008 2:29 am) FYI: Chrysler tied Toyota as the most productive automaker in North America this year, according to the Harbour Report on manufacturing, which measures the amount of work done per employee. Eight of the 10 most productive vehicle assembly plants in North America belong to Chrysler, Ford or GM.
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 30, 2008 9:19 am) I understand your thought here, but can't agree with it 100%.. Bank tellers don't make the wages and bennefits of UAW workers. It has been mentioned several times on this forum that there are many UAW workers with college educations. Seems a bit ironic that a college grad would choose to assemble cars. Unless, of course the money is better. They make about the same wage as my wife with her BSRN degree and countless courses in continued education, and her dealing with human life. Her bennefits are no where close to UAW workers. Biggest problem with the "Sub Prime Mess" started with Jimmy Carter. Another bad idea of his. Seems he felt every person should own a house, whether they could afford it or not. As Americans, they were "Entitled" to the good life. He was and still is a disgrace to this great state. That idea was nurtured by democrats through the years and the republicans did nothing to change it. In the early years of the Clinton administration, mortgage companies were seriously "ENCOURAGED" to do even more to loosen lending requirements, so that low income folks that couldn't meet the requirements were not discrimenated against. Didn't matter whether or not they could afford the loan. So they got the loans through creative means, such as, nothing down, (because they could not or would not save enough to put down) balloon notes, interest only, variable interest rates, and high interest rates. They were set up to fail, by the feds and the lending institutions. In a nut shell, this Sub Prime mess is the child spawned by poor management of our government over a long period of time. The only ones to actually reap bennefits were the loan officers at the banks. Very similar to the D3 situation in that those at the top reap the bennefits while the company/country goes in the toilet. Many loans should not have made, and D3 management should not have signed the greedy UAW contracts that they did. They were setting up the company and the country to fail. Least we not forget that many of the failing mortgages are from UAW workers that lost their jobs, because the UAW leadership as well as corporate management refused to see the light at the end of the tunnel as being a train coming at them. To his credit, George Bush did bring sub prime lending to light in the first part of his first term, and again in the first part of his second term. To his discredit, he didn't do anything about it. Someone said earlier that Obama is upset at the mess he is inheriting from Bush. Obama needs to look at the whole picture of just how this came about.  Kip
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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 30, 2008 8:00 pm) Not at all. In the perfect world, we have to make this assumption, capital should move to its most efficient use. The more competition, the better for the consumer. Then that being said. Labor being a subset of capital, it should be allowed to move to its most efficient use, just to be consistent. Therefore, this whole immigration hoax is nothing but a silly ploy to avoid the issue. If one looks at the Carolina's and their furniture jobs being moved overseas. Hundreds of thousands of jobs moving to their more efficient use. Then some media hype about Benz/Michelin bring in a few thousand jobs as some kind of parity in kind. Do the math. Why would they have an issue with illegals taking their jobs? Why are they going to scapegoat these illegal, if any, for the loss of jobs? I light of the fact that they have less than a 2% Hispanic population, they are but not coming to grips with the issue and orchestrating a clever public relations ploy. So there is this perfect world. Yokels and bumpkins being conned. Just come right out with it and tell them the truth. Its those people in China taking your jobs and not illegal aliens. Don't you expect personal accountability from your elected representative? Is that elected representative more obligated to corporate lobby's or the voter? One could certainly deduct that the elected representative and special interest share special relationship. Newton's third law of motion has just happened and come 01-20-09 your jaw is going to drop. The forward thinking Obama, will have to clean up this mess. Corporations and people are going to have to come to grips with the facts. Some of those so called assets on the balance sheet are nothing but liabilities. Call them derivatives or whatever, they are but fecal matter. They need to be wrote off and or paid. Past practice is that they have only down graded enough to for tax purposes. When your paying debt, your not going to fuel an economy. Govt will have to go into more debt to assure that GDP stays the stable. Fact is that faux accounting practices and or legal but deceptive metrics are used in many corporations to please the number folks on Wall Street. Can we agree to look at the entire balance sheet/financial statement and be honest for starters? Then we should fess up to the fact that govt is buying the liabilities labeled as assets to keep the house of cards from falling in. In that perfect world these are the abuses of the past and a complete meltdown of the capitalist system. Taxpayers (the very same UAW auto workers included) are being forced to buy liabilities labeled as assets. Wealth didn't just disappear, it was never there. They were putting liabilities down as assets all along. Now rich uncle Sam (the taxpayer) which includes UAW members is picking up the tab. Now you don't mind if uncle Sam has a meal and drink, since he is treating? They want catering for Wall St and a pot luck for the UAW. Now is that fair? Just who did start this slipper slope of bailing out folks?
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Replying to: kipk (Dec 31, 2008 6:46 am) My friend, are you listening to the corporate mainstream media again? I agree that this was a direct result of the need to fill a void left by the dot com bust. But, lets look at Bush in 2002. Granted he was well meaning. I'm here to celebrate National Homeownership Month, because I believe owning a home is an essential part of economic security. But I believe owning something is a part of the American Dream, as well. I believe when somebody owns their own home, they're realizing the American Dream. We are here in Washington, D.C. to address problems. So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) Five-and-a-half million families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well. And so what are the barriers that we can deal with here in Washington? Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. People take a look at the down payment, they say that's too high, I'm not buying. They may have the desire to buy, but they don't have the wherewithal to handle the down payment. We can deal with that. And so I've asked Congress to fully fund an American Dream down payment fund which will help a low-income family to qualify to buy, to buy. The second barrier to ownership is the lack of affordable housing. There are neighborhoods in America where you just can't find a house that's affordable to purchase, and we need to deal with that problem. The best way to do so, I think, is to set up a single family affordable housing tax credit to the tune of $2.4 billion over the next five years to encourage affordable single family housing in inner-city America. The third problem is the fact that the rules are too complex. People get discouraged by the fine print on the contracts. They take a look and say, well, I'm not so sure I want to sign this. There's too many words. (Laughter.) There's too many pitfalls. So one of the things that the Secretary is going to do is he's going to simplify the closing documents and all the documents that have to deal with homeownership. http://www.hud.gov/news/speeches/presremarks.cfm
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We've hashed and rehashed housing in here before and no one has changed their minds yet. Back to the golfing, you can add NASCAR, airlines and radio stations to the litany: The UAW’s Money-Squandering Corruptocracy (National Review) The interesting factoid is that the UAW retains assets worth $1.2 billion. That's a big "strike fund."
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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 30, 2008 8:19 pm) You speak as if the Asian automakers were not expanding the gas guzzler manufacturing base. Tundra's and Titan's being tooled and plants built. http://www.toyota.com/about/our_business/operations/manufacturing/manu_location/- tmmtx.html http://www.gulfcoastnews.com/News%20Stories/NissanOpens.htm |
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 30, 2008 10:41 am) |
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 31, 2008 7:35 am) Buckley said in 2005 that the magazine had lost about $25 million over 50 years. NASCAR its publicity, more or less like these large corporations naming stadiums/arenas. Besides, the one dollar per overtime worked is a good thing. It discourages the automakers from robbing the workforce of the "Family Time" a part of "Family Values". both of whom make six-figure salaries thats vague, is it $100,000 or $999,999.99
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