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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16655 messages, Last post on Nov 07, 2009 at 10:02 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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up what a lot of us think about what the UAW's have done to point the domestic auto industry towards the huge iceberg. Demanding more from your Company than they really can afford to give is one of the big problems here. While the Big 3 decided that cars weren't the meal ticket and that they could just be left out to twist in the wind, it's the UAW with their rather large pay increase demands and healthcare demands that have helped sink GM and Chrysler. It sounds like A.Mullaly and Ford Motor Co. are saying that they'll be all right for 2009, and hopefully after that, if I have read my automotive news right. Their autos seem to be getting built better all the time, though a new all-electric would be nice, Ford. Maybe take the 2010 Ford Fiesta model and rebuild it with an all-electric powertrain, it's light, and would be the most fitting Ford to fit for electricity, at least without showing us any other bodystyles they're currently working on. But that's the point, if GM wants to charge people $40,000+ for the 2010 Chevy Volt, that's not going to mix with this economic situation very well. Think smaller, like the 2010 Pininfarina-Bollore B0, for example, GM, Ford and...umm...Chrysler. 
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 7:48 am) It's the Dell way! Regards, OW |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 11, 2009 8:08 am) If this is left then you might just be a fascist. I can only suggest that you quit reading/listening to the right wing corporate controlled media. There is no argument on who owns the media outlets and that they derive their income from advertising for the big multi national companies. They don't have your best interest at heart, even if you think they are your superiors. Save money - live better, is but a slogan. Their new logo is nothing but a con job. Walmart is nasty inferior cookie cutter fecal matter. Back in the day when the UAW was strong. CEO pay wasn't what it is today. Deregulation and corporate welfare wasn't an issue. Left to their own devices they managed to bring down the entire banking system. If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed. Its absurd to grant all these tax breaks to wealthy corporations and wait for the trickle down/supply side golden shower. If things were so grand then Obama wouldn't have stood a chance. The compassionate fundamentalist neo conservative has taken this nation to the brink of disaster. I just can't imagine it getting any worse. The only question is if we will have the "lost decade" that Japan had? Trillions lost in 401K money, many will have to put off retirement. Those forward thinking folks who said "there is nothing wrong with our health care system" have yet to explain why there are more Americans without insurance. Why are employers/corporations complaining about the rising cost of health insurance? For that matter why does a Pizza Hut employee in Europe have health insurance, here in the land of milk and honey that same Pizza Hut employee lacks health insurance. Enough of this race to the bottom and back to progress. Again, America elected a new commander and chief, Obama as a forward thinking leader.
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Jan 11, 2009 8:25 am) A friend of mine just told me they leased acres and acres. To Toyota and Honda off both the ports of Houston and New York. They are parking their car there. Rodents are nesting in some of them. Who is going to buy them? Then again, I was at the UAW Arlington plant and saw them putting Arabic lettering on the dash controls of those big SUVs. http://www.newser.com/story/44666/us-ports-awash-in-foreign-cars.html So who did that to the import auto industry? Why aren't Americans buying cars? Why are China and India coming into this industry? |
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 7:07 am) C'mon, DD. You call yourself a classical liberal - as opposed to a New Deal welfare liberal - so the Cato Institute should be your intellectual home away from home. The CTS V has the recarro seats and a V8 which makes it the Status Car if one is looking for the envy factor. I happen to like the CTS - it's unquestionably the best looking Cadillac since the Eldorados of the late 60s - & I hope that it's the breakthrough car that Cadillac desperately needs. But it has to undo almost 30 years of fumbling & blundering, for which I blame GM management more than I blame the UAW. Perhaps Cadillac is still an aspirational vehicle in Texas & elsewhere in the interior states. But on the coasts, & particularly in the all-important California market, the wealthy & the wannabe wealthy broadcast their social status by buying German. This has been true since the first of the baby boomers reached their early 30s, back in the late 1970s. Remember when the word "yuppie" became part of our popular vocabulary in the early 1980s? Preferring German cars - BMWs in particular - was a large part of being a yuppie. No self-respecting yuppie would be seen alive or dead in a bustleback Seville. Cadillac's core business was under attack, & alarm bells should have sounded in divisional headquarters. But Cadillac wasted most of the 1980s & all of the 1990s designing & building cars that few buyers born after WWII wanted to buy - particularly if those prospective customers were affluent college-educated professionals living in high-income coastal zip codes. Just think how much better off GM would be today if it had brought a high-performance Euro-inspired RWD sedan like the CTS to market in 1993 instead of 2008. Try to imagine how many billions of dollars in lost profits this failure has cost the company. You can carry on all day about the VAT (devised, BTW, by the French in the 1950s to combat revenue lost to smugglers), but the real story here is how Cadillac lost an entire generation of luxury car buyers by failing to understand what they wanted.
