Posted on 12/11/2005 11:18:40 AM PST by Brilliant
KOKOMO, Ind. (AP) -- At least a thousand people rallied in central Indiana against steep wage cuts proposed by auto parts manufacturer Delphi Corp., which has filed for bankruptcy protection.
Workers say the proposed cuts -- from $27 an hour to between $10 and $12.50 -- are unfair, especially as Delphi has given bonuses to managers and other executives. United Auto Workers officials have said a strike against Delphi appears increasingly likely.
"To the Delphi workers here and everyone else, there are 380,000 union workers in the state of Indiana who will march in this battle with you," said Indiana AFL-CIO President Ken Zeller. "You are not alone."
Workers carried signs that read, "Delphi cooks the books/Workers get BURNED."
Delphi spokesman Lindsey Williams declined comment.
One in three jobs in Kokomo is tied to manufacturing, and the Howard County community is poised to take a heavy blow as its two big employers -- Delphi and DaimlerChrysler -- eye layoffs or pay cuts.
Delphi has been operating under bankruptcy protection since October and is seeking to cut hourly workers' wages by more than 60 percent.
Based in Troy, Mich., Delphi has about 6,000 employees in Indiana, most of whom work at the company's Electronics & Safety Division headquartered in Kokomo.
The company was founded in 1999 as a spin-off from General Motors. With 185,000 workers worldwide, Delphi is the nation's largest auto supplier.
Nice of you to resort to insults... I am not twisting your words saying someone can be replaced by a trained monkey and calling them one is about the same thing.
Being a fry cook is more difficult and it takes more skill and judgment.
You are either kidding or so subservient to an agenda (Free Traitor) to say this... on the other hand you could really be that arrogant..
You probably recall the protectionist taxes enacted against 64K DRAM chips. The Asian suppliers could make deliver them at a lower price than TI or Micron. Micron howled and big import taxes were slapped on the chips. A single chip was going for $27 each. It took a row of 8 in my computer. Pretty pricey. Micron made no attempts to compete at a lower price once the taxes made the competition uncompetitive.
Absent the taxes, Micron would likely have shut up the shop. They are still in business and still howling about the competition from Asia. They are also targets of government probes in memory price fixing schemes. See link. They love to dish out government penalties against their competitors, but have no problem in engaging in the same practices. Shades of Atlas Shrugged.
Any other questions?>>>>>>
I just wanted to know, I have heard all kinds of definitions, at least one article I saw referred to carpenters as unskilled labor and I have heard people say that if it does not require college it is unskilled or if it can be learned on the job it is unskilled. My own idea of UNskilled is something like sweeping the floor, if it requires at least one week of training I would say it is semi-skilled or minimally skilled but not totally unskilled. I did time and motion studies for two years myself a long time ago and I learned that skill on the job.
Bill Gates would disagree.>>>>>>>>
There are always exceptions, Bill did not make his by working a job for someone else, I was referring to what it takes in this area to qualify for a decent paying job. I see ads here which demand a minimum of a Batchelor's degree and two to four years experience and offer a starting salary around twenty thousand.
Right you are! In fact without the easy credit being thrown around these people would not be making on dad's check alone.>>>>>>>>
Or maybe it is because of the easy credit that they have a hard time. I would rather do without almost anything than go back into debt but most people I know are buried in debt. Why don't people realize that everything bought on credit winds up costing far more than the purchase price and once you start paying sky high credit card rates it can end up three times the purchase price.
It does matter what you're after. If you want a good paying "job" then college is necessary. If you want a career then drive is more important than education.
You are wrong, but probably not nuts. No one claims that "everyone" is making higher real wages, but people, on average, are doing better than every.
Union thugs in manufacturing jobs are not doing so well, since their wages were artificially high and global competition is eliminating their jobs, much to the benefit of the average consumer.>>>>>>>>>>
Okay, forget the "everyone", that was poetic license. I am often assured that the average person is doing better than ever and I am reminded of what a friend used to tell me, "you know, if your ass was on fire and your head was in a block of ice, on the average you would be comfortable". I don't see any evidence in my neck of the woods that the average person is doing better than ever, far from it, I don't think I know a single person over forty years old who does believe it. Out of sixteen people in my department I can show you two who are under thirty and are already working for much lower pay than they have had in the past, almost everyone over forty says they are working for lower pay now than in the past.
Right. The sky is falling.
