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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: explorerx4 (Jan 08, 2009 5:34 pm) I have never been through one or even seen one. I would guess it is a tool to discover certain ailments. And a way to cover the doctor's behind. hardly a day goes by that someone I know has had an MRI. I guess if you really need the test it would be nice to get it in a reasonable time. Many forms of the cancer and tumors are detected with an MRI. Those are ailments that need quick attention many times. Waiting 10 to 12 weeks could be the difference between life and death. I can just hear the UAW retiree scream when the doctor says I think you have cancer. I won't know until we get the results from your MRI. I think the waiting list in your area is 12 weeks. Then we can schedule a specialist to look at the results and that will be another 18 weeks. I hear people upset when they have to wait a week to get results from the lab. For those that really believe in government provided health care need to research Oregon and Hawaii's universal health care. Doug Farrago comments on the failure of universal children's coverage in Hawaii, where the program was discontinued after 7 months. It's a good example of what would happen if health care was "free": Families that had private coverage were dropping it so they could get the free care as well. I don't think this experiment should be ignored. It really needs to be examined to see what went wrong and how Americans think. As physicians, we all want people to have the appropriate healthcare but it can be abused and just giving it away will bankrupt us all. The people of Hawaii have spoken and they have said that even if they have the money to pay for their doctor's visit or medication, they still would rather get it for free. The UAW members need to be freed from their entitlement mentality. |
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Replying to: lumoy (Jan 08, 2009 3:22 pm) Anyone who thinks Honda/Toyota are great companies would have to agree with their "NO VALUE ADDED" mentality and oppose waste aka MUDA. Why aren't we running the health care system like all the business schools preach. Surely Toyota, the darling of the business schools for efficiently operated companies can be cited here, and as a prime examples of America being a special interest/lobby operated country and a far cry from economic rational. Treat the medical community ,AMA, as if it is sacred cow and the lowly UAW as a parasite on the society? Please bombard us with some logic and quit boot licking these folks for the simple reason that you think they are better/richer than yourself and therefore have your best interests in mind. Your going to have to be consistent if your reasoning/argument are to have any merit. |
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Replying to: steve_ (Jan 08, 2009 5:45 pm) i was pointing out the most obvious reason why there are so many here in the states. |
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Replying to: steve_ (Jan 08, 2009 5:45 pm) Again our friend mr Lumpy feels that GM and the UAW would be making money if we had free health care for every citizen. I think the UAW has built their members up to think they are worth more than they are. How is there any more skill involved in putting a tire and wheel on a new car vs doing the same procedure at the local Tire Rack? Yet the guy in the UAW protection program gets $30 per hour and the guy at the tire rack gets under $10 per hour. There is a HUGE disparity between pay for doing the same job across this great land. The UAW would rather bring GM to their knees in bankruptcy than to give a nickel from their senior members & retirees. They have no problem selling out the new guy. I say that is not a Union. That is a union divided, that will never survive.
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 08, 2009 6:16 pm) I'm sure they are fair game for overuse.
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 08, 2009 6:16 pm) That is what I have been saying all along... the UAW has forgotten why they were created and are now more like self-serving moneygrubbers who will destroy the USAs auto-industry. People are purchasing NON union-made cars *because* the UAW has forced the automakers to cheepen their products in order to pay for the outrageous UAW contracts. I fear that the UAW will discover too late what they have done and there may be no turning back at that point. If they were smart, the UAW would volintaraly move to help the automakers survive by offering up SIGNIFICANT changes in the contracts. Making all the pay-scales the same as NONunion autoworkers would be a great start. (...but a very small start compared to what NEEDS to happen) |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 08, 2009 6:16 pm) i could look it up but i seem to recall that the average ceo in the 50-60's made something like 60 times the average pay of the employees of the company but that this ratio has now jumped to sometime like 350 times. don't hold me to those precise mumbers but you see my point. sorry i just don't hate or despise tthe idea of a factory rat making $28-29 an hour whether at toyota or GM. interesting you would prefer that the uaw sell out its retirees rather than new hires. however the retirees where not only uaw members for their working lives but also the recipients of a written contractual promise repeated restated over their working lives, that they would have health care during their retirement. understand also that most retirees may not have many options and may even have a hard time getting a decent job nowadays. the new hire has not been promised anything or paid any dues. indeed he or she has a choice on whether to take the $15 a hour job or not. somehow i have the feeling that if the uaw had agreed to cancel health insurance for its hundreds of thousands of big3 retirees in exchange for keeping new hires at $28 an hour with full benefits--you would be among the first to condemn the UAW for selling out its retirees. I think the UAW did all it could to protect its retirees by assuming the risk of managing the VEBAS and still give the big3 relief..if the vebas can't keep up with annual 15-20% health care costs then those trustees will have to do what the teamsters trustees did to you -- start eliminating health care coverage. for some strange reason you thought this was just peachy when it happened to you, but i suspect that most UAW retirees may be unhappy with the UAW if their health care is reduced or lost under the UAW VEBAS. the big 3 employers called the 2007 transformational. they will have these huge legacy costs off their books and a new workforce would be slowly added at half the wages and benefits. i would like to bet that 99% of you who were critical of the bridge loans and incorrectly blamed the uaw for the international credit crunch which triggered the problem, where not aware of the health care concessions negotiated in 2006 and the somewhat major changes in the 2007 master agreements But i forgive you. you approach the issue with the firm opinion that the uaw was the prime reason that the bridge loans were needed and despite claims of having an open mind--don't wish to have it cluttered with facts which are not consistent with that firm opinion. |
