I understand as reported on Fox/CNN. The guys out in the plant at big 3 do not make 71 bucks a hour with benneis. Go to search for Keith Obmermann Fridays news cast MSNBC. Im not going to go over it all. In short they used formula that included all the retired folks benneis. I mean you add retirement pay and health care for thousands of guys that are not even working there any more is nuts. Those currently working are in line with Europe and Japan workers.
Auto Makers Not Making?
- Thread starter djv
- Start date
Dj don't u know that it is a lot easier to blame the working man then the actual criminals that make out like bandits? This is a product of the right being steamed because some of my union dues go to people who actually work for me. They can't figure out why some of my money don't go to their campaigns while they do everything in their power to screw me over time after time again. If you blame the working man it is a lot easier to get monkeys and clowns to rally around you. Same with the mortgage crisis. Blame the homeowners but turn ur head when a 20 million dolllar golden parachute zips by ur head. Its priceless. A whole new batch of rich CEO's will be littered all over this country from the great earnings they made from this farce of a war. Then we can call these people the new producers of our country when actually this pile of scum should be sent to jail or better yet hanging from a noose.
I'm a former Ford plant supervisor. The mechanics that worked for me made just under $30/hour. With the daily OT, weekends, etc., many of them made over $100k. I also had a group of clerks that made around $25/hour....lots of OT led to some nice yearly earnings. The highest ranking Union official (an hourly worker elected by the membership) gets paid 12 hours a day at the highest hourly rate x 7 days a week....whether he works it or not (and he never works weekends or 12 hour days, he just gets paid for it).
You can't operate like this. A lot of you guys don't get it, but the UAW has bargained their way into a sick contract that doesn't allow the Big 3 to compete.....and it's not the union's fault. The UAW took what they could get and, unfortunately, they got a lot and it is going to hurt everyone in the long run.
"Loaning" them money will not help and that money will NOT be repaid.
Carry on.
You can't operate like this. A lot of you guys don't get it, but the UAW has bargained their way into a sick contract that doesn't allow the Big 3 to compete.....and it's not the union's fault. The UAW took what they could get and, unfortunately, they got a lot and it is going to hurt everyone in the long run.
"Loaning" them money will not help and that money will NOT be repaid.
Carry on.
Word out that GM may drop either Pontiac or Saturn brand by 2010. Part of stream lining. I think if true either one means at least loss of 15000/20000 jobs. This would include dealers. GM believes Chevey brand can pick up some of the loss in sales. I guess we will know if any this is true next week.
gmroz, a question about the overtime, etc., scenarios with the automakers. Shouldn't it be up to management how many people they have working and on the payroll, and be in charge of basic schedules? The reason I ask is if a business is properly managed there should be less overtime and better control of costs overall. Seems that the auto business should be pretty well targeted as far as how many cars are produced from year to year, but maybe not - you probably know from your experience. Do the contracts mandate a certain amount of overtime for each employee - or the highest seniority ones, that kind of thing.
Just seems like a basic management control issue, but maybe the union maintains that much control that it can tell the company how their employees work, how much, when, etc. I understand basic union structure - I've been a union worker twice previously in the past (both on the top and bottom of the totem pole), and overtime was something that was tightly controlled by management in those jobs, and was only used in extreme high volume times.
Thanks for your input - interesting topic. Maybe it's time the union workers realize the dire times they are in and change things if they are going to really fall apart.
Just seems like a basic management control issue, but maybe the union maintains that much control that it can tell the company how their employees work, how much, when, etc. I understand basic union structure - I've been a union worker twice previously in the past (both on the top and bottom of the totem pole), and overtime was something that was tightly controlled by management in those jobs, and was only used in extreme high volume times.
Thanks for your input - interesting topic. Maybe it's time the union workers realize the dire times they are in and change things if they are going to really fall apart.
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sounds like greedy overtime run amok with no controls
yup djv, lottsa careless use of statistics (surprise!)
yup djv, lottsa careless use of statistics (surprise!)
$73 is not a fair estimation of benefit to the worker, but it is a fair estimate of the labor cost to the employer.
