Posted on 01/27/2006 8:14:40 AM PST by oxcart
Employees at Ford's Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich., will have to drive Ford Motor Co. vehicles to work or park across the street, the plant manager announced earlier this week.
The new parking policy, which is scheduled to take effect Feb. 1, was instituted by plant manager Rob Webber just as Ford reported losses of $1.6 billion from its North American auto operations in 2005 and Monday announced plans to close 14 plants and cut 30,000 jobs as it tries to reverse losses and respond to declining U.S. market share.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Ford isn't forcing them to quit --- they are just telling them to park the competition's product somewhere else.
What about someone who works for a bank but banks at another bank? Should they be fired? Or maybe they just don't want their personal financial information available to co-workers.
The concept you espouse made a particularly good Dilbert cartoon, as I recall. They had Asok saying "Why do they hate us?" when they announced that employees MUST use the company's products.
You mean you drive foreign (German) and youll buy what you like.... Thats fine, just dont work at Ford. Thats all they ask, it seems to me...With 30,00 out of work, its a sellers market
It says a lot when a company has to basically FORCE its employees not to purchase the competitors product (especially once you consider that being a Ford employee they would get good prices on Ford products).
It's not dumb. The company should have done this a long time ago. What surprises me is companies like Nationwide insurance. They have a great health insurance policy for sale, but give employees insurance from another company.
If your employees are purchasing other manufacturers vehicles you aren't giveing them a good enough reason to purchase your vehicles.
Either they don't have faith in the product they produce, which is rarely something they have the ability to change, or the company is simply not offering a good value on their cars, even with employee discounts.
You also can't expect new employees to run out and buy a car made by you.
Hope I explained my thoughts completely, I'm not looking to get flamed. People certainly have the right to buy what they want, but they should at least think about it long term.
If the company isn't making products that their empolyees think are worth buying even with employee discounts, then buying the best value is thinking long term, because the long term prospects of the company aren't good, and the relatively small amount of profit the employee gives them buy spending their hard earned money on a product they feel isn't thier best value isn't going to change that.
It's entirely possible to recognize Ford's legal right to restrict what goes on its property while also acknowledging that such a policy is extremely evil.
Just one more I would like to make... In the cases in which you really believe the product you are producing is inferior, and hence you refuse to buy it yourself, I would think you would want to run to find another job. If the employee won't buy it, then why would anyone else, hence your job is destined to be gone...
Just some thoughts and I am enjoying the active discussions here.
But I'm not sure I fully agree with your statement that the employees rarely have the opportunity to change the product... Maybe to some extent, but maybe they it is some employees working on the line doing shoddy work that is causing part of the problems today.
Heck we've all talked about why we wouldn't want to purchase vehicles made now, after the layoffs, etc. because the workers would not have any incentive to do a good job..
Now what exactly does that say about these employees ??
Actually I think the number of years will be ten. A decade. Chinese cars will be making a solid foray into the American market in 5 years, but it will take them another 5 to really reach the place where the average American has no qualms about driving Chinese (plus they need to work out quality issues, just like Hyundai did in the last 5 years). Hence I'd give them 10 years.
However, once the Chinese are up and going in those 10 years, Detroit better have its ship in shape because the Chinese will be a bl@@dy tsunami. That is assuming GM and Ford are still around then in present form (i.e haven't been bought out by Toyota). Once the Chinese get into the market the entire car industry will have to go through some very serious changes (even Japan, and to a lesser extent Korea, will be affected by this ....and Detroit will definitely be killed off as we know it unless they have really taken miraculous steps by then).
That is true. However, it is not possible to support property ownership rights while at the same time holding that the actual exercise of that freedom is evil if it doesn't conform to one's personal opinion.
Where did you get that percentage? I just checked the article and it doesn't say (or even insinuate) any such thing. I'm curious where you got the 10%.
Actually the only part where I saw anything similar to that is this post by Lokibob, where he tries to make his point by saying 'they COULD' have 90% of the workers driving Ford.....' Is that where you got your 90%-10% split? If it is then that is quite funny ....it would show how normal statements turn into 'fact' in just a few degrees of seperation. Here is the post from the FReeper:
I agree with the property rights, but it seems that everyone has missed a very important point. No place in the article does it say how many non-ford cars have to park elsewhere. They could have 90% of the employees driving Fords, and want to reward them for buying the company product. It could affect 2 new hires and the immigrant applying for the nut tightening job only. NO one knows by the facts in the article.
or Found On Road Dead
If the Government wanted you to have it (fill in anything), They would issue it to you.
If Ford wants an all GM/Ford parkinglot, Issue out the vehicles...
I've gone through the comments in post 89. No one suggested that Ford didn't have the legal right to do what they did. (The union employee came the closest, but even he didn't get there.) Most responded by either pointing out the abstract consequences, the direct consequences, or historical reality about the company.
Ford might want to give their employees the best discount possible so they don't have to buy another product.
You have a good point. However, your average company employee usually has very little control over the quality of the product. They may notice an obviously defective part going down the line and pull it before it ends up in a finished vehicle on a very rare occasion, but for the most part they spend their time moving parts around and watching machines run.
However, there's a lot that goes into making an automobile desirable. A large part of it is determined in the design, and even good designs can still result in a product that doesn't meet a consumer's needs as well as a competitor's design. It's also possible that the particular features of the vehicle Ford makes doesn't suit their worker's needs as well as a vehicle made by Chevy.
If Ford wants all their employees to drive their cars, then they need to given them enough incentive to overcome that, and in some cases, it's just not going to be practical.
If the employee won't buy it, then why would anyone else
Because in many cases, one size does not fit all, despite the best efforts of designers.
Heck we've all talked about why we wouldn't want to purchase vehicles made now, after the layoffs, etc. because the workers would not have any incentive to do a good job..
Now what exactly does that say about these employees ??
It says that we don't trust them. However, the vast majority of quality problems come from bad processes, not from individual workers not doing their jobs well.
Much of the work that could have resulted in poor quality decades ago is automated now. Manufacturing relies much less on skilled trades than it once did.
When unions drove up the costs of skilled labor so high, they effectively priced themselves out of a job by encouraging companies to investing in developing and purchasing automated systems. Automation allows for more consistent quality and allowed for hiring less expensive employees.
My wife worked for a while designing databases that a truck manufacturing company used to track their manufacturing process. They track an amazing amount of data that lets them go back and find what is causing poor products to be produced and fix the problem.
When they get that plant up and running fully they will have an incredible ability to track problems back to their source. However, considering some of the stories my wife has told me about their management, there's still a decent change that they will fail to fix any of the problems once they are aware of them.
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