Posted on 11/13/2008 5:11:57 AM PST by equaviator
They need to declare bankruptcy, as the current business model is too expensive and inefficient to continue.
Shut down and reopen with a new agreement; you guys get paid like any other assembly workers with "normal" benefits, the unions get tossed out and banned, and if any of you don't like the new agreement, you'll be replaced like any other assembly workers from the stacks of applications we have here.
Welcome to the real world. You might want to watch some videos of a Toyota plant.
Gosh, now a new GM car is half the price and selling. Who woulda thought.
No, they can't legally dump the UAW, but they can dump the contracts and start over 100% with a court ordered contract that will allow the companies to survive.
The outrageous wages and benefits would go instantly to the trash bin of history.
Bush is not too keen on the idea but who knows what Barney Frank will pull. Bush was against Fannie Mae, etc and Frank and Dodd still ripped off America.
Currently driving a 1994 Chevy Astro EXT with 170k miles, bought used in 1998. Dubbed by my teenager as the “welfare van”. Yes, it’s a tank, but is very reliable, and minimal problems, and I get about 18-20 mpg with a 4.3L V-6.
Our founding fathers warned us about apathy in our country. We should be paying attention.
Are you crazy? What would make the poor suckers come back to the same place to get hosed again? And think of all that money they make in the last 4-5 years of the financing from parts and repairs from stuff that is conveniently not covered under the warranty.
It's all a big circle jerk, GM pisses someone off, they go to Ford, which does the same thing, then they wind up at Chrysler. By the time the Chrysler is paid off, some clown who works for GM tells them "sorry about what we did to you eighteen years ago, our quality has come back!"
And the poor sucker, goaded by false patriotism ("Buy American!") stays on the merry-go-round. What GM and the others didn't count on was people wising up to this scheme.
I knew back in the late 80’s that the plan (and everyone thought I was a raving nut when I would complain about this scam) of selling shoddy cars to get folks to come trade back in within 5-7 years (and that has dropped to 3-5 years now) would blow up on them when they started noticing that the foreign cars their friends were driving were still lasting 10-15 years down the road.
Even had a few car dealers tell me “You might as just trade them in every few years, you are going to pay for a car regardless, even if it just in car repairs. Might as well get a new one!”
Yeah, that’s worked out so well for them!
As John McLaughlin used to say, "I believe you've lurched into the truth." Zero and the Rat congresscritters are bound and determined to prop up the Detroit car makers.
They'll act as engineering nannies and try to make a show of a switch to hybrids or something, but the truth is, Detroit cannot make a hybrid that is either significantly more fuel efficient or durable than the Japanese can. They'll be zombie companies, and the printing press will run to do CPR on them.
The next trick is to figure out how to supply pie to the rest of the base, since it looked so easy to pay off the UAW.
Not the first. Unions killed the textile indusrty, US steel industry, etc.
Did you notice that to prolong things, they were switching to a leasing model of financing? That way, you get the sucker back into the showroom after only three years, you just build an invisible high interest rate into the lease payments.
Once the residual values of the cars went way above what they were really worth after three years, the house of cards started collapsing.
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