Are You an American ? Are you.......

[SteelersFan]

+1 for free trade. It brings us the highest quality product at the lowest price. If we can't economically compete with producing the product, find one that we can. If we didn't have NAFTA, I would guess we would see living expenses at least doubled.

You must be talking about all the toys coming from China tainted with lead.Also everyone thinks the UAW killed the auto industry how about the CEO and his inflated salary.
Union questions auto execs' pay packages - USATODAY.com

 

[Serial Crusher]

I wouldn't say that the UAW killed Detroit, but with everyone having their hand in the cookie jar it doesn't take a mathematician to see what's going to happen. If you look at the numbers, a chartered jet is a drop in the bucket compared to some of the ways the UAW has cost the big three money. That's just the numbers that can be tracked. In my experience unions in a manufacturing business wind up protecting lazy asses and trouble makers.

 

[seawolfxix]

In my experience unions in a manufacturing business wind up protecting lazy asses and trouble makers.

Bingo.

 

[2ADMNLOVER]

I cant tell you enough how much I agree with Tyler34 ! As a Tile setter , where's my bailout now that the powers that be have let our "south of the border friends" in to do my job for less than half of what I was making ?

Now I'm supposed to be a "good citizen" and help bail out these banks and auto industry , ran by folks with WAY more education than I have ? They were smart enough to create this mess and sink the whole country , let them figure out how to get themselves out of it .

This being a PG site I also cant tell you what I really think of the banks , obama and unions ! FFFFFFFFFFFFF them !!!!!

 

[IUGradStudent]

In a nutshell & IMHO..... The UAW priced their workers right out of a job and the members applauded them all along the way. "Stupid is as stupid does"!!!

This. If you demand $30/hr for something that someone else can do for $20/hr your business is not going to last. If your quality of product is better then perhaps you can charge more. If it's worse, all your business is going to go to the other guy. This is why these big union companies are losing out to non-union companies like Honda and Toyota (Plus the legacy costs).

My dad works for GM. Them going bankrupt and getting rid of all the UAW contracts and starting over would be pretty much the best thing that could happen.

Integrity -- you got it.

Are you serious? Is $17 an hour too much? I wonder would you do it for $17 an hour?

I've worked three different jobs for lass than $17/hr, including a factory and an assembly warehouse. One of them was the summer after I got married -- worked for like $6 something an hour doing quality control on auto parts in southern Michigan. The simple fact is there are LOTS of teenagers who would work for a lot less than $17. Which brings me to...

A minimum wage is fundamentally unjust. It tells a man he cannot work unless he can produce X amount of value for his boss. If you are unskilled, stupid, or just young and inexperienced then you can't work for what your labor is worth -- you just have to sit around and let the government take care of you (or live with your mom and cause trouble). Unjust and degrading. If a 15 year old's labor is worth $4 or $5 an hour, why not let him work for that? He would learn something about hard work, he'd learn a business, and if he sticks at it he'll make four times that before too long. It's somehow better to say he can't work at all until he magically can produce $8 or $10 or $12 /hr worth of value? Or should we sent him to IU where they can give him an "education"? Most of the educating that happens is "diversity training" and forgetting all of the facts that they memorized in high school.

 

[versuchstier147]

Toyota cars. Made in America by Japanese machines. Employing half the number of employees your standard American manufacturer does. I've owned 4 Ford vehicles. Nothing can kill them except 1. Flood. And 2. Girlfriend driving off without oil to, go get oil......... Dammit.

 

[RealtorWhoCarries]

Toyota cars. Made in America by Japanese machines. Employing half the number of employees your standard American manufacturer does. I've owned 4 Ford vehicles. Nothing can kill them except 1. Flood. And 2. Girlfriend driving off without oil to, go get oil......... Dammit.

I think i get the point you're trying to make. But it doesn't matter where machines are made and how many people are employed. The reality is that one business model works in today's economic climate and one is antiquated and is falling like a lame duck. And the reality is that if half the number of employees can make a superior car and rise from trailer park to $200K homes, like Somerset KY, then there is some merit and credibility. And their job is secure, or at least miles more secure than UAW, and they strive to produce a quality product because they know that is the only thing you can ethically do to guarantee job security...Even though i love them all, and will fight for them till the end, i can't praise one of my children when they do wrong. I'm not doing them any favors. In fact i'm delaying their inevitable failure and setting them up for a more rude awakening. Likewise, you can't praise everything, "Just because it's American". In fact that business model is far from the "American" that our founding fathers intended for us.

