I agree give the money. Japan helps out it's auto industry by giving free healthcare. And makes sure management makes no more then 15 times low man in company. Sounds like that saves them a few billion a year. And what the hell look how Bush ran this country last 8 years. On Credit and big deficit. Heck of a example. It's not good and would be better if the auto industry didn't affect so many other companies that suply them. There is the bigger problem.
Question on auto bailout (terryray?)
- Thread starter dawgball
- Start date
- Feb 12, 2000
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So if the $4,000 per car blamed on UAW and past promises is accurate, we can still only hope to get to break-even if they fully fix all of these problems without any add-on costs?
I feel great about where my tax dollars go....
- Feb 12, 2000
- 10,652
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http://www.risingsunofnihon.com/200...roduction-at-its-new-us-plant-in-mississippi/
Anyone want to bet that if gas was still $4.00 that this site would not have been paused????
Anyone want to bet that if gas was still $4.00 that this site would not have been paused????
problems much more than labor costs, or even the products--but rather entire system is flawed and needs radical restructuring for any chance.
One MIT study found US autos are underpriced $2500 and still can't sell them.
slashing UAW costs per vehicle won't hardly begin to make up the difference.
- Feb 12, 2000
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of course, many analysts point out that there are a lot of high non-wage costs imposed by unions. Non-wage costs such as reduced flexibilty due to restrictive job destriptions making multiskilling difficult, lessened ability to rapidly adapt to changing consumer tastes due to rigid job contracts, production on floor hurt by mandated and ponderous employer-employee negotiations (see what gmroz22 wrote about this recently here), increased costs in terminating poor workers, etc, etc...
Those Southern Senators bashing Detroit of late have learned, after years of closely observing foreign manufacturer's practices in their states, a lot of contempt for the Detroit Way.
from Kausfiles.com:
Clive Crook's Nov. 11 article on Detroit's collapse....here's the most relevant passage:
[T]he unions raised wages and benefits to insupportable levels, and for years blocked efforts to cut costs and increase efficiency. Worst of all, by anointing themselves co-managers, they reduced the domestic industry's ability to react promptly to shifts in demand. Is this how the Democratic Party intends to strengthen the economy?
By their own standards, admittedly, U.S. car producers have raised their game recently, and they have done it with the unions' help. Productivity in some of the domestic producers' plants is now as good as in nonunion plants run by foreigners. But this came late, and only under duress. It took the imminent collapse of the industry to moderate the unions' demands.
Unions destroyed Britain's car industry, and during the 1960s and '70s they accelerated the decline of British manufacturing and of the wider economy as well. Of course, they were far more powerful in those days than U.S. unions have ever been Unions in America today are weak and getting weaker -- a trend that they hope to reverse with the incoming administration's help.
The point of the comparison is not to suggest that America might get a case of the pre-Thatcher British disease, but simply to question the Democrats' conviction that stronger unions serve their voters' wider interests. Look at GM, and tell me that strong unions are good for the economy. [E.A.]
...........
Now that everyone is criticizing work rules, it's easy to forget that they don't represent a perversion of the collective bargaining process--they are the intended result of that process, and were once celebrated as such. Here's an excerpt from a 1983 article by Robert M. Kaus:
[R]igid work rules are not a mere by-product of unionism. They are central to the collective bargaining system and in fact have been praised by labor scholars as one of its great strengths. During the postwar era of prosperity, they were thought to dovetail nicely with the form of business organization that seemed destined to rule the world, the large corporate bureaucracy. [snip] ...
The fertile marriage of business bureaucracy and collective bargaining soon produced a large family of rules whose complexity was the subject of rapturous admiration. A textbook written by Clark Kerr and John Dunlop in 1964 noted with pride that "the web of rules becomes more explicit and formally constituted in the course of industrialization. ... The continuing experience of the same workplace tends to result in customs and traditions which begin to codify past practices. Eventually, these may be reduced to writing. ... The statement of rules then becomes more formal and elegant, particularly as specialists are developed in rulemaking and adminstration. The process of industrialization thus brings more and more detailed rules and a larger body of explicit rules. ... "
Under the Wagner Act, management manages. What the union does is complain, and negotiate for a rule limiting management's right to do what the union doesn't like. A worker protests that his job should be classified as "drilling special and heavy" instead of "drilling general." The parties butt heads, a decision is reached, and a new rule is deposited like another layer of sediment. At some GM plants, distinct job categories evolved for each spot on the assembly line (e.g., "headlining installer"). In Japanese auto plants, where they spend their time building cars instead of creating job categories, there is only one nonsupervisory job classification: "production."