Current workers do not make $70 per hour. The only reason that figure is relevant is if GM per-worker productivity is not high enough to cover that number, especially compared to competition. It seems not to be, but there are many other problems GM has besides this one.
Steven Pearlstein, the Washington Post business reporter, has said some of the more intelligent stuff on the big 3, and never used the $73 figure 'cause it's so misleading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/11/18/DI2008111802106.html
I think that if they crafted a special bailout of Chrysler in 1979, they can craft a special streamlined bankruptcy of the big 3 today.
Pearlstein:
"First, it's not just the union contracts that make the companies unviable. They have too much debt as well as too much pension liability, they have too many dealers, they have too many plants, etc. Let's not put all the onus on the workers. Second, bankruptcy is fine but it has to be fast, which is why you need some sort of special expedited procedure. And third, you don't see the benefit of bailing out AIG, but that's a good thing, because its working, which means that financial markets aren't melting down as they would have been if AIG was not able to make good on its insurance of all those bonds."
ASSOCIATED PRESS ? The leaders of GM (GM: 5.35 +0.54 +11.23%) and the UAW told Congress last week that a new union contract will virtually erase the labor cost gap between GM and foreign competitors with U.S. factories. That?s not quite true, according to GM?s own figures.
GM says its total hourly labor costs dropped 6% this year from $73.26 in 2006 to around $69 per hour. The new cost includes wages of $29.78 per hour, plus benefits, pensions and the cost of providing health care to more than 432,000 GM retirees, GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said. The total cost will drop to $62 per hour in 2010 when the linchpin of the new contract - a UAW administered trust fund - starts paying retiree health care costs.
But that?s still $9 more than the $53 per hour that GM estimated Toyota (TM: 62.51 -2.63 -4.04%) now pays in the United States, and the gap could be even wider. Toyota spokesman Mike Goss said the company?s total labour costs at its older U.S. plants are around $48, with about $30 per hour in wages (see chart above).
The remaining difference largely is due to ?legacy? costs, the cost of a 100-year-old company paying its retiree pensions, Sapienza said. ?While legacy seems to be a dirty word of late, it also means we support hundreds of thousands of people via pensions, health care and good jobs,? he said.
There?s also the ?jobs bank,? a feature of the UAW contract that drew fire from senators, in which workers get 95% of their base pay and all of their benefits if they are laid off or their plant is closed. In the past, workers could stay in the jobs bank forever unless they turn down two job offers within 80 kilometres of their factory. GM?s new contract imposes a two-year time limit, and workers are out of the jobs bank if they turn down one job within 50 miles or four jobs anywhere in the country. GM has about 1,000 workers in the jobs bank now because it?s been thinned out by early retirement and buyout offers. At its peak, the jobs bank had 7,000 to 8,000 people, Sapienza said.
Bottom Line: Even with the new contract, there will still be about a $14 per hour pay gap in total labor costs between GM and Toyota, and more than a 29% wage premium for UAW workers compared to their nonunion counterparts at Toyota.
yup djv, lottsa careless use of statistics (surprise!)
$73 is not a fair estimation of benefit to the worker, but it is a fair estimate of the labor cost to the employer.
Current workers do not make $70 per hour. The only reason that figure is relevant is if GM per-worker productivity is not high enough to cover that number, especially compared to competition. It seems not to be, but there are many other problems GM has besides this one.
Steven Pearlstein, the Washington Post business reporter, has said some of the more intelligent stuff on the big 3, and never used the $73 figure 'cause it's so misleading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/11/18/DI2008111802106.html
I think that if they crafted a special bailout of Chrysler in 1979, they can craft a special streamlined bankruptcy of the big 3 today.
Pearlstein:
"First, it's not just the union contracts that make the companies unviable. They have too much debt as well as too much pension liability, they have too many dealers, they have too many plants, etc. Let's not put all the onus on the workers. Second, bankruptcy is fine but it has to be fast, which is why you need some sort of special expedited procedure. And third, you don't see the benefit of bailing out AIG, but that's a good thing, because its working, which means that financial markets aren't melting down as they would have been if AIG was not able to make good on its insurance of all those bonds."
