Posted on 05/29/2009 7:25:37 PM PDT by Timeout
That's funny.
I'm still boycotting Home Depot buy I have forgotten why.
And my husband was/is one of them. Was a salesman for Dodge for ten years. The dealership he worked for escaped the axe but no such luck with him or half the work force there. Pink slipped after ten years, large,solid customer base with many repeats. Why,he even managed to sell 7 trucks and 4 SUVs in the last 9 weeks, despite all that's going on. Pitched out like an old boot.
He was a lot more miffed (and p.o.) more than depressed. I just gave him a wee kiss and assured him that "Everything happens for the best". But still I kept thinking of that old saying: "When the elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Thank you, Lord Obama.
sorry folks, I’m from Texas & still 1/2 our vehicles are pick-ups & most by far are American made. Texas is unlike the Northeast, in the Northeast mostly guys drive pickups for either pleasure or mostly business but in Texas it’s more considered a household car & being a yankee around here is not unusual to see a girl drive a pickup vs up in the Northeast.
I’m sorry folks, but in Texas, made in America will always mean something to us.
Sorry folks, drive the highways in New York, Jersey, Mass, any where up north & they all drive foreign cars.
Hmm, aren’t these same libs on the Americab side?
Except for machinists, line work is less than challenging. Unless you call screwing bolts with a hangover challenging.
For those of you in Rio Linda, that's $150,000+/yr. Worth fighting for?
yitbos
The whole idea is to not support UNION made products whatsoever.
Unless Ford finds a way to dump the unions, they are boycotted too by my family.
Maybe Ford would be smart and hire all those laid off auto works and bust the union!
I don’t understand what you are driving at.
Are you saying because I am against throwing money down a black hole that I am un-American? That because I happen to live up in Massachusetts I have no right to say how I am to be taxed and how my tax dollars are to be spent? We had the “Big Dig” up here, and sure, it has improved driving in Boston, but I am on the side of people who are pissed because they live in Texas and had to have their federal tax dollars spent on something in Massachusetts.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am all for American built anything if it can compete on its own merits. BUT FAILURES IN THE MARKET ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE SUCCESSES.
I am not willing to endorse socialism in order to “save” something that CANNOT BE SAVED. The American car industry is DEAD or nearly dead, and it is the UAW that has had more to do with its demise than nearly anything else. Sure, you hear the union people all the time lamenting it is poor management that has done it.
I call BS.
It is union greed that bears a greater responsibility than anything else. And now, MY tax dollars and OUR tax dollars THAT OUR COUNTRY DOES NOT HAVE AND IS NOT GOING TO EVER HAVE are being thrown DOWN THOSE RATHOLES CALLED GM AND CHRYSLER.
So what is it you are saying? Are you for the nationalization of the banks, automakers and all the other people that are going to be coming down the road with their hand out? Where is that money going to come from to put in their hands?
Are you saying that you endorse socialism so you can drive an ostensibly American made pick-up truck that is made in the USA with Chinese financed debt? Is that what you are saying?
Please do not take this personally. Normally, I don’t mind the “we are more “American” than the Yankees because we drive pick-up trucks” junk because I don’t have much room to maneuver coming from a state that has people like Barney Frank, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy in public office. But not when it is invoked to somehow justify socialism.
But I’ll be damned if somehow driving an American made pickup truck made with MY tax dollars and supporting socialism makes someone more American or patriotic than another person driving a Toyota who is committed to free market capitalism and opposes socialism in all of its forms.
Again, this is not directed at you per se, but to invoke the patriotic red-blooded American patriot in the context of the bailout changes the complexion. If you have never read “The Road to Serfdom”, I suggest you buy and read it.
I agree. I too will never voluntarily buy an American union made car. But don’t you realize that they will make you buy their cars through some concocted trade policy, or energy policy, or environmental policy. Or if they can’t maintain that charade, they will just tax or inflate away your wealth and give to their unions and other cronies. They are eroding the rule of law and it will not be available to protect you.
