My father was a Auto worker and I could tell from his 21yr with GMC that Unions were killing the companies. They make it almost impossible to fire shi**y employees, Make the companies pay people are not even working, but in the process of "finding work", And If a UAW worker gets injured... HOLY S**T! I am totally and uderly against the Unions, they had there time but that time is gone and they are no longer benefitial to the workers or companies...

 

I have had my Xfire for three years now and I think that it is well made and reliable. So it was not made in North America .... so what. It amazes me that some owners try to make their cars more Mercedes, with stickers etc, get over it it is a Chrysler, ask a MB dealer. This is one reason that the North American cars are in trouble, people want imports and see them as better.
North American cars are sold around the world with some success, if they made cars that people wanted they would sell more.
I live near a Chrysler plant here in Canada that makes the 300 series, before that they made the LH series. I have had two LH cars, a Concord and a LHS and now have a 300. The 300 is not as good as the LH series in my opinion.
When you drive by the Chrysler plant and look at the employees cars in the parking lot it would be difficult for a stranger to figure out what cars are made in that plant. If I worked for Chrysler I would drive a Chrysler even if I got it used. The car makers had to come out with a better incentive plan to get the employees to buy their own product, What does that tell you? Some plants had their employees who drove their own product park in the closest parking lot to the entrance. This did not go down well with the others who drove other makes.
Some of these people earn nearly $40 an hour plus benefits for very menial tasks and feel hard done by. Tough, get a job in a hamburger joint when you put yourself out of work and see what your 'skills' are worth then.
The Unions say they will not back down, that is all well and good but the union officials will be the last out of the plants and they will be able to put the lights out, permanently, when they leave. Even on strike the officials get their regular pay, even the shop stewards, so why settle the strike when you have that power.

 

I do run my own business, and don't threaten me by telling me to grow a pair. I already have 3. I still don't understand what you mean.

 

My father was a Union member for 37 years. Though not a sihtty employee, his company had no problem firing people. The company had to have their "I's" dotted ant "T's" crossed, but they managed to fire folks with no problem. The Union was there to make sure the company didn't fire the guy with out due process. And sometimes, the Union could take the initiative with internal programs to help change the person's behavior for the better, to protect the familly, and the employer, from any more hardship.

As for making companies pay folks for not working, that's called "paid sick time," and "paid vacation," and "minimum compensation guarantee," and "OJI pay protection." What's wrong with that? The congress people have the same rules.

And if a Union employee gets injured? That's what OJI is for, which is a State sponsored program, with Federal guidelines (OSHA). However, if the Union is able to bargain for better rights for OJI, good for them.

Our company laidoff over 350 employees, and paid them one month severance to go "find work" while they weren't working. Not that uncommon of a situation in a good Labor/Management relationship. The Union planted the seed for the company to cultivate the process on their own to keep ill will towards the company to a minimum.

 

I'm glad the crossfire did not sell well. If it was a huge seller, I would not have gotten the HUGE discount on my roadster. There is no way I would have paid the $ 41,000 + sticker price. We have awesome cars, many at soltice & sky prices.

 

I almost threw my TV when I watched the news last night!

Those jackasses asking the heads of the big 3 to work for 1 dollar because they screwed up their companies. Granted, I'm no huge fan of CEO's making millions by driving the companies they work for into the ground, but it's not entirely their fault.

I scared my girlfriend when I jumped up and yelled....."WHY DON'T YOU SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN WORK FOR A DOLLAR, ALL YOU HAVE DONE IS SCREW UP THIS COUNTRY!

 

I think you nailed it square on the head there!!

 

Congress should bailout General Motors and Chrysler, but leave Ford to rot.

 

I really enjoyed this thread so far...but I really don't think we should bail out anyone...we should have never bailed out the financial institutions...Bank of America got it rt and what did they get, a good deal buying out failed brokerage firms at a cheap price, now they are even bigger and more successful...their CEO is paid 25 Million a yr...he did a grt job considering he out guessed wall street, but is he worth 25 million a yr? Its always about money at the top, but what do those at the bottom doing the work reap...well, they have a job, they get paid as long as their leaders find a way to make a profit...but if the top fails, it trickles down until the company fails, or restructures...no one should be bailed out by the government for free....and it isn't for free, these are government low interest loans that will have to be paid back...including the financial institutions...but there still should be repocussions on the CEO and top mangagement that put them there...unions aside...they still make the decisions and answer to stock holders like me...GM....2 bucks a share...anyone want to buy my stock....

