US Automaker Bailout - FAIL in the Senate

Spectre said:
the returning Mondeo (though we're not sure how that one will work out),
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I believe the Fusion will follow the route of its sister car and be based on the new Mondeo. The Fusion is already a good car, no point in retiring the name.
 
I guess those "three words" Corker was talking about were "United Auto Workers".

Congratulations, Ron and the rest of the UAW, you've just sealed your own fate. If you can't make concessions, then a Chapter 11 judge will make them for you.
 
If (When) Chrysler goes under, I wonder how much a completely un-assembled Viper ARC kit will go for. Or maybe a Challenger.


Or maybe they'll be like MG and just leave cars in the factory when they close it.
(for those of you that don't understand the MG reference... check out this thread. http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=9749)
 
Walsh_e said:
Oi, Opels are rebadged Vauxhalls I'll have you know! :p
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Not really, the last Vauxhall that was actually a "Vauxhall" was the Viva which ceased production in 1979. All current Vauxhalls are either rebadged Opels (Vectra, Corsa, Astra etc), Holdens (Monaro, VXR8) or reskinned Lotus' (VX220).
 
Well, I have mixed feelings but hopefully they will both chapter 11 and be able to survive.

Spectre, I wanted to ask you because I remember you writing about this before. Since it seems like in the end it was the unions that killed the US auto industry, I seem to remember that the UAW had ridiculous salaries and benefits, can you shed a light on this?
 
I wonder if that guy Gettelfinger knows about he world outside of Detroit at all. It'd probably be an enormous shock for him to visit a European car factory... or one of those non-UAW factories in the USA...

I imagine he might be as shocked as the soldiers of the East German army after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when they finally found out that in West Germany all troops went into weekend on Fridays at 12 o'clock, leaving empty barracks behind till Monday...

Otherwise it is not explicable, how a person in such a high position can be so completely ignorant.

Edit:
Just reading a comment on the topic on www.spiegel.de. One passage sums it all up, I guess: "The companies are not only penniless, they are above all soulless. They need money but even more urgently they need managers with a love for cars. The current Detroit culture is incurable. It has been destroying itself for 30 years. What was negotiated in the US senat, was not a rescue plan, as it was officially called, but a billion dollar medicide."

Things we have been saying for months here...
 
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avanti said:
Spectre, I wanted to ask you because I remember you writing about this before. Since it seems like in the end it was the unions that killed the US auto industry, I seem to remember that the UAW had ridiculous salaries and benefits, can you shed a light on this?
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Hi, I'm not Spectre.

http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070924073107AAuGk8O

Linky said:
Take grass cutting. As defined by the current United Auto Worker contract negotiated with the "Big Five" (GM, Ford, Chrysler, and top parts makers Delphi and Visteon), an auto "production worker" is a job description that covers anything from mowing grass to cleaning the toilets. In the real world, these jobs would be outsourced to $8 an hour, no-benefit wage earners, but on Planet Big Five, these jobs get the same wages as any auto line-worker: an average $26 an hour ($60,000 a year) plus benefits that bring the company's total cost per worker to a staggering $65 an hour.

But at least the grass cutters are working for their pay. The UAW contract also guarantees that 12,000 autoworkers get full wage for doing nothing. On the heels of Miller's straight-talk, the Detroit News reported that "12,000 American autoworkers, instead of bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank." These aren't jobs. And they certainly aren't being "lost" to China.

"We just go in (to Ford's Michigan Truck Plant) and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper," The News quoted one UAW worker as saying. "Otherwise, I've just sat."
The coming months will be painful for many American autoworkers.

Accustomed to a certain lifestyle, they will see their wages cut in half, jeopardizing second homes, college tuitions, and car payments. One blue-collar Delphi worker interviewed by the Detroit News makes $103,000 a year operating a forklift and fears the consequences if his pay is drastically reduced. But many Americans will ask how a forklift operator felt entitled to a six-figure income in the first place (according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average forklift operator wage in the U.S. is $26,000).
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I seem to remember the $26/hr starting pay got halved for all new employees about a year ago... but how many employees do you think the Big Three has hired in a year?
 
As a counterpoint to the UAW thing, I was listening to Olbermann (so yes, take with a pinch of salt) but the main points were

A UAW worker takes home $27 per hour with benefits
A Toyota worker takes home $30 per hour with benefits
A Nissan worker takes home $26 per hour without benefits

And McConnell's state plays host to the worlds biggest Toyota plant outside Japan and Corker (sp?) just announced a Volkswagen plant in his state. Companies with a direct stake in seeing their opposition go under.

Now, I don't know how true that all is as I haven't had chance to corroborate it, but it does make food for thought and a decent conspiracy theory.

I'm generally a supporter of unions, but yeah, the UAW does sound like the old BL days and I was never a supporter of that kind of behaviour.
 
Good. let one fail miserably and file chapter 11.