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Replying to: jimbres (Jan 11, 2009 9:00 am) They lost me years ago. Big tobacco, Texas sodomy laws, the nuts from Waco, and then they support the neoconservative movement have lost many supporters. Like any large organization, its leadership has been hijacked by special interests. BMW does lots of leasing and there were plenty of sub prime folks out there in the auto market. I was amazed when the local Infinity dealer told me that 70% plus of their cars were leased. Word is that the repo man is doing good business these days. So one could out right buy a Caddy and or appear to be more affluent by leasing. The fact is that GM in France builds the transmission on the 3 and 5 series BMW. I see common parts in many euro cars. Then I see BMW motors in some GMs too. Its amazing how this cross referencing works.
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 9:27 am) That's nice, but wouldn't you rather see GM sell the whole car & not just the tranny? I grew up in a fairly well-off suburb of NYC in the late 50s & 60s, & I remember clearly how Cadillac completely dominated the luxury market then. If you walked through the parking lots of country clubs where the elite golfed & drank, you'd see a few Lincoln Continentals & a sprinkling of Chrysler Imperials, but most of the cars there would be Cadillacs (or Olds 98s or Buick Electras, both of which shared bodies with the Sedan de Ville). Cadillac's lock on that market segment was hugely profitable for GM. I recall reading in a 1960s business mag that 1 Cadillac sale was worth 5 or 6 Chevrolet sales to the corporation's bottom line. Given Cadillac's importance to GM as a whole, you'd think that the company would pull out all of the stops to keep outsiders - notably, the Germans - from stealing this business. Instead, it kept designing & building cars for the previous generation of buyers while BMW & Mercedes grabbed & the baby boomers. This was a colossal blunder that cost GM billions of dollars. Again, I'm a fan of the new CTS. But it could have been & should have been brought to market many years earlier.
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Replying to: jimbres (Jan 11, 2009 10:31 am) And then let's talk about the "entry-luxury" buyers. I've always liked smaller cars, but not CHEAP cars. For the past 20 years those cars were BMW, Audi, VW, perhaps Lexus, Acura - but NO CADDYS. Why couldn't Caddy have built the A4 rather than Audi in the mid 1990s? The 3-series rather than BMW in the early 1990s? Not only are these smaller sport sedans very profitable compared to a Cobalt or Cavalier, they gain the brand loyalty to more expensive "move-up" luxury cars for the future. GM squandered this market and was left selling rental-fodder cars while most Americans who had a choice bought foreign to get some quality. And part of the issue was GM de-contenting the cars due to high fixed costs brought on by UAW benefits. |
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Replying to: tlong (Jan 11, 2009 11:20 am) Excellent point, but not one that the UAW wants us to ponder. They would rather have us believe that the D3's current predicament is due entirely to forces beyond their control: currency manipulation, trade barriers, sunspots, Waco, etc. It will be easier for the UAW to sell us on the need for a no-strings bailout if they can get us to see the D3 as helpless victims. But once we understand that the D3 are their own worst enemies - that their blundering got them into this mess - then what little sympathy there is for a helping hand from the taxpayers will evaporate.
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 8:43 am) Just when would that have been? I believe someone posted statistics showing that Wagoner was way behind the average CEO compared to the high paid UAW workers. If it weren't for the bail out, capitalism would have failed. I think you are very confused. The bailouts are a sign of failure. You will not find a true fiscal conservative that was in favor of ANY of the bailouts. Any good conservative will tell you that you do not reward failure. The liberals have pushed to bailout the banks, GM and their UAW millstone. They did it to cover up their failure to rein in their banking cronies that have given BIG donations to mainly Democrats. Don't kid yourself. If not for the politics of the UAW, GM would be out of business today. You can believe what you like. You are not convincing in your arguments for the UAW. Maybe your UAW local and bargaining unit are responsible and cognizant of the health of your Company. The UAW locals that are tied to the auto industry are totally out in LEFT field. |
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