 

I think cars should be built on a demand basis. In the UK, you typically order a car you do not buy one off the lot. Many reasons exsist for this but I think it is a good approach. The sales channel is not clogged with models people do not want. An advantage to this is you actually can determine what people want to buy. You waist far less cash and you do not need to have a fire sale at the end of the year.

 

This thread is an interesting read .
Thank you for an extremely well thought out debate and not silly name calling. Sure is helping me see different sides.

 

REVIT93RXT: Great post an ideas. I think that would not work in an American consumer system. American consumerism wants on demand services. The ability to order cars and essentially have them hand built causes issue of production. Business wise they have to be able to bulk order material from suppliers. This causes issues from the most basic supply side. If Chrysler would impliment this style of production it would require a great amount of coordination between every single supplier. They would have to nail down an aproximate production figure if off, they have wasted a large amount of funds on parts that they have to recycle that may not fit within the design context of other cars, or they are unable to meet production demands. I think rather than doing a production on demand basis moving to lower levels of production and a greater amount of parts bin build processes would benefit the big 3. You would want to accentuate the parts bin models with different pieces of trim so your Chrysler wouldnt feel like a Jeep or your SAAB didnt feel like a Saturn. But this would allow greater flexibility in my opinion.

 

We should not be bailing out the big three.
1) They have, since the 1970's been producing crappy vehicles. There is a reason why Toyota has taken the top spot in the world today. A quality product. If the American companies made equally reliable cars and trucks, they would still be in the running financially. People want to buy American but are tired of getting ripprd off!
2) Yes, Unions do contribute to the problems. Union employees and benefit packages cost more to the companies that are trying to sell a product. That's why so much manufacturing has gone overseas. I have seen plenty of waste, time=money, on Union jobs.
Let's not forget the harrassment when "god forbid" a non-union employee walks onto a job site. Especially in big union cities. Talk about the need for an FBI racketeering investigation!
3) Amazingly, we don't hear the Asian automakers crying. We don't see their American non-union employees complaining about there jobs being cut. We don't hear about the American based, non-union automaker plants having to be shut down. Think about it open mindedly!
4) I apologize if I offended anyone. Just wanted to vent like everyone else!

 

It is not just a simple question of quality. The domestics have quality on par with the imports, in some cases better. There is certainly a perception of better quality, but that's about it. When it comes to quality of materials in small cars, it's tough for the domestics to compete because of the wage differences - too many things need to be cut back content wise. Example: a $25,000 domestic vehicle vs a similar priced Japanese vehicle - there's almost $2000 more in the domestic vehicle that goes toward paying wages/benefits, meaning in the Japanese vehicles that same $2000 goes toward better materials. Both cars are screwed together equally well, both have good mechanical life spans, etc. But the Japanese manufacturer has the freedom to put nicer materials in their cars.

This changes when it comes to very high profit margin SUVs and pickup trucks. Until very recently the domestics were the only companies building these things. The Ford F150 had been, up until a few months ago, the #1 selling vehicle in the US for a couple of DECADES!! Name a popular, full sized pickup from Japan 20 years ago.


Your comments here about Union wages/benefits confirms my comments above.



That's because, primarily, Asian companies are the ones who can profitably build smaller cars. Going to back to my comments above about content and perceived quality. A Camry or Accord (hell, even a Sonata for that matter) has a nicer interior than a Fusion or Sebring. Because the Asian makers can spend an extra couple grand to make them nicer, without pricing themselves out of the market!! Seriously, who buys the lesser contented vehicle for the same money? And the nicer materials will automatically give the impression of "higher quality". It just perpetuates the perception. Never mind the guy who's Toyota needed 8 warranty visits to the dealer in 3 years while my Chrysler products have needed 1 warranty visit in 8 years. Yet, somehow, that Toyota owner insists his car is of higher quality than mine. Perception. It's a Toyota. Let us all bow down.

