The future of GM

One of the big reasons why GM will not be allowed to fail is the amount of people they have working for them. I doubt Congress will allow that many jobs to go.
 
which means the UAW will be saved, and I will be very angry. But then again, if they manage to make me some good Camaros I'll get over just about anything.
 
It`s hard to even believing that GM can survive, even with government aid. They`re just not selling enough cars to sustain their vast dealer network. Unless if the Volt becomes so profitable and popular that it saves the company, or when the American car stigma is nonexistent, Chapter 7 is probably the best long term solution for restructuring and getting a game plan up and running.
 
smib said:
which means the UAW will be saved, and I will be very angry. But then again, if they manage to make me some good Camaros I'll get over just about anything.
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What would you suggest as a replacment? You cant just have ununionized labor, this isnt the 1700's...
 
Aston Martin said:
Opel/Vauxhall and Holden do quite well by themselves, which is also true of Ford Europe/Aus... I dunno where i'm going with this though. :(
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Ford australia are not doing well at all.
 
MattD1zzl3 said:
What would you suggest as a replacment? You cant just have ununionized labor, this isnt the 1700's...
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Um, yes you can. Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Mercedes among others get along fine without unions. So do their employees. In fact, working conditions in nonunion shops are better than the union shops, on average.

The day when we needed unions in America for anything other than public servants is loooooong gone. OSHA is far nastier about safety than any union and miserly pay is rewarded by the flight of employees.
 
jetsetter said:
One of the big reasons why GM will not be allowed to fail is the amount of people they have working for them. I doubt Congress will allow that many jobs to go.
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Right, they have too many people working for them. In 2007, GM employed four times as many people as Ford. The viability of General Motors is, again, going to rest on how much fatty, unnecessary, costly baggage they can get rid of. You have to figure that no matter how they survive this, there were going to be massive layoffs anyway.

MattD1zzl3 said:
What would you suggest as a replacment? You cant just have ununionized labor, this isnt the 1700's...
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You can't? Everything that the unions stood and fought for once upon a time is now government mandate. And even then, if you don't like an employer's policies... this isn't the 1700's where that's the only place you can work. If I don't like working at General Motors, I can work at one of the multitude of plants that exist in the US now.

Oh, and check this out...
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/19/autos.ceo.jets/index.html
(CNN) -- Some lawmakers lashed out at the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies Wednesday for flying private jets to Washington to request taxpayer bailout money.

"There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.

"It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious."

He added, "couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it."
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MattD1zzl3 said:
You cant just have non-union labor, this isn't the 1700's...
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Who do you think built your Camry? :?

Now compare that car to your Camaro, which WAS built by UAW employees.



Exactly.


Personally, I think GM should eliminate all car brands and just call themselves General Motors, no Chevrolet, GMC, Pontiac, Buick, etc. One small and large truck, one small and large SUV, one full size sedan, one luxury only sedan, one mid size sedan, one subcompact, one sports car. Then make each with sporty, utilitarian or luxury options.

Kind of like how Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Hyundai does it! :blink:
 
jayhawk said:
Kind of like how Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Hyundai does it! :blink:
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You mean how Honda/Acura, Nissan/Infiniti, and Toyota/Lexus/Scion do it? :p
 
jayhawk said:
Now compare that car to your Camaro, which WAS built by UAW employees.



Exactly.
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I like my camaro :(

My camry's timing belt is falling apart and its burning oil quite badly, the camaro runs solid high 11's in the quarter. Thats all you need to know :) (apart from that one U-joint failure which puked a driveshaft, which ironicly had a proud UAW sticker displayed on it)
 
GM and Ford have recently started to produce some damned good cars, but it's too little too late. You simply can't make almost entirely badly designed cars for 35 years, pay unskilled/grandfathered-in laborers the same wages as college professors to build them, support a ridiculous profusion of brands and badge-engineered cars and expect to get away with it. The SUV craze (and their ridiculous profit margins) have hidden the rot for 15 years. Job banks. 0 R&D dollars for cars for two decades. The Cimmaron, the Aztek, the Bonneville, the Ion, the Escalade EXT. They probably should have gone bankrupt in the late eighties. Supporting a clearly unsupportable mess of an industry is like shovelling $100 bills into a blast furnace.

