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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16657 messages, Last post on Nov 08, 2009 at 12:40 PM
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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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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 8:43 am) You do not understand capitalism at all.... In short - capitalism provides freedom to take risks, freedom to succeed and freedom to fail. The bail-outs are cutting off the "freedom to fail" part of capitalism and replacing it with the notion that the government will save you if you fail. THIS IS VERY WRONG. The failed ventures MUST be allowed to die so newer-better ideas can take over. Otherwise, our grandkids will be paying taxes for more and more losing ventures which our goverment was too corrupt to allow to die. The inevatable end to this spiral is a FAILED GOVERNMENT!!! This logic would be obvious to anyone who steps back a looks at things with an open mind.
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regarding the conditions of the GM-Chrysler-UAW bailout. Might Obama hire some knowledgeable auto industry consultants(many of us would fill that spot admirably, IMHO  )to help him keep tabs on how the UAW intends to get their grubbly paws on...uhhh...I...I mean work nicely with Daddy GM and Chrysler towards building product that the public actually feels like parting cash with? I read some of his latest comments on this and that sounds like his intent. But who is he actually going to hire to watch over this 14B large, eh? Valid question?
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Jan 11, 2009 2:25 pm) It is a good question. I just don't think any executive worth a hoot would take on the GM mess without the benefit of bankruptcy. They need the latitude to shed all the waste, UAW contracts and monstrous debts they have incurred. I think as in 1979, Chrysler would be easier to save than GM. They need a Jack Welch type that will streamline the operation, into a money making entity. I see it becoming a nationalized industry that ultimately fails to produce anything the consumers will want. Just think about a car designed by Pelosi, Reid, Obama and Barney Frank... 
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gets the mind imagineering, don't it? I say it was already time to punt, but apparently enough important others feel otherwise. 4th down and about 99 yards to go with a bunch of Guv-Mint cash. Can anyone smell raspberry jelly donuts warming in the Company microwave? I noticed my old buddy's at The Boeing Company are finally joining the rest of the nation's manufacturer's and are layoff off some 4,500 workers. Here we go again. Boeing smells rotten socks with the sensivity of a hound dog. Anything close to tight pocketbooks anywhere in the world and they're brewing up the Starbuck's and buying the raspberry jelly donuts for those long, extendo excruciating Big-Boy meetings. With announcements following like this week's one.
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 11, 2009 3:55 pm) |
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Replying to: tlong (Jan 11, 2009 11:20 am) Thats a rare breed today. Any car buyer is rare and I posted all the imports parked in lots off the ports yesterday. Maybe we could stack them to save space? Isn't it bad enough that the transplants can't sell theirs? Why do they import them to park them here? http://www.newser.com/story/44666/us-ports-awash-in-foreign-cars.html "This is about power. And the business community is not going to give up power willingly." Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said as much to a meeting with analysts in October. "We like driving the car," he told them, "and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us." Throughout his run for president, Obama was explicit in his support for Employee Free Choice and his understanding of the forces arrayed against it. "If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union; it's that simple," he told union members in Pennsylvania in April. "Let's stand up to the business lobby." Nationwide, some 86,000 workers have been fired over the past eight years for trying to unionize (countless others have been threatened), and only a fraction of these get reinstated by the NLRB. So Lawhorn's return to the forklift is what passes for a victory these days, under the shredded protections of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, whose intent was not merely to protect the right to collective bargaining but to "encourag[e] the practice." But unionization rates have been crashing for decades. "Historically, unionization basically created the middle class," says economist James Galbraith. "First, by its direct effect on the wages and benefits of unionized workers; second, by its indirect effect on the wages of workers who weren't unionized; and third, by the impact unions had on the creation of the social institutions that underpin the middle class, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--the very structures of the New Deal and the Great Society." Since the election, the business community has savvily retooled its campaign. In a November 21 letter to Congress, the Chamber wrote that passage of the bill "would have a particularly devastating impact on small employers who, as the primary source for new jobs, would be counted on to reverse the current economic downturn." The bill, the letter went on, "is an awful idea in good economic times and a catastrophic idea in the difficult economic times now upon us." Days later, the Chamber presented new research claiming that unionization is a drag on GDP--an assertion that Galbraith and other economists find laughable. And the Chamber used negotiations over the auto bailout to claim that unionization bankrupted the industry. In fact, labor makes up a tiny portion of a car's production cost, but in a tense economic environment with spiking unemployment, such talking points easily gained traction in the media. As UC Santa Barbara labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein points out, the New Deal was not just a series of reforms that stabilized banking or stimulated the economy. "Those reforms," he says, "were backstopped by the organization of the working class, and those reforms continued for two generations." Any Obama-era reforms, he adds, "can and will dissipate" unless unions form an institutional bulwark against retreat. Then, unions were more than twice their current size and less allied with progressive causes, and so it was easier to frame the battle as a parochial fight between big labor and big business. "Labor's decline helps recast that dynamic," he says. "This time around it isn't about two special interests; it's about economic recovery and restoring the middle class." http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090126/kaplan/single |