So, what were the domestics to do? People looking to buy nicely equipped small to midsize cars found great offerings in Asian imports due to the above mentioned contenting issues. People looking to buy large SUVs and pickups (and goodness knows there were a hell of a lot people fitting this description) generally bought American - until recently there really weren't a lot of foreign choices. And the American companies loved it! Lots of sales (#1 seller for 20 years!!! Woo-hoo!!!) and lots of profits. So when the bottom falls out and nobody is buying SUVs anymore, the domestics take a huge hit. Meanwhile, we don't hear the Asian automakers crying. We don't see their American non-union employees complaining about there jobs being cut. We don't hear about the American based, non-union automaker plants having to be shut down because they're still building the cars Americans (now) want. They always have. Plus, they've got these little, very fuel efficient cars in production back home that have been selling well in Asia and Europe. The Honda Fit is a fairly new arrival in the US, but it's been in production for several years elsewhere. Same holds for several models from Toyota, Nissan, et al. And it is so much faster (months vs years) to alter these for US sale than to develop a brand new Dodge or Chevy from the gound up.

Quite honestly, if Union wages for the Big3 weren't so damn high, and if Americans hadn't had this absurd, stupid obsession with SUVs for the past many years, the domestic auto industry wouldn't be in such a mess.


No offense taken here.

 

There's nothing wrong with my Chev K1500, circa 1995. Union built. It's just old, and has been worked hard for 160,000 miles. My father's caddys have always gone well over 150k in miles with no problem. He's been buying them since the 60's. Crap indeed!

So what's wrong with wanting better pay and quality of life? The reason that manufacturing has gone overseas is because of corporate greed, not worker greed. The bottom line is far more important to a company than screwing the worker. Workers get screwed as a consequence of terrible legislation designed to protect the consumer with cheaper stuff, but it fails to address the consumer's ability to buy said stuff if they loose their job. Your assumption of harassment should be looked at two fold: 1. To protect what has been gained through rightful collective baraining, and; 2. To protect the industry's job force from having a race to the bottom.

The second point is more important than the first. Let's take an example. I don't know what you do for a living, but how would you feel if I learned your job, and convinced your employer to hire me for half the wages, and less benefits - to do your exact gig? I'd sit at your desk, use your computer, contacts, prior work experience, and benefit the company by finishing what you started for me. Would you bow to the concession, and say, "Eric, you can have my job, because you are less expensive to the company." If you would say yes to that, shame on you. If I did do the act of taking your job like that, you might as well label me a scab. (search "ode to a scab" for a definition) I think you would do all you could to keep your job so you can spend money on cool siht for our sweet ars cars, and feed the young-ing. You would talk to your boss, find out why they need me there instead of you, and develop a compromise to keep your gig.

Most jobs in this country do not allow direct compensation replacement based off of prior work experience. Most people can't take the 30 years of stamping radiators and move to a new job with the same pay and benefits. Some can, professional bureaucrats, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and the like. Surprisingly, most jobs that Unions protect make the senior and experienced employee start at the bottom if they change companies!! Tell a lawyer, or doctor, or architect, pro sportsman, to do that! "Well, I guess this hospital is going out of business, I think I'll go to a new one so I don't have to worry about my new crossfire payment..." says the doctor. "Crap, the hospital is going out of business, now I'll have to get another nursing gig and start at the bottom of the heap, again." says the nurse who wants a crossfire but will have to make due with the cobalt.

