GM Closing WY Stamping Plant, More (Months after union extorts higher wages)

Due to some of your other comments Spectre I'm beginning to wonder if to you this is more of a political issue -- They seem to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum that your seem to be on, so they make a nice target -- rather than a honest assembly quality issue.

I'm sorry I didn't really mean to get personal, but I can't believe simply that people putting together stuff in the US are THAT BAD. Hell if they are that bad then they deserve everything they get!

I'm heading off to get some sleep, so I don't have time to go through and counterpoint anything but the above...

Oh, these UAW guys are *proud* of how they sabotage cars!

Here's just one source of many: http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/dodge_wildcat.html

The wildcat strike had come and gone and Chrysler was getting even with its employees for being so presumptuous as to call an end to production for four days. The work schedule (nine hours, six days) seemed especially outrageous in the face of our rebellion the previous week, given that we had only been doing 40 hours up until the strike.

On the first day of production, a brief movement to walkout at the end of eight hours failed. But later that week, the line ground to a halt at precisely 2:50 p.m. on the day shift, the normal quitting time for eight hours. Circuit breakers flashed open indicating something jammed in the line while short-haired, white shirted supervisors panicked and raced to correct a very damaging situation. The beginning section of the chassis line was standing idle while the rest of the light line moved on, opening a wider and wider gap where trucks should have been.

Idle workers laid back and laughed as maintenance men and supervisors tore open a gearbox for the line driving motor and dug out a power steering pump that belonged about 75 feet further down the line. When the same incident happened at the same time on Saturday, even management was convinced that it was not an accident, but there was little they could do but fix it and curse.

Most people call it sabotage and hold varied opinions about it. A typical executive would demand to know, "Why would these workers destroy the very means of their livelihood, it just shows what lazy, stupid, irresponsible people they are."

A union rep might say, "If something is wrong they should go through the proper channels of the grievance procedure, otherwise it destroys the authority of their elected representatives."

Sabotage is a way of life in any large industrial operation, especially in auto plants where the moving line dominates everything. The word itself comes from the French "sabot" meaning a wooden shoe to be thrown into the machinery. That dates back to the earliest mass production.

Sabotage is not always an individual act, nor is it random, nor is it really spontaneous. The methods are infinite and no corporation can protect itself from some angry employees who take it upon themselves to change the conditions of their jobs. A more appropriate term might be "direct action."

It is an act of enforcing the worker's demands on the company, not an act of petitioning a mediating authority to plead their cause. Authority resides in the power of controlling production - those who run it have it.

{snip}

The demands of the strike were not even formulated until the third day and even the issue of the firing of the four metal shop workers and union rep, was admitted by all to be only the spark for the uprising.

"Everything", offered one young exuberant worker when asked what he wanted during the peak of the strike action.

"I just don't want to work", moaned another during the first few depressed days of the return to work after the strike.

Nice people, eh? And here's the site it's from: http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/index.html - a pro-socialist, pro-union site! They're actually *proud* of this s**t!

There's lots more. Such as scholarly treatises on sabotage in a particular plant: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119431632/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

From Time Magazine, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,905747,00.html?promoid=googlep:

Hardly anybody calls it sabotage?yet. But last October somebody deliberately set fire to an assembly-line control box shed, causing the line to shut down. Autos regularly roll off the line with slit upholstery, scratched paint, dented bodies, bent gearshift levers, cut ignition wires, and loose or missing bolts. In some cars, the trunk key is broken off right in the lock, thereby jamming it. The plant's repair lot has space for 2,000 autos, but often becomes too crowded to accept more. When that happens, as it did last week, the assembly line is stopped and workers are sent home payless.

And even on a pro-GM forum, http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/...inst-gm-friday-54785/index3.html#post1176248:

The {1999 C5} Corvette was ordered before the UAW strick (it all began with an argument over the location of stamping dies for the new pickup truck). The car was built after the strike and delivered. I should have known better, but I accepted delivery and paid for the car.

When new - the right front door striker bolt was loose - the door would not close properly. The right side hood hinge nuts were not tightened, causing the car to rattle over the slightest bump. Later, I found metal nuts inside the cowl drains. The car broke down three separate times while I driving it out-of-state, on vacation. It has been repaired due to numerous defects. I still have a newspaper clipping from a Bowling Green paper that tells of the stoppage of the Corvette assembly line due to employee sabotage after the strike was settled.