Go bankrupt, ditch about 1/2 to 2/3 of the workers, pay the remainder what they're worth, keep Ford, Cadillac and Chevy brands only, get rid of 3/4 of the dealers and get to friggen work. Many, many people lose their jobs every day and deal with it. What makes the UAW so special?
 
What's really amazing is that the UAW expects people to come flocking back to UAW-made cars now that they're "great!" again... never mind the fact that their build quality still isn't really up to par, the UAW is responsible for quite a bit of why people left in the first place, and that neither management nor the UAW has apologized for the 30+ years of disastrously bad cars dumped on us.
 
Spectre said:
What's really amazing is that the UAW expects people to come flocking back to UAW-made cars now that they're "great!" again..
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I have a feeling they actually don't give a shit whether people buy the cars or not, as long as they keep getting dues. The UAW of today seems to only care about making its dues paying members happy (e.g. $28/hour starting for every hourly employee), or keeping it's dues paying members paying dues (e.g. jobs bank).
 
Looks like "no bailout" and that GM will probably run out of cash sometime in December. The Democrats, despite having control of Congress by a wide margin, have decided that they won't bother unless they can get some Republicans on board to share the blame when it inevitably goes south.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94IAPNG0&show_article=1

Finger-pointing begins as Senate nixes auto vote
Nov 19 08:14 PM US/Eastern
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Democratic Congress, unwilling or unable to approve a $25 billion bailout for Detroit's Big Three, appears ready to punt the automakers' fate to a lame-duck Republican president. Caught in the middle of a who-blinks-first standoff are legions of manufacturing firms and auto dealers?and millions of Americans' jobs?after Senate Democrats canceled a showdown vote that had been expected Thursday. President George W. Bush has "no appetite" to act on his own.
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Eh, bad on the AP for making it look like the cause of the lack of a bailout was impotency in Congress and the Presidency, when clear arguments from both of them were presented against it.
 
Well, AP wants them to bail out their union pals in the UAW... so that then the government will bail out all the failing AP affiliates.
 
It's fascinating how every now and then some irrational hope bubbles up in these kind of threads...

If it is so hard to accept the realities for people who's only connection is a (possibly crappy) car they own or want to own from that company, then I begin to understand how hard it must be for people who are directly involved.

GM is fatally ill. There is no medicine or therapy that can save it. So better pull the plugs out and let it die.

Yes, it will set free a lot of workers. But they had a good life so far. From all I heard, they earned more money for decades, than they ever deserved for doing such bad jobs.

My sympathy is therefore limited to them and only goes to the innocent, who will be sucked down in the maelstrom together with GM - the victims of circumstance.
 
I'm not seeing any irrational hope around here.... Mostly resignation or "they deserved it," but not irrational hope.

There is a way to save GM, but they don't seem to want to do it. It's called Chapter 11.
 
Save GM, yes, but not save most of the workers who have been living an artificially inflated cushy, good life thanks to the UAW.
 
Dogbert said:
Oh, and check this out...
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/19/autos.ceo.jets/index.html
(CNN) -- Some lawmakers lashed out at the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies Wednesday for flying private jets to Washington to request taxpayer bailout money.

"There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.

"It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious."

He added, "couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it."
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You know... I have no problem with managers living in luxury and earning millions and millions - as long as they do a good job.

What I miss, however, is a clause in their contract that defines what happens when they fail, when they don't do a good job. It shouldn't just contain that they are fired, oh no... It should contain that they are stripped naked and ran through the streets, with the workforce being allowed to throw things at them.

That would be a much better motivator, than the millions :mrgreen:

Spectre said:
I'm not seeing any irrational hope around here.... Mostly resignation or "they deserved it," but not irrational hope.
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"I doubt Congress will allow that many jobs to go.".

That's what I call an irrational hope.
 
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