ASSOCIATED PRESS ? The leaders of GM (GM: 5.35 +0.54 +11.23%) and the UAW told Congress last week that a new union contract will virtually erase the labor cost gap between GM and foreign competitors with U.S. factories. That?s not quite true, according to GM?s own figures.
GM says its total hourly labor costs dropped 6% this year from $73.26 in 2006 to around $69 per hour. The new cost includes wages of $29.78 per hour, plus benefits, pensions and the cost of providing health care to more than 432,000 GM retirees, GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said. The total cost will drop to $62 per hour in 2010 when the linchpin of the new contract - a UAW administered trust fund - starts paying retiree health care costs.
But that?s still $9 more than the $53 per hour that GM estimated Toyota (TM: 62.51 -2.63 -4.04%) now pays in the United States, and the gap could be even wider. Toyota spokesman Mike Goss said the company?s total labour costs at its older U.S. plants are around $48, with about $30 per hour in wages (see chart above).
The remaining difference largely is due to ?legacy? costs, the cost of a 100-year-old company paying its retiree pensions, Sapienza said. ?While legacy seems to be a dirty word of late, it also means we support hundreds of thousands of people via pensions, health care and good jobs,? he said.
There?s also the ?jobs bank,? a feature of the UAW contract that drew fire from senators, in which workers get 95% of their base pay and all of their benefits if they are laid off or their plant is closed. In the past, workers could stay in the jobs bank forever unless they turn down two job offers within 80 kilometres of their factory. GM?s new contract imposes a two-year time limit, and workers are out of the jobs bank if they turn down one job within 50 miles or four jobs anywhere in the country. GM has about 1,000 workers in the jobs bank now because it?s been thinned out by early retirement and buyout offers. At its peak, the jobs bank had 7,000 to 8,000 people, Sapienza said.
Bottom Line: Even with the new contract, there will still be about a $14 per hour pay gap in total labor costs between GM and Toyota, and more than a 29% wage premium for UAW workers compared to their nonunion counterparts at Toyota.
In the case of the mechanics, they had leverage in their job knowledge and they were masters at playing the safety card. We had around 300 pieces of equipment in our plant and around 10 mechanics. All of that equipment is set up on an inspection schedule. The inspections get dragged out as long as possible and if challenged on that, they start finding all sorts of things wrong with the equipment and start tearing the thing completely apart. The more they tear into things, the more backed up we'd get on inspections. When a vehicle goes overdue for inspection, it must come off the shop floor...when enough vehicles come off the shop floor, production is in jeopardy and can't function....production comes back to the garage and takes the overdue vehicle back onto the shop floor and then one of the mechanics calls the Safety Hotline and reports an unsafe condition. The UAW-Ford Safety team gets involved and the end result is that all the mechanics are put on 12 hour days and are in working on the weekends.
The whole inspection process is a complete joke. The guidelines for the inspection is what the mechanics use against the company. The company has checklists for each specific type of equipment and level of inspection. I made the mechanics perform the inspections in front of me and they follow the guidelines as written. If you have ever read the manual for a complicated piece of equipment, you have probably seen how long and drawn out the recommended maintenance instructions are....well, if you have to do that for each piece of equipment on a regular basis, you're going to have to either work OT or hire more people. Every mechanic in there knew that the inspections where way to involved, but that was their meal ticket.
There were more factors, but that is essentially the jist of it. If you are wondering why they don't relax the inspection criteria, you've probably never worked at a place where people have been killed on the job.
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somehow I knew it was going to be a explanation like that.
So the union employees basically fawed themselves out of jobs if they go down .
you can only play that kind of game so long and it catchs up to you.
I would have outsourced the inspections or something. Letting them fawk with mgt like that is just crazy.
there are always employees who want to fawk with the system.
That was what we tried doing, but the threat of a strike always got management to back down.