If it's a wake up call for the other 2, and they suddenly start making better cars, good on them.
I see only good news in the future...
 
Dogbert said:
Hi, I'm not Spectre.
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Thanks, those were the numbers I remembered.

Plissken said:
As a counterpoint to the UAW thing, I was listening to Olbermann (so yes, take with a pinch of salt) but the main points were

A UAW worker takes home $27 per hour with benefits
A Toyota worker takes home $30 per hour with benefits
A Nissan worker takes home $26 per hour without benefits
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Now if those numbers are true it does change the argument a bit, while I agree that 100 grand to drive a forklift is outrageous, it is understandable that they want to earn as much as the competition. Yes, the cars are crap, but are the workers on the floor to blame, surly they don't chose the materials and one would think they were able to set the wrench to the correct torque so the screws don't fall out... :rolleyes:
 
Plissken said:
As a counterpoint to the UAW thing, I was listening to Olbermann (so yes, take with a pinch of salt) but the main points were

A UAW worker takes home $27 per hour with benefits
A Toyota worker takes home $30 per hour with benefits
A Nissan worker takes home $26 per hour without benefits
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While I absolutely love Olbermann, he can blow me on this one.

A UAW worker != a Toyota worker. I'm willing to bet that the $30/hour figures from Toyota are for their line workers, whereas the $27/hour figures from the UAW are for every hourly worker. This is also probably based on the new revised figures, which (I think.. [citation needed]) only reflect about 20,000 employees out of GM's 250,000. Everyone else made the original $28 per hour without benefits figure, and nobody ever gets a pay cut in the UAW (as they've just demonstrated). I'd love to see the average wage of all the line workers for these three companies, because I'm willing to bet the UAW's number is actually closer to $40 per hour.
 
Dogbert said:
I seem to remember the $26/hr starting pay got halved for all new employees about a year ago... but how many employees do you think the Big Three has hired in a year?
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Starting pay for a new GM line worker is $14.12 an hour plus benifits after 30 or 60 days(can't remember). GM went on a hiring bing after they bought out a bunch of the older workers. GM also hired a bunched of temporary workers a few years ago with terrible results and stoped the program before it was supposed to end.

The UAW also agreed to a bunch of cutbacks to help get the "loans", but apparently it was not enough.

I have also said bad workers should be fired, and the UAW is not perfect. That may have to become my new motto!
 
avanti said:
Well, I have mixed feelings but hopefully they will both chapter 11 and be able to survive.

Spectre, I wanted to ask you because I remember you writing about this before. Since it seems like in the end it was the unions that killed the US auto industry, I seem to remember that the UAW had ridiculous salaries and benefits, can you shed a light on this?
Click to expand...

Dogbert took care of it - but the average pre-tax wage (defined as 'what goes into your pay packet) is somewhere around $30/hr, depending on how you figure it and not including overtime. I posted it somewhere here with references before, too, so search my posts.

MacGuffin said:
I wonder if that guy Gettelfinger knows about he world outside of Detroit at all. It'd probably be an enormous shock for him to visit a European car factory... or one of those non-UAW factories in the USA...


Edit:
Just reading a comment on the topic on www.spiegel.de. One passage sums it all up, I guess: "The companies are not only penniless, they are above all soulless. They need money but even more urgently they need managers with a love for cars. The current Detroit culture is incurable. It has been destroying itself for 30 years. What was negotiated in the US senat, was not a rescue plan, as it was officially called, but a billion dollar medicide."

Things we have been saying for months here...
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I believe the only place Gettelfinger has been is the UK. Which would explain a lot.

There are actually a lot of managers with a love of cars in Detroit. Unfortunately they also have a lot of beancounters and risk-averse types, and there's more of them than the car guys. On top of which, most of the car guys turn out to be pretty terrible managers, in financial terms.

Dogbert said:
Hi, I'm not Spectre.

http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070924073107AAuGk8O


I seem to remember the $26/hr starting pay got halved for all new employees about a year ago... but how many employees do you think the Big Three has hired in a year?
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Man, it would suck if you were me. I mean, two of me? :p

Yup. If you roll in benefits, pension, and all the other stuff that's not in the pay packet but you get anyway, the average UAW wage is more like $70-75, depending on how you measure it. My preferred number is $74.

Plissken said:
As a counterpoint to the UAW thing, I was listening to Olbermann (so yes, take with a pinch of salt) but the main points were

A UAW worker takes home $27 per hour with benefits
A Toyota worker takes home $30 per hour with benefits
A Nissan worker takes home $26 per hour without benefits

And McConnell's state plays host to the worlds biggest Toyota plant outside Japan and Corker (sp?) just announced a Volkswagen plant in his state. Companies with a direct stake in seeing their opposition go under.

Now, I don't know how true that all is as I haven't had chance to corroborate it, but it does make food for thought and a decent conspiracy theory.

I'm generally a supporter of unions, but yeah, the UAW does sound like the old BL days and I was never a supporter of that kind of behaviour.
Click to expand...