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Replying to: lumoy (Jan 08, 2009 7:40 pm) You keep saying that long enough and you will believe it is true. I was VERY upset when the Teamsters dropped health care for the retirees. I was even more upset that they changed the retirement age from 45 to 57. I was just about ready to retire and get out of the Arctic cold. When it was finally presented to the rank and file, it made sense to keep the retirement solvent rather than take a chance on depleting the fund. At the time we were shelling out more to the retirees than was coming in from the members and the investments. We also had a cash out clause and a couple large bargaining units closed up shop when the price of oil fell. Those guys all cashed out depleting the fund even more. That option was also done away with. Thankfully today the fund gains each year instead of losing ground. It should be able to keep paying us our pension for however long we are here. somehow i have the feeling that if the uaw had agreed to cancel health insurance for its hundreds of thousands of big3 retirees in exchange for keeping new hires at $28 an hour with full benefits--you would be among the first to condemn the UAW for selling out its retirees. I believe a Union should be for all members not just the elite few. I have no problem with a pay scale with increases over time. I see no reason to pay a line worker new or 30 years seniority $28+ per hour. The job in reality just does not warrant that kind of pay. If the person has a specialty that is different. Some one that slaps doors on all day long can be trained in a matter of weeks just does not deserve $28 per hour. Now if the company wants to give bonuses when they make a big profit. I think that is a wonderful idea. That is an incentive to make the cars better. Paying two people doing the same job at two different wage scales is asking for one to be disgruntled. If I am working along side some old dude making $15 per hour doing the same job I am why should I work as fast as he does? Again we are not talking about machinist, millwrights, electricians etc. We are talking simple tasks that you can train a person to do in a very short period of time. This new hire not only is paid half what the lazy old fart next to him gets. He has no pension, mediocre health care. I would be ashamed to say I was part of the UAW. And yes if the rank and file voted to throw the retirees under the bus I would scream about that. I am looking for equal concessions. That is what Unions are for to keep everyone on the same level. |
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Replying to: fezo (Jan 08, 2009 7:28 pm) but i am somewhat befuddled by the argument that we pay twice as much per citizen as canada on healthcare ( now about $8,000 versus about 4,000 for them) because they have fewer MRI machines. for a nation of 32 million or so, they would have to buy a lot of MRI machines to spend something like 130 trillion (if i have my zeros) on MRI machines to catch up to our costs. (let's buy stock in that company). seriously the suggestion is that the lack of adequate numbers of MRI machines (fewer per citizen than the usa) explains both the twice as high us costs and the "substandard" canadian healthcare. which according to the last survey shows 87% of canadians as satisfied or very satisfied with their health care. if healthcare is substandard in canada, then one would expect that it would not only be reflected in widespread dissatisfaction in such surveys but also comparative data on various health care indicators which are not as subjective. data on such things as life expectancy and other favorable health care outcome factors are used by the world health organization in its rankings of health care systems. when you look at the WHO rankings they show that the us is ranked 37th and canada is at 30 with cuba, japan and the ec countries which have national health care all ranked ahead of the usa. moreover again all these other national health insurance countries ranked higher than the usa spend roughly half per citizen that the usa spends those fearing that they are about to be infected with socialism because our current health care system is about to collapse or be ended in congress (take your pick) , still have not explained how we can continue to handle both a 15-20% annual increase in health care premiums coupled with a 1-2 million annual increase in the number of those (mostly children) without any insurance coverage (estimated to be 45, 999,998 at the end of 2008.. the bush administration's partial solution, as you may recall, was a medical ira--you would set aside a certain percentage of your disposable income in a trust fund to be used to pay your medical bills when you retired. Unfortunately not too many walmart employes or unemployed people ( or even GM salaried employees) have benefited from trickle down economics and thus have not been able to set up such iras with their excess income. just to get back on point - in requesting thier 17 billion dollar bridge loan, all the big 3 claimed. along with bush, even darth vader cheney. treasury, SEC,. those involved in the wall street, AIG, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns and numerous other "economists" involved in the prior trillion dollar round of grants -- that the auto industry problems were mainly attributable to a drying up of credit which had in turn been triggered by underegulated and somewhat greedy or risky trading in housing related mortgages. the other industrialized countries making such loans to their auto industries also appear to be in agreement with this analysis and none of them are specifically conditioning loans on the backs of the factory rats in their countries. however, it appears to me that the bulk of the comments here are to the effect that all of these "experts" are wrong and that despite the facts of uaw concessions since 2006 and the fact that wage rate in toyota and GM plants are almost equivalent, the real problem is the UAW contracts -- even though hourly costs are less than 10% of the cost of production. from there the argument goes, that despite the fact that no mention was made of reducing incomes for the wall street types (where labor costs are about 60% of total costs and some are paid slightly higher than $28 an hour), the auto loans should be conditioned upon the UAW's agreement to jump on the bangladesh wage spiral downward train. anyone have any reputable authority (other than anecdotal stories about joe the 150k hilo driver) for that conclusion?
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 08, 2009 9:19 pm) uaw retirees are not the elite few. GM alone has more than 400,000 . i beleive current hourly GM employment is under 100,000. the uaw big three retirees incurred some court approved cutbacks in 2006. they are also taking some risks that the VEBAS, supposedly be funded at about 50 cents on the dollar ( assuming ultimate rejection of the administration's demand that more stock be substituted for hard cash) survive through their retirement. many think that this is impossible if health care costs continue to rise as they have for the last 20-25 years. but this is a risk the uaw was courageously willing to take on its own shoulders. again those faced with taking big 3 factory jobs at $15 an hour with greatly reduced benefits have a choice to either accept that offer or apply to wall street where i hear the the taxpayers are not as concerned about subsidizing wages and benefits which are slightly higher.
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