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well thats why unions need to go the way of the dinasaurs.
you know you have got trouble when mgt cant make a decision without worrying about the shop stewards starting the strike talk.
We will be much better off once we get contro; of the medical insurances and put those terrorists, both doctors and insurace companies, in their place. If Obama has any ball$ at all, unlike Bush, he will go right after them.
It's a skilled trade. You can't just pull people from other departments when your workload increases. Adding headcount is always frowned upon because then you have to pick up the cost the fully fringed head.
This is just one scenario of many where they are set up to fail. If I had to guess what they pay out in OT grievances a year at my old plant, I'd guess over six figures. Union contract was abused for personal gain on a daily basis. For example, if there was a spill on the floor and I had to get it cleaned up quickly because it was a dangerous situation, I'd either clean it up myself or get one of my guys to do it....then I'd end up having to pay a cleaner "that could have stayed over or came in early to do that job in his classification" via grievance. How would the cleaner find out? My guy would tell one of them so they could file the grievance and get paid for it. Ridiculous.
That is some unions. You cant paint them all with the same brush. My union u either worked or u go the fuk home. And scotty when i was the boss if u walked on the job i would have sent you home even if u did work u rat bastard.
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i have never walked on a job in my life
I run
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your too nice dude
if that was me I would have called that fawking cleaner guy and told him to get his ass in there and clean the spill or I would dock his pay, fire him, or send RAYMOND over for a visit.
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CNN) -- Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative.
Experts say if many physicians stop practicing, it could be devastating to the health care industry.
The survey, released this week by the Physicians' Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.
A U.S. shortage of 35,000 to 40,000 primary care physicians by 2025 was predicted at last week's American Medical Association annual meeting.
In the survey, the foundation sent questionnaires to more than 270,000 primary care doctors and more than 50,000 specialists nationwide.
Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said they'd consider leaving medicine. Many said they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there's too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.
And if that many physicians stopped practicing, that could be devastating to the health care industry. Dr. Gupta: Watch more on the looming doctor dearth ?
"We couldn't survive that," says Dr. Walker Ray, vice president of the Physicians Foundation. "We are only producing in this country a thousand to two thousand primary doctors to replace them. Medical students are not choosing primary care."
Dr. Alan Pocinki has been practicing medicine for 17 years. He began his career around the same time insurance companies were turning to the PPO and HMO models. So he was a little shocked when he began spending more time on paperwork than patients and found he was running a small business, instead of a practice. He says it's frustrating.
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Waiting for the doctor ... and waiting, and waiting
"I had no business training, as far as how to run a business, or how to evaluate different plans," Pocinki says. "It was a whole brave new world and I had to sort of learn on the fly."
To manage their daily work schedules, many survey respondents reported making changes. With lower reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of malpractice insurance skyrocketing, these health professionals say it's not worth running a practice and are changing careers. Others say they're going into so-called boutique medicine, in which they charge patients a yearly fee up front and don't take insurance.
And some like Pocinki are limiting the type of insurance they'll take and the number of patients on Medicare and Medicaid. According to the foundation's report, over a third of those surveyed have closed their practices to Medicaid patients and 12 percent have closed their practices to Medicare patients That can leave a lot of patients looking for a doctor.
And as Ray mentioned, med school students are shying away from family medicine. In a survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in September, only 2 percent of current medical students plan to take up primary care. That's because these students are wary of the same complaints that are causing existing doctors to flee primary care: hectic clinics, burdensome paperwork and systems that do a poor job of managing patients with chronic illness.
Physicians don't have a lot of answers. But doctors say it's time to make some changes, not only in the health care field but also with the insurance industry. And they're looking to the new administration for guidance.
One of President-elect Barack Obama's health care promises is to provide a primary care physician for every American. But some health experts, including Pocinki, are skeptical.
"People who have insurance can't find a doctor, so suddenly we are going to give insurance to a whole bunch of people who haven't had it, without increasing the number of physicians?" he says. "It's going to be a problem."
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Pressure them too much and they will quit.
Or do like the union workers , find a inspection of machines to pilfer money from somebody, probably the general public is my guess.