 

[Serial Crusher]

One of the most overlooked parts of freedom is the freedom to both fail and do wrong. It isn't really freedom if you have no choice but to do right and do well.

 

[Myrk]

The automakers had the chance to compete years ago, they choose to make big V-8's instead of doing R&D on the little 4's. A car aimed at the working class, just to get from point A to point B would have been great 10 years ago, would still be a good idea, but too many perks, gizmos, and flashy details go into a vehicle now it is hard to find a basic model for a reasonable price.

 

[jeremy]

The automakers had the chance to compete years ago, they choose to make big V-8's instead of doing R&D on the little 4's. A car aimed at the working class, just to get from point A to point B would have been great 10 years ago, would still be a good idea, but too many perks, gizmos, and flashy details go into a vehicle now it is hard to find a basic model for a reasonable price.

Actually had very little to do with why the big three are not doing well.

 

[Cromartie]

Buy American

While I generally agree with buy American sentiment, I cannot, and will NOT do so when it comes to vehicles.

Did the original poster somehow miss the recent headline that GM will now be building millions more vehicles in China and exporting them to America?

The Big 2.5 are lost...gone, kaput, insolvent, corrupt, wasteful, inefficient, and above all....socialist and most certainly UN-AMERICAN.

Most real Americans see this bailout combined with bankruptcy for what it is, and that is propping up of a system of centralized economic management and kleptocracy that is ultimately unsustainable.

Simply put: If you buy a Chrysler or GM at this point, then you truly are NOT buying American, you are buying foreign and you are buying into a failed ideology of socialism via waste and fraud on a massive scale.

 

[Cromartie]

re:

You must be talking about all the toys coming from China tainted with lead.Also everyone thinks the UAW killed the auto industry how about the CEO and his inflated salary.
Union questions auto execs' pay packages - USATODAY.com

Management salaries are just a tiny fraction of the total waste when it comes to the Big 2.5
The biggest problem with that is simply one of rewarding incompetence and failure.
Know why Chrysler and GM failed? They are simply too big for the market. The Unions then hampered the scaling down and reductions in capacity that are needed because of their wholesale belief in the entitlement mentality and their perceived "right" to a certain job, with a certain pay level, and a certain level of benefits and a predetermined high standard of living for basically what amounts to - a 13 dollar an hour unskilled factory job - ahem. Take that how you want to, I'm sure I'll get flamed to hell and back for telling it like it is.

But this issue cannot simply be avoided any longer. Unions simply don't work when you allow them to become a self-sustaining bureaucracy on the level of a government, with too much power over companies.

C'mon people, is this really a surprise?!?!

This kind of thing has NEVER worked anywhere it has been tried, ever, in the entire history of mankind. This type of economic manipulation and quasi-socialism is UNSUSTAINABLE, pure and simple. THAT is why GM and Chrysler failed.

 

[Cromartie]

Re:

Remember, If you can either teach a monkey to do the job, or build a machine to do that job it is not a skilled trade. Non skilled trade jobs should earn minimum wage or less. YMMV

Couldn't agree more. You can pay someone that much, but why would you when the Toyota folks are paying less. There has to be fair competition on every level, and unions prevent this and so set forth the ultimate demise of their worker's industry when they are unwilling to see this. The competition is bigger, better, more efficient, and paying less, so the only thing you can do to stay competitive is pay something more competitive. But the unions became too strong and made the company over-leveredged and less than competitive by not making any concessions and fostering an entitlement mentality among the union members and union management.

I work in upper management at my company, and supervise over 100 employees, and I barely make more than the 17 dollars an hour the above mentioned broom pusher makes, but I don't make more than that because similar competitors to my company pay about the same to people with similar skills. That's just how it is.

 

[SteelersFan]

]Management salaries are just a tiny fraction of the total waste when it comes to the Big 2.5
The biggest problem with that is simply one of rewarding incompetence and failure.[/B]
Know why Chrysler and GM failed? They are simply too big for the market. The Unions then hampered the scaling down and reductions in capacity that are needed because of their wholesale belief in the entitlement mentality and their perceived "right" to a certain job, with a certain pay level, and a certain level of benefits and a predetermined high standard of living for basically what amounts to - a 13 dollar an hour unskilled factory job - ahem. Take that how you want to, I'm sure I'll get flamed to hell and back for telling it like it is.