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from just yesterday..."It would be nice for Audi to be different and build a plant in the north or midwest part of the U.S.,like around NYC ,Cleveland,Chicago,Kansas City,etc."... You must come back to reality...I would believe that ANY foreign maker coming here will simply avoid the North or the Midwest...too many northern cities are overrun by unions and the cities are a failure, too, not just having the UAW...NYC has the transit union screwing up the city, Detroit is an absolute mess, and would still be even if the UAW was never there...truthfully, conisdering it is known as the rust belt, I see NO advantages to locating in ANY northern city, and they will be surrounded by environment-ruining unions running the North...the South simply does not have that problem, they don't have workers with the you-owe-me-a-job mentality, and no bad work habits to break...and if ANYONE thinks that a former UAW worker does not have about 12 million rotten work (or non-work) habits to break, they have been living in fantasyland...UAW people have grown up with, and have developed on their own, the worst militant attitudes and work habits seen since the fall of Rome... If I had any kind of a job to offer, and someone noted on their resume that they even took a tour of a UAW plant 27 years ago as a school field trip, I would show them the door before they sat down for an interview...when you ingest a poison, there are often antidotes to save your life and help you survive...once you have the UAW poisoned attitude, even a religious epiphany cannot remove that welfare attitude.. No, they will look South as the North has been destroyed by all unions, not just UAW, but if you want to make cars, the North offers NOTHING...and please don't tell me about a trained workforce, as there is none up North...they are UAW trained, which means brainwashing to make anything but good product...it appears that the transplants train their workers that a good product is what means job security, something that people want to buy...the UAW just trains them that product quality is simply an accident, but you will demand your wages whether you work or not, whether someone buys your product or not... One would have to be an absolute fool to go anywhere but the South...and avoiding any vestiges of the union is Job One... |
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Replying to: jimbres (Jan 11, 2009 10:31 am) AIG doesn’t break out its U.S. employment numbers, but it has 116,000 workers worldwide. Perhaps half of those are U.S. jobs. GM employs 96,000 Americans. Total worldwide employment is 252,000, more than twice AIG’s. Former AIG CEO Martin Sullivan earned about $14 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $53 million (including only 9 months in 2005, the year he became CEO). GM CEO Rick Wagoner earned $14.4 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $30 million. AIG is also offering controversial “retention bonuses,” ranging from $92,500 to $4,000,000, to a select group of execs deemed essential to the company’s turnaround. Congress has asked questions - but so far shown little outrage There’s only been one Congressional hearing on AIG, and that focused mostly on past practices. No current AIG officials have testified before Congress since the feds got involved. Wagoner has testified before Congress four times since November. And GM has presented a 38-page “viability plan,” that’s publicly available, showing how it would use government money. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke both support the AIG bailout, and they’ve steered money to the company without Congressional approval. GM’s most important friends in Washington have been the Michigan Congressional delegation, which obviously doesn’t have the clout it used to. Paulson has actually argued against using part of the huge $700 billion financial bailout fund to help the automakers, because they can’t pass a “viability” test proving they’ll stay in business long enough to pay back the loans. But AIG hasn’t passed a viability test either, and without federal help there’s little doubt it would be in bankruptcy. GM has a bunch: 64,000. Ah ha! Maybe that explains it. In fact, Senate Republicans who blocked a $10 billion emergency loan for GM and a $4 billion loan for Chrysler said they wouldn’t approve a Detroit bailout unless the United Auto Workers made much deeper concessions than they’ve already offered, essentially giving up any advantages they have over non-unionized workers in other states. So here’s one lesson: If you want a government bailout, try to have problems that are too complicated for most people to understand. And make sure your employees are the kind who wear a suit to work every day. Once you’ve satisfied those two requirements, ask for as much as you want: The coffers are open.
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Replying to: marsha7 (Jan 11, 2009 8:04 pm) VW would have probably given the UAW a shot at their new plant if not for the strikes this year against companies bleeding red ink. The UAW leadership is BRAIN DEAD! Tough labor climate isn't helping state BY TOM WALSH • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • August 3, 2008 When the top-level VW and Staubach teams came to Michigan for the crucial pitch in May at the Yarrow resort, their worst fears about Michigan's reputation for adversarial labor relations were splattered in headlines across Detroit's newspapers and USA Today: "Local UAW strike hits GM's popular Chevy Malibu," May 6. "UAW Turns Up the Heat," May 7 "Axle Union Reps Leave Talks," May 8. "Fear of the UAW probably drove the final decision," Hettinger told me last week. While some people in Michigan are quick to blame the UAW and other labor unions for all of the state's economic ills, others -- especially in the Democratic Party -- tend to dance around the topic. Labor has been politically powerful in Michigan for generations, and the UAW is deeply embedded in the state's fabric, not only in auto plants but in offices, casinos and on the boards of hospitals and charitable groups. The past 30 years of decline for Michigan's auto industry and its chief labor union should have made it abundantly clear by now. If we keep doing the same dumb stuff, we will get the same dumb results. http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3963871 While Michigan and Detroit may not be the most corrupt state in the Union, they run a close second to Illinois and Chicago. The UAW is a BIG part of that corruption. So your argument is valid, starting a business in the Midwest or NE is problematic. Though it seems that Indiana has had better success than Michigan. |
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