As for FBI investigations? Not needed. Every time they investigate a Union, they find the smallest thing to raise a huge media uproar about. Save for Hoffa and his crew. How many times can you find corruption in the corporations that house the Unions? Boeing lost nearly a whole BOD a few years back for just such malfeasance. The Department of (anti) Labor is chock full of Bush appointees that will guarantee that Unions remain overly scrutinized while the FTC, SEC, and corporate biased judges get much more "liberal" with their movements that promote corporate "health." Let's get the FBI involved with more intellectual crimes against shareholders, and stakeholders.
Asian auto makers aren't crying because their companies make money from other diversifications despite the American market. You would hear from the workers at American (and Canadian) based, non-union automaker plants if they had a collective voice. But they don't. They have themselves, they don't have the ability to negotiate for the betterment of the whole, they don't have the rights afforded to them by written rules (except for States' law). They are just as happy as the Union worker when their plant shuts down. BUT, they have less to loose when their plant closes. The Union worker will loose much much more, because that's what their employer agreed to in the contract.

Let's ask ourselves this quesion. Are we willing to spend a few percent more on a car so the guy making the blinker fluid resivoir can afford to send his kids to college so they don't have to be the next blinker fluid resivoir builder?

I'd gladly spend my money on stuff that will pay the American worker, not some Mexican, not some Canadian, (no offense please, just patriotic), ...pay the American worker to buy American stuff, so the other American worker can buy more American stuff.

That being said, I'm a hypocrite. I bought a Crossfire. At least it was build by a Union shop.

We are doing well keeping these discussions civil. Pat us on our collective backs.

 

Patriotic you may, be but times have changed and not for the good in a lot of cases. The manufacturers of all kinds of goods have opted to make things outside of the US and Canada etc, because they make more money. I cannot say that the goods they sell to us are any cheaper, except some junk we are conned into buying at times.

In the future who will be able to buy this merchandise when all the good jobs are gone? They do not care as they are making money now. When this change started they said we would all have different jobs, the service industry was often quoted in that regard. We did not realize they meant working in a hamburger joint for minimum wage.

We have seen whole plants shipped to the east, making goods that we used to make not five years ago.

I live in Canada, I have purchased seven new cars in the last forty years, most were made in the US, two in Canada (Chrysler) and the Xfire in Germany. I have not purchased a Japanese car, new or used and do not intend to. Sorry, but I have not forgotten.

I am fearful that unless there are changes we will have our children and their children living in a third world country.

We complain but still buy items that our friends and neighbours made in factories down the street just a short time ago. This has to stop, when we refuse to buy these foreign made items they might listen. I hope so for the future generations. I am not against world trade, I want fair trade.

Boycotting goods from China is a good start.

 

As much as I hate to say this, but the above is unrealistic. We have a global econcomy with transcations occuring across national and international borders daily. Producers are going to identify the best location for production and use those sights, factors could include government regulation, cost of employers, tax breaks ect. Some employers will stay in the United States, but production occurs on a global scale and will continue to do so. Boycotting Chinese goods would criple the American economic sector. The Chinese goods and producers are too intertwined with the American economy. America's and China economic relationship is similar to the relationship one may have with the bad girl and they know they shouldnt do it but it just seems like a good thing until you look back five yeras later and you are flat broke with busted credit (Not applicable here lol).

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by aftcg

I do run my own business…

Quote:

Originally Posted by aftcg

…Our company laidoff over 350 employees…

Quote:

Originally Posted by aftcg

…The reason that manufacturing has gone overseas is because of corporate greed, not worker greed…

No disrespect intended, as you’re obviously intelligent and articulate.
Is it fair to offer that there is at least some inconsistency in the (admittedly cherry-picked) perspective that you’ve shared with us thus far?

Quote:

Originally Posted by aftcg

…We are doing well keeping these discussions civil…

Amen to that. Incidentally, my 207K+ mile GMC got us to the jobsite just fine today.

 

Of course, the basic problem with the proposed US Auto Industry bailout is this:

1. US Car Companies have in the past, on average lost between 8 and 30 billion in a single quarter in net income and asset losses.
2. When a US Car Company "loses" money, they are spending it. Either they are deficit spending, or they are blowing through cash.
3. Improvements to the existing US Car Companies will, if possible, take 3-5 years.

Add that up and see how much the US Car Companies really need. If they are asking for $25.0B, they are asking for nothing compared to what they REALLY need. From a money management perspective, there is only one conclusion - they are totally, completely screwed.

 

Just a thought....why not let the unhelped people in foreclosures live in the giant SUVs that those millionaires developed and tried to sell us?