But this issue cannot simply be avoided any longer. Unions simply don't work when you allow them to become a self-sustaining bureaucracy on the level of a government, with too much power over companies.

C'mon people, is this really a surprise?!?!

This kind of thing has NEVER worked anywhere it has been tried, ever, in the entire history of mankind. This type of economic manipulation and quasi-socialism is UNSUSTAINABLE, pure and simple. THAT is why GM and Chrysler failed.

I know of a supervisor that works for GM and makes 90+ a year she has 12 employees, is that not wasteful. As far as GM and China go GM wants to sell cars in China. China was having a economic boom and only ten percent own a car so there is a lot of chance for sales there.

 

[JakeJ277]

I've worked at Chrysler for a few years now and I can vouch for what SteelersFan just said. The union boys collectively realized that they could pretty much do whatever they wanted and disappear during the day when they're needed most then actually have the brass balls to come ask for overtime because they didn't get their work done. The only people that can turn test rigs on are the union boys and they are never around to turn them on...ironic thing is if you get caught doing "their work" while they aren't around you get a grievance filed against you and they get paid for you doing what they should have been doing while they were having their third break of the morning. Don't crap in the hand that feeds you I guess.

 

[SteelersFan]

At the big 3 you have to groups of people ones who hired in in the good old days when a good job was a dime a dozen these are the people you hear bragging about how little they do. Then you have people with less then 10 years who were working for $10 a hour before they got on and realize how blessed they are to have a good job and how bad things are right now.

 

[fireball168]

I know of a supervisor that works for GM and makes 90+ a year she has 12 employees, is that not wasteful.

Perspective.

If that supervisor is in charge of the product liability team and has a staff of associate attorneys and paralegals under them, along with $15+ million a year in retainers and billing for local counsels across the country, that wage sounds like a bargain.

If that supervisor is in charge of non-mechanical/non-production maintenance at the plant and has a staff of broom pushers, toilet plungers and yard mowers under them, it sounds like they've got pictures of the plant manager with barnyard animals.


Both are examples I was given years ago in my first weeks working for GM, both "managers" made the same money.

As a side note, many of the broom pushers, toilet plungers and yard mowers made the same or more as the 1-3 year attorney's were.

Perspective.

 

[Ogre]

The automakers had the chance to compete years ago, they choose to make big V-8's instead of doing R&D on the little 4's. A car aimed at the working class, just to get from point A to point B would have been great 10 years ago, would still be a good idea, but too many perks, gizmos, and flashy details go into a vehicle now it is hard to find a basic model for a reasonable price.

Wrong. They did create the technology. Remember GEO's? those little cars got 30-40mpg, with 1980's technology, had they stuck around long enough the quality would have been on par with any other import (IIRC they were contract made by Suzuki for GM). Either way, GM got away from them in large part because gas was cheap and people went with SUV, trucks, so on... They sold what people wanted to buy.... Did they gouge, probably, the technology in those was pretty low, and fuel efficiency could have been improved, but until gas shot up, no one cared.
If we are looking for a reason the big 3 didn't build/sell something to compete in an age of $5.00/gal. gasoline then we must look in the mirror.

 

[Paco Bedejo]

Wrong. They did create the technology. Remember GEO's? those little cars got 30-40mpg, with 1980's technology, had they stuck around long enough the quality would have been on par with any other import (IIRC they were contract made by Suzuki for GM). Either way, GM got away from them in large part because gas was cheap and people went with SUV, trucks, so on... They sold what people wanted to buy.... Did they gouge, probably, the technology in those was pretty low, and fuel efficiency could have been improved, but until gas shot up, no one cared.
If we are looking for a reason the big 3 didn't build/sell something to compete in an age of $5.00/gal. gasoline then we must look in the mirror.

It's not just the engineering...the build quality is terrible in American-made (i.e. Mexican/Canadian-made) cars. It's not a new phenomena that people are buying foreign...Hondas have been very popular for their longevity for decades.

Unmotivated employees, unaccountable management, irresponsible CEOs...gosh, not quite sure why our nation is falling so far behind...

 

[jeremy]

Unmotivated employees, unaccountable management, irresponsible CEOs...gosh, not quite sure why our nation is falling so far behind...

We used to be a nation of people with broad skill sets. It was/is one of the reasons our military was/is such an unstoppable force. This is why we won 2 World Wars. This is how we put a man on the Moon. We are not so skilled as a population anymore.

We are no longer a nation with a let's get it done attitude. The what can I do for my country type of people are becoming extinct...