I hope you don’t think that because I am AGAINST bailing out these carmakers and nationalizing them, that I am somehow FOR people losing their jobs.
That is not the case. But the point is, they are going to go bankrupt no matter what. No matter what. And spending money we don’t have to prop up the status quo is not going to help either.
The sooner they go bankrupt and can start from scratch without the boot of the unions on their necks, the sooner we will have a viable auto industry.
Would it be better if they didn’t go bankrupt? Absolutely. But with salary structures like those, can any rational person think they won’t? The auto industry is a smaller scale model of Social Security. And we know how that is going to end.
I’ll keep your family in my prayers, as I will keep our Country. We are going to need them.
Well, I used to work at a GM plant. You couldn't walk through the skilled trades area without tripping over all the people asleep. And they weren't waiting for work; work orders were essentially DOA, it had to be an act of congress to actually go and do one. There were classifications for pipe fitters, painters, mechanics, tool makers, die makers, tin smiths, welders, mill wrights, fork lift repair, and electricians. Alright, electrical work should be left to electricians, but most of the classifications were just to make-work. Machine issues turned into a circus when more than one trade was involved. A lot of the tradesmen actually did things only on over time; the first 40 hours were for sleeping—I swear this was true. There were two die makers, that did absolutely nothing, period, as in never touched a machine or a die or a tool or anything except magazines and newspapers.
The union contract specified which news paper vending machines were to be in the lobby—so they'd have something to read while a machine behind them ran.
That place was a surreal adult day care center. There were some good people there (some people actually did try to do a good job and put in a fair days work, which is saying something when they had no incentive to do so), and I'm sorry for what they and their town are going through now. But there were a lot of bums with serious entitlement complexes and the Union was trying as hard as it could to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. As another poster said, nothing wrong about high wages for high productivity. GM had, and probably still has, the highest labor hours per car in the industry. Combine that with the highest labor rates in the industry, and that is a business model on the fast track to oblivion. I left after a couple of years for a job that paid less but was in an industry that was sustainable. Now that the CAFE standards are to increase, plus the resistance to drilling for oil domestically and the prospect of returning high oil prices, GM is over.
I have a friend who works in a company that works closely with the auto industry, and he has spent a fair amount of time over the years inside GM plants working with them, and what you said mirrors what he has told me.
He has also spent time with a few of the Japanese automakers, and he said the difference in the way things are structured is like night and day, even accounting for the cultural differences, which are pretty substantial, so that says a lot.
As you point out, there are a lot of good people who work in a bad system.
That was pretty depressing to read, though.
An interesting experiment in the flaws of socialism, share the wealth. The union demanded it, fought for it with revolutionary ferver. They demanded unrealistic shares of profits to the point of confiscating all profits and stealing others profits (confiscating the bonds) even to the point of confiscating the assets of the company built with others profits from their labors.
The government is as much to fault as the union. It promoted the Grand American Automobile Experiment.
That experiment lasted about as long as the Soviet Union and failed for the same reasons with the same results.
yitbos
Oh, how I hated to read that.
I think you folks are in error. That 73 bucks an hour includes EVERYTHING that GM pays...including retirement. So, all they do is take the total amount spent on labor and their retired labor and divide by the actual hours worked to come up with this figure. 1000’s of retired employee’s figure into the hourly wage rate as well.
You improved my comment, thanks.
O.K., just you, me, and my best friends, all one of them.
About the only successful and expanding unions remaining in the U.S.A. are all subsidized by government.
yitbos
You were correct up to the point where you said the figure includes retirees. It doesn’t. But the benefits are included.But it’s still crazy high and way more than the foreign automakers.
And, despite bankruptcy and the new agreement, that number hasn’t changed much at all. No way they can make affordable cars.
I think Obama plans to keep pumping our money into it until the union coffers are sufficiently full to support all the current workers. Then they’ll ditch the company, pawn off all those pensions on the PBGC (us), and use the remainder to pay themselves benefits forever.
This is very interesting and informative !
I’ve heard other opinions, as you might imagine...
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