That's a big hit, no doubt. But they don't have to take it. I had a 20% cut once. We'd just had our 4th kid, bought a new car, and signed the two oldest kids up for Catholic school. I was not happy about the cut, but that motivated me to renew my real estate license, and I started selling on the side. It wasn't too long before I found another job, and 18 months later I'm making about 20% more than before the cut. Add in the real estate commissions and I'm about 50% ahead. Best thing that ever happened to my career and finances. Sometimes you need a shakeup. With a pending 60% cut, the smart ones are already making plans while the not so smart are making picket signs.
"Someone b-slap me if I am way off base."
lol...well I won't b-slap you, but Delphi makes parts and pieces, not the whole vehicle. But more to your point, unless the Iraqi army needed exactly what a plant built, there is no easy way to suddenly start churning out armored vehicles.
Auto plants need to be refitted & retooled - an expensive process that takes time. Under normal circumstances, this is amortized over millions of vehicles. In this case it would be tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of vehicles, if you really wanted to go hog-wild.
So, the end result is that you'd have vehicles that they couldn't afford and that probably wouldn't meet the mission. logistics & maintenance in Iraq would be a whole other issue too......
Do not be so quick to cut management out of the picture. After all, they think they run the factories. They certainly hire the employees.
Speaking of large companies, the US Government is the biggest one around and within that operation the US Postal Service is the largest single employer ~ over 800,000 people.
It's the most unionized business in the world.
The only people who are not unionized are those close to the major decision makers, as well as those who control the budget.
At the same time the organization operates with a security element (Postal Inspection Service) that has overhead secret observation galleries in every building. You have no privacy in the crapper.
By common agreement their exists a paramilitary culture among managers.
Their unions are far too soft given the conditions.
My company is a little outfit. Only 42,000 employees. We only managed $7 billion in gross revenues last year. Many (most) people at my company negotiate there own "package". We have no unions. Employee owned. 76% of employees have at least a 4-year degree. 50% have a masters or better. My only regret is that the new CEO has stars in his eyes. He wants to take our employee owned company public.
Folks who need union representation are neatly culled at the start.
Who does the janitorial work around there? Bet it's a contractor who hires illegals ~ and your management knows it.
Contractor, yes. Illegals, no. Many of the janitorial staff have to be cleared secret or above to get the job. That leaves out the illegals.
Employees are encouraged, but not required to own company stock. For my part, the stock options have paid off my mortgage and left me with a pretty good lump of investment capital to direct to other worthy causes. The company has a decent match on 401K as well.
If you "need" union representation, we probably aren't the kind of place you want to work. If you're a slacker, you won't get past the interview. If you get past the interview and are found to be a slacker, a layoff notice can be expected. A layoff notice sometimes comes even if you aren't a slacker. If you aren't set with a revenue producing contract, your viability is about 4 weeks.
You ought to check into the clearance standards there. Anytime you have contract personnel on site doing janitorial work, that means youre business is being protected mostly by the personnel director at a janitorial firm.
BTW, if you'd ever worked in a really large organization with nationwide dealings you'd discover that unions have values frequently not noticed in smaller corporate environments.
I worked at PacBell from 1980 to 1991. Prior to that, I worked at a marine electronics company that worked in union shipyards. We "joined" the union to keep the other union hacks in the shipyard from walking off the job. It's a typically childish behavior of unionized labor.
My experience has taught me that unions are collectivist exercises in mob thuggery. They reduce productivity, protect the incompetent and drive up the cost of doing business. They demand increases in pay and benefits on pain of shutting down the business instead of as a reward for doing a better job. There is little to admire.
BTW, clearances are performed by DISA. It takes between 6 weeks and 18 months to get through the process.
Did you actually think DISA did background investigations?
Anyway, my impression of corporate life at the top levels is that you find more than your fair share of thugs in the executive suites.
No doubt that in any sufficiently large operation that hires on a crew with limited educations you will find stupidity in the ranks of the union leaderships, but thuggishness is simply not a characteristic limited to the ignorant.
I switched from full time to consulting employee status for two years to work at a startup. The company wanted to go public. They hired a bunch of "executives" with name recognition to help the cause. These people were arrogant and worthless as tits on a bull. I would never have hired them, but they provided the "window dressing" necessary to go public. The company sent them packing within days of the public offering. The core value of the company was the technical staff and their ability to deliver top quality product on time.
I have seen my share of thugs in 3-piece suits too. They exact their behavior with methods other than physical violence and vandalism commonly seen in the less educated ranks. Influence peddling and the old boy network are more common "tools".
Right. The sky is falling.>>>>>>>>>
Well, I kinda doubt that the sky is falling but it dang sure is a lot cloudier around my area than what all you blue sky peddlers tell me. What I have told you are actual facts, you don't have to believe them but they are facts.
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