....................
on the management side, here's a fine piece about "GM: Death of an American dream.....General Motors was the Great American Company. But by clinging to the attributes that made it an icon, GM drove itself to ruin."
author writes of GM executives:
"...they became comfortable, insular, self-referential, and too wedded to the status quo - traits that persist even now, when GM is on the precipice. They prefer stability over conflict, continuity over disorder, and GM's way over anybody else's. They believe that hard work will overcome adversity, and that tomorrow will be better than today - despite four decades of evidence to the contrary."
Those Southern Senators bashing Detroit of late have learned, after years of closely observing foreign manufacturer's practices in their states, a lot of contempt for the Detroit Way.
from Kausfiles.com:
Clive Crook's Nov. 11 article on Detroit's collapse....here's the most relevant passage:
[T]he unions raised wages and benefits to insupportable levels, and for years blocked efforts to cut costs and increase efficiency. Worst of all, by anointing themselves co-managers, they reduced the domestic industry's ability to react promptly to shifts in demand. Is this how the Democratic Party intends to strengthen the economy?
By their own standards, admittedly, U.S. car producers have raised their game recently, and they have done it with the unions' help. Productivity in some of the domestic producers' plants is now as good as in nonunion plants run by foreigners. But this came late, and only under duress. It took the imminent collapse of the industry to moderate the unions' demands.
Unions destroyed Britain's car industry, and during the 1960s and '70s they accelerated the decline of British manufacturing and of the wider economy as well. Of course, they were far more powerful in those days than U.S. unions have ever been Unions in America today are weak and getting weaker -- a trend that they hope to reverse with the incoming administration's help.
The point of the comparison is not to suggest that America might get a case of the pre-Thatcher British disease, but simply to question the Democrats' conviction that stronger unions serve their voters' wider interests. Look at GM, and tell me that strong unions are good for the economy. [E.A.]
...........
Now that everyone is criticizing work rules, it's easy to forget that they don't represent a perversion of the collective bargaining process--they are the intended result of that process, and were once celebrated as such. Here's an excerpt from a 1983 article by Robert M. Kaus:
[R]igid work rules are not a mere by-product of unionism. They are central to the collective bargaining system and in fact have been praised by labor scholars as one of its great strengths. During the postwar era of prosperity, they were thought to dovetail nicely with the form of business organization that seemed destined to rule the world, the large corporate bureaucracy. [snip] ...
The fertile marriage of business bureaucracy and collective bargaining soon produced a large family of rules whose complexity was the subject of rapturous admiration. A textbook written by Clark Kerr and John Dunlop in 1964 noted with pride that "the web of rules becomes more explicit and formally constituted in the course of industrialization. ... The continuing experience of the same workplace tends to result in customs and traditions which begin to codify past practices. Eventually, these may be reduced to writing. ... The statement of rules then becomes more formal and elegant, particularly as specialists are developed in rulemaking and adminstration. The process of industrialization thus brings more and more detailed rules and a larger body of explicit rules. ... "
Under the Wagner Act, management manages. What the union does is complain, and negotiate for a rule limiting management's right to do what the union doesn't like. A worker protests that his job should be classified as "drilling special and heavy" instead of "drilling general." The parties butt heads, a decision is reached, and a new rule is deposited like another layer of sediment. At some GM plants, distinct job categories evolved for each spot on the assembly line (e.g., "headlining installer"). In Japanese auto plants, where they spend their time building cars instead of creating job categories, there is only one nonsupervisory job classification: "production."
....................
on the management side, here's a fine piece about "GM: Death of an American dream.....General Motors was the Great American Company. But by clinging to the attributes that made it an icon, GM drove itself to ruin."
author writes of GM executives:
"...they became comfortable, insular, self-referential, and too wedded to the status quo - traits that persist even now, when GM is on the precipice. They prefer stability over conflict, continuity over disorder, and GM's way over anybody else's. They believe that hard work will overcome adversity, and that tomorrow will be better than today - despite four decades of evidence to the contrary."
....yadda, yadda, yadda.... a lot of non-commital bs from TerryRay. Power to the workers, down with the beaujois.
Eddie
Eddie
These #'s pretty well tell the story but not the whole story--the part you don't see which is even more scary (per their chance of ever being profitable is--"It was the second best sales total in GM's 100-year history and the biggest loss ever for any automaker in the world,? said Ralph Reiland on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website.
---I hear the UAW continually speak of millions of jobs that will be lost on trickle down effect --my question to them would be--do they think the millions of cars sold by big 3 will just disappear or will they be absorbed by increase sales of other automakers.
If U.S. has say 30 mill cars sold each year--does it make any diff on whose selling them--is it not going to take same amount parts-and 2ndary business's to handle same amout of auto's being sold:shrug:
With that being said--I think short term bailout should be considered--not that I think there is remote chance in hell of them everbeing profitable with UAW calling the shots--but because I think right now would be very bad time to add mental shock into equation of already very fragile economy.