My point - the unionized auto workers are known for their thug tactics and doing hidden damage or poor asssembly just to "get back" at their employer. The unionized auto workers do not always realize that if it wasn't for their loyal, paying customers - they would be out of job. Why do you think the sales have declined for so long of the "Big Three" automakers

Plenty more where that came from.
 
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Ironic that most people arguing with Spectre that he's taking this Anti-UAW thing too far are those who don't actually have to deal with anything UAW assembled in the first place.

Take the 4th Gen F-bodies (Camaro/Firebirds) for example.

They were faster than the same year Mustangs, and a little bit more money that the mustangs. So why didn't they outsell the mustangs (remember this is when mid 90s mustangs were some of the slowest mustangs produced...had the performance pedigree of a clydesdale)?

Quality.

At the time they were new, it was ruled that you had about a 50/50 chance of getting either a good F-body or a badly built F-body. Now that they've been out of production since 2002 the figure dictates it was more like 40/60 chance of either getting a good one or a shit one.

I was one of 3 people at my high school to have a F-body. 3 different years, 3 different options. (mine-95 Z28/auto...friend 94 V6/5spd...other friend 97 Z28/6spd)

All three failed us miserably more than once... None of our T-top seals actually kept water out when it rained. My brakes would never actually work in stopping the car, my transmission failed, my engine gaskets failed, my timing chain failed, my interior electrics failed. The V6 went through 3 different engines, and the 97 went through at least 4 transmissions and rear ends...

All cars had low mileage as well (mine was under 70k, the 97 was under 40k and the 94 was under 35k)...

Who assembled all the parts that failed on our F-bodies? The UAW....

I have no faith in anything Union related in this country, I wouldn't care if the unions went away right now...if anything I'd celebrate.
 
All three failed us miserably more than once... None of our T-top seals actually kept water out when it rained. My brakes would never actually work in stopping the car, my transmission failed, my engine gaskets failed, my timing chain failed, my interior electrics failed. The V6 went through 3 different engines, and the 97 went through at least 4 transmissions and rear ends...

All cars had low mileage as well (mine was under 70k, the 97 was under 40k and the 94 was under 35k)...

Considering that I've known quite a few people to go through transmission on both v6 and v8 models I'm inclined to say a large portion of the F-bodies problems were design related and exacerbated by poor assembly.

My brother had a friend that owned a 96 v6 that went through SEVEN, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7! Transmissions, in the warranty period alone. The man only owned the car cause he liked the way it looked and always had the dealer do all the maintenance on it. What do you expect from a transmission design that requires the entire unit to stop and reverse direction between a 1st and 2nd gear shift?
 
Ironic that most people arguing with Spectre that he's taking this Anti-UAW thing too far are those who don't actually have to deal with anything UAW assembled in the first place.

Take the 4th Gen F-bodies (Camaro/Firebirds) for example.

They were faster than the same year Mustangs, and a little bit more money that the mustangs. So why didn't they outsell the mustangs (remember this is when mid 90s mustangs were some of the slowest mustangs produced...had the performance pedigree of a clydesdale)?

Quality.

At the time they were new, it was ruled that you had about a 50/50 chance of getting either a good F-body or a badly built F-body. Now that they've been out of production since 2002 the figure dictates it was more like 40/60 chance of either getting a good one or a shit one.

I was one of 3 people at my high school to have a F-body. 3 different years, 3 different options. (mine-95 Z28/auto...friend 94 V6/5spd...other friend 97 Z28/6spd)

All three failed us miserably more than once... None of our T-top seals actually kept water out when it rained. My brakes would never actually work in stopping the car, my transmission failed, my engine gaskets failed, my timing chain failed, my interior electrics failed. The V6 went through 3 different engines, and the 97 went through at least 4 transmissions and rear ends...

All cars had low mileage as well (mine was under 70k, the 97 was under 40k and the 94 was under 35k)...

Who assembled all the parts that failed on our F-bodies? The UAW....

I have no faith in anything Union related in this country, I wouldn't care if the unions went away right now...if anything I'd celebrate.

I honestly think that those not from the US do not understand how the unions work here. The only ones that probably have an idea are the British but AFAIK they haven't had that problem for a while now.
 
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