Posted on 03/31/2006 6:44:15 AM PST by Mikey_1962
DETROIT | Bankrupt supplier Delphi Corp. has identified 14 U.S. factories it will shed as part of its reorganization in another sign of how bloody the restructuring of the nation's largest auto parts maker is turning out to be.
The Troy, Mich.-based parts maker — now with 28 U.S. plants and 33,000 hourly workers — intends to close all but four of 18 factories represented by the United Auto Workers after it emerges from bankruptcy, according to a UAW letter distributed this week to workers in Oak Creek, Wis.. Contents of the letter were confirmed by other local union officials briefed on the plans by UAW's top leadership.
Details of the company's downsizing plans are emerging as Delphi prepares to file a court motion today that will begin the process of undoing its union contracts. The motion could push the company's unions closer to a strike that could ravage both the supplier and General Motors Corp., its largest customer.
The UAW plants expected to survive — located in Grand Rapids; Kokomo, Ind.; and Rochester and Lockport, N.Y. — suggest Delphi sees a future in building automotive electronics and fuel systems in this country, but not spark plugs or catalytic converters.
The rest of the 18 UAW plants will be closed, consolidated or sold. But it is still unclear what would happen to its 10 non-UAW factories.
Workers at the Delphi plant at 3100 Needmore Road in Dayton are represented by the UAW. Workers at the other Dayton-area sites are not represented by the UAW.
Both the factory-closing plan and Delphi's move to overhaul its labor contracts are central to Delphi's goal of emerging from bankruptcy by next year. Delphi, which filed for bankruptcy in October, has made no secret of its intention to reduce it U.S. labor costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at daytondailynews.com ...
These days you really do have to train the people who work in automotive plants.
Hyundai just built an autoplant in Birmingham Alabama (on I65).
Etc., etc.
An amazingly large percentage of the foreign automaker/autoparts manufacturing capacity in this country is stretched out along I65 and I70.
I'm trying to think of why we ever thought Detroit and SE Michigan were good places to make cars.
I believe the cost of training replacement workers + the cost of paying replacement workers' salary + the cost of paying for enhanced security would still be significantly cheaper than paying UAW workers approximately $75 an hour in pay and benefits.
The union label is a pink slip.
Charles Grassley and a couple of other Congress-critters used to do that with USPS to show that USPS gross productivity was crap, and getting worse. Then, one day, it got better ~ Chuckey Jr. there shut up about it. Dick Strasser, who is retiring this month, didn't.
Guess it depends on who you want to impress, and with what.
Whether they actually produce something or not...
My favorites are the people who have been being paid not to work for five or more years.
Any normal American would be embarrassed.
if I was lucky enough to have an employer who laid me off and still paid my salary, I would go back to school and get a degree while I was being paid to do nothing or I would look for another job.
But these slobs are content to laze around collecting paychecks they didn't earn while playing cards and watching TV.
Well, if folks continue to want a set-up like that they should move to France.
Proximity to natural resources, skilled labor and growing market for transportation. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the industrial Midwest was at the center of the need for transporting agricultural goods (be it by wagon or train) from America's heartland to the major cities. The automotive industry naturally evolved from the convergence of those factors and grew upon the established infrastructure. (An infrastructure that Dubya's globalization policies undermine.)
So the government must do something to protect the jobs correct??
"The majority of us would rather stay here doing what we're doing," he said.
"You're not on the line, chasing a car."
Unions are just disgusting.
What I can't figure out is why haven't more of the rank-and-file grown a brain? Sigh.
I dont know if your trying to be sarcastic, but Just short history...
WV Ohio and Va = Coal
UP MI and Mn = Iron Ore
OH IN IL = Steel
PA = Glass
Detroit = home of Ford Family, and families of Most US auto makers.
Detroit = Autos, auto parts, etc
1960 Detroit = BIG Companies + Big Labor = Control of entire region and Auto industry
1964 German and Japan Atuos make headway in market US auto indutry = blind and stupid (bad combination)
1968 Unions demand and get huge wage increases and lower producion quotas (Auto companies gutless)
1970s Japan makes Huge inroads US car makers produce junk cars from junk designs fall farther behind
1980s US still producing Junk Cars that will not sell, Labor still wants and get double digit increases to produce junk cars
1990s to today. Quality improves, and auto industry moves south to non union states. Overseas companies build plants in US away from overpriced Unions.
Future: Detroit will be ghost town (even more so than now).
Rest of michigan population requires US government to use Detroit as new Nuclear testing site. Figure whats left can not be as bad as what is there....
So he did.
He selected Detroit, and the rest was history.
Obviously, though, the I65/US31 corridor is better suited to supply the national needs than SE Michigan.
When market forces are allowed to work, they frequently do not arrive at the same solution an erratic, emotionally unstable individual such as Henry Ford or Joe Stalin might decide.
There, that's better.
Basically all the infrastructure to make cars was in Detroit starting from day one with Ford's Highland Park plant.
That's why SE Michigan WAS a good place to build cars.
Not anymore.
Henry Ford relocated to Detroit. He was elsewhere, as was the infrastructure, before that. Remember, Elwood Haines invented the automobile in Kokomo, Indiana. SE Michigan was still a swamp at the time.
Indiana was the auto capital until then. All those old, non union, hand built cars that now command hundreds of thousands ,if not millions from collectors, were made here. The Indy 500 was built as the auto industry "test track".
Old Henry changed all that when he built Detroit. And technically he was right in moving there, from a purely logistics stand point (Great Lakes Shipping).
Still we haven't seen quality autos from the US since.
Well, okay, maybe a few here and there. But the UAW ruined the US auto industry, now they are going to pay the reaper.
Ever since Ford moved the auto industry to Detroit, it's been downhill all the way.
My point was that foreign companies, taking a look at the markets and logistics have decided that the first market decision, namely to center the auto industry on Central Indiana, was CORRECT, and the move to Detroit was a bit mistake.
Excuse me?
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