I haven't looked at those figures in detail, but that looks about right -but it's not "including" benefits. It's "plus" benefits - i.e., the benefits are stacked on top of that.

The big problem isn't the amount of pay, really. Nobody cares if you get paid a lot of money to do a quality job. The problem everyone has is that these UAW people are being paid large sums of money and *aren't* doing their jobs properly. As I have said before it is literally impossible to fire a UAW worker; you can defecate or urinate in the cars, you can sabotage the parts, you can just loosely install the parts and there's nothing they can do but the equivalent of give you a stern talking to.

Meanwhile, pull that sort of shenanigans on the Toyota or Nissan line? You'll be out the door so fast your head will spin, and there will be a recall notice going out at about the same time as the email to your state unemployment office reporting your termination for cause.

NooDle said:
Good. let one fail miserably and file chapter 11.

If it's a wake up call for the other 2, and they suddenly start making better cars, good on them.
I see only good news in the future...
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Well, Ford has still got their head above water. GM's all over the news this morning, publicly "considering" Chapter 11.... why weren't they considering this months ago?

avanti said:
Now if those numbers are true it does change the argument a bit, while I agree that 100 grand to drive a forklift is outrageous, it is understandable that they want to earn as much as the competition. Yes, the cars are crap, but are the workers on the floor to blame, surly they don't chose the materials and one would think they were able to set the wrench to the correct torque so the screws don't fall out... :rolleyes:
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See the above. They're *not* setting the wrench to the correct torque setting. They're still screwing up the assemblies and demanding top dollar for their 'work'.

If I worked like a UAW member 'works', I wouldn't have a job or clients.

GRtak said:
The UAW also agreed to a bunch of cutbacks to help get the "loans", but apparently it was not enough.

I have also said bad workers should be fired, and the UAW is not perfect. That may have to become my new motto!
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Oh, yeah, the UAW *finally* agreed to the cuts... but said they wouldn't accept them before 2011. WHAT. THE. FUCK. The Big Three are going under NOW, and these short sighted asshats in the UAW can't understand that they don't need concessions in three fucking years, they need them NOW?
 
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This will get interesting.
 
Spectre said:
Man, it would suck if you were me. I mean, two of me? :p
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Jesus, I'd kill myself.

Spectre said:
Well, Ford has still got their head above water. GM's all over the news this morning, publicly "considering" Chapter 11.... why weren't they considering this months ago?
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http://www.suntimes.com/business/1294652,gm-bankruptcy112308.article
AP said:
DETROIT---- General Motors Corp.'s board of directors does not consider bankruptcy protection a viable option to solve the company's financial troubles, but it has discussed Chapter 11 because it has a legal duty to do so, a spokesman said Saturday.
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Spectre said:
Dogbert took care of it - but the average pre-tax wage (defined as 'what goes into your pay packet) is somewhere around $30/hr, depending on how you figure it and not including overtime. I posted it somewhere here with references before, too, so search my posts.



I believe the only place Gettelfinger has been is the UK. Which would explain a lot.

There are actually a lot of managers with a love of cars in Detroit. Unfortunately they also have a lot of beancounters and risk-averse types, and there's more of them than the car guys. On top of which, most of the car guys turn out to be pretty terrible managers, in financial terms.



Man, it would suck if you were me. I mean, two of me? :p

Yup. If you roll in benefits, pension, and all the other stuff that's not in the pay packet but you get anyway, the average UAW wage is more like $70-75, depending on how you measure it. My preferred number is $74.



I haven't looked at those figures in detail, but that looks about right -but it's not "including" benefits. It's "plus" benefits - i.e., the benefits are stacked on top of that.

The big problem isn't the amount of pay, really. Nobody cares if you get paid a lot of money to do a quality job. The problem everyone has is that these UAW people are being paid large sums of money and *aren't* doing their jobs properly. As I have said before it is literally impossible to fire a UAW worker; you can defecate or urinate in the cars, you can sabotage the parts, you can just loosely install the parts and there's nothing they can do but the equivalent of give you a stern talking to.

Meanwhile, pull that sort of shenanigans on the Toyota or Nissan line? You'll be out the door so fast your head will spin, and there will be a recall notice going out at about the same time as the email to your state unemployment office reporting your termination for cause.



Well, Ford has still got their head above water. GM's all over the news this morning, publicly "considering" Chapter 11.... why weren't they considering this months ago?



See the above. They're *not* setting the wrench to the correct torque setting. They're still screwing up the assemblies and demanding top dollar for their 'work'.

If I worked like a UAW member 'works', I wouldn't have a job or clients.



Oh, yeah, the UAW *finally* agreed to the cuts... but said they wouldn't accept them before 2011. WHAT. THE. FUCK. The Big Three are going under NOW, and these short sighted asshats in the UAW can't understand that they don't need concessions in three fucking years, they need them NOW?
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Thanks. :thumbup:
 
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