Posted on 11/06/2009 7:24:43 AM PST by markomalley
GM's about-face has angered both Opel workers and European governments. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, union leader and Opel board member Armin Schild blasts GM for mismanagement and says that the US company is uninterested in saving the Opel brand.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Schild, General Motors has decided not to sell Opel after all, preferring to restructure the German automaker itself. What do Opel employees think of the plan?
Armin Schild: GM is going to continue pursuing company policies that have already led to the firm's decline over the last 20 years. Pressure on the employees and on the government, however, will become more intense.
(snip)
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But GM is also interested in selling cars.
Schild: The last 20 years have shown that GM managers pay more attention to profits than to the number of vehicles sold -- and as such have paid less attention to developing innovative, more competitive products. Everyone could see the results of this strategy at Opel. They never fully took advantage of the know-how of their engineers nor did they use the brand's technological potential. Instead, the focus on saving money ruined the brand -- new models were only introduced once managers were certain that they would produce the maximum amount of profit. But that never really worked and it won't work in the future. Since the bankruptcy, not a single new GM model has been introduced.
PIEGEL ONLINE: In other words, you think the fault lies with the management of GM?
Schild: The problem has to do with the structures and the fundamental course charted by the bankrupt giant GM. The flow of information from one level of the hierarchy to the next reminds one of socialism, in which successes were claimed even as failure was evident to all.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
I guess he'd know.
The guy who built our house lost $220 K in GM bonds that became worthless when they went bankrupt. He wonders if the UAW might provide a couple of free oil changes...
They will rue the day they let their envy be used to kill the rich.
Opel is simply collateral damage. The UAW doesn’t want Opel sold and emerging as a competitor. Opel will be slowly strangled, and deemed and acceptable loss.
Such is the way of communists.
My take is that that Germans have a right to be very skeptical of the future for Opel at the hands of GM management. The criticism is spot on.
But you have to recognize that the significance of the change in thinking in GM’s Board of directors is that they realized how accommodating the Obama Administration and the Congress have been - so now that they understand they can count on being backstopped by Obama, they don’t need to scale down in Europe as they once thought would be necessary.
exactly. They are intentionally going to destroy the Opel brand to keep it from becoming a competitor, putting a few more nails in their own coffin at the same time.
Yup, straight out of an Ayn Rand novel.
Hey now that Obama owns GM maybe he can bring back the EV1 electric car since they helped kill it one of the biggest mistakes of the decade was killing that car !
Oh wait Obama wants to kill coal comanies too hmmmmm well that wont work if were all driving electric cars darn SCREWED AGAIN !
Yea.
So I wonder: How many of his union thug-minions were wildly cheering and/or lining the parade routes for the pre-election zerO's fling through ol' Germany??
Rhetorical question. Everyone knows the answer and while admittedly mean spirited? True, nonetheless. LOL
"I guess he'd know."
He knows, he'd never admit it though.
Truth & humility's not The Way of leftist thugs across the spectrum, A to Z.
Killing the EV1 was a good business decision, not a mistake. There was no way to make money on that car. There’s no way to make money on the Volt either, but with the Gov’t forking over endless taxpayer dollars, GM no longer cares. The Feds own ‘em, and GM will do what the Feds want.
There’s a reason why the only highway-legal electric car available today costs over $100,000 - batteries. They were the downfall of the EV1. The technology just wasn’t there then and still isn’t, at least not at an affordable, non-subsidized price.
Schild: ......”The flow of information from one level of the hierarchy to the next reminds one of socialism, in which successes were claimed even as failure was evident to all.”
Sounds like the same claims coming out of the administration for the “success” of the stimulus package.
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