Workers at a Lansing-area GM crossover factory go on strike [Idiots on parade]

Assembly plant work has got to be the most dreary godforsaken work there is. I toured a GM assembly plant in Arlington (just the body shop) and you wouldn't want to work there. It's dim and depressing. All the workers mope around with sorrowful expressions and they don't do a damn thing. Press a button, monitor a machine etc. I wouldn't work there even for $90-$140k, no thanks.
 
IIRC the $75/hour rate was factoring in all of their health benefits and retirement.

Their take home wages were something like $40/hour. Which is still double what any other SKILLED labor job makes where I'm from.
 
Their take home wages were something like $40/hour. Which is still double what any other SKILLED labor job makes where I'm from.
I did a year of vo-tech, got 3 welding certifications (at $200 a pop) ... and I still didn't even make half that. And I won't make that much with a mechanical engineering degree. The UAW has Detroit by the balls, they control the whole supply chain. It's been that way for decades and I don't see it ever changing.
 
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Not having a local contract is obviously not acceptable.
 
Yeah, it's the world's best paid unskilled labor job. Bar none.

The best part is how the UAW goes on about how they're highly skilled craftmen and that's why they deserve those high wages.

1. Judging by the product they put out, no, they're not skilled and they're not craftsmen.

2. Ever take a tour of a GM plant? At various points along the route, they let you play auto worker and they show you how to put bits on the car like they do. Well, within 10-30 minutes, you could be just as good at their job as they are.

Any job that you can teach proficiency in less than 12 hours is NOT skilled labor.

here, i've heard crane drivers getting ?50-70k..... crane drviers..... and im sure its not a rumour because the car park where they park at the steel mills is full of nice cars including a couple of porsches.

i know crane driving is a dangerous job, mostly for the people on the ground....but getting paid that much to come n move some metal beams every now and then and read the paper inbetween is a joke.

the better joke is that while i worked in the R&D dept for this company .... when other companies or even other business units within the same company wanted things done by us they cost it as something daft like ?40 an hour. ?30 more an hour than they would be paying me for the work.
 
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I did a year of vo-tech, got 3 welding certifications (at $200 a pop) ... and I still didn't even make half that. The UAW has Detroit by the balls, they control the whole supply chain. It's been that way for decades and I don't see it ever changing.

My dad was almost making half that living in California. The scary thing is, in the industry he works in (he's a mechanic but everything from small engines to heavy equipment and diesel engines) he can make a few phone calls and have people begging to hire him, and he can't make anywhere near what these bone heads make.

I remember during the grocery store strikes a few years back in California, one of the strikers tried to convince him not to go in, and after finding out that the guy was a cashier and made $19/hour, had ALL medical paid, plus retirement... he told the guy to "fuck off". They were on strike because they were going to have to start a paying a $5 co-pay on prescriptions and doctors visits...

We aren't a fan of Unions in this household, my grandfather was UAW when he worked in Aerospace and wasn't happy about it. Mostly because the union wanted him to vote in a direction that would cost him his job.
 
Fuck unions. All of them are way too greedy.
 
Fuck unions. All of them are way too greedy.

Dunno what your guys take on teachers unions are cause well my school and my area we've had off due to a teacher strike then again they get paid bad wages..
 
Dunno what your guys take on teachers unions are cause well my school and my area we've had off due to a teacher strike then again they get paid bad wages..

was that the strike about pay for performance. Nothing like saying we are going to punish good teachers so that mediocre teacher don't feel bad. I listened to your commissioner of schools on Charley Rose one night thought he was really smart and had plenty of good ways on improving education.

Unfortunately the truth is that teachers unions block those ways because they want to get paid full time wages for half a days labor at a job that is only seasonal. If you had schools that went until 5 and that are year round you would kill two birds with one stone. Education would improve and wages would go up but God forbid that you take a ways summer vacation never mind that kids are not digging in the farms anymore.

Like education, teacher unions and unions in general are useless in the new flat world. Wait till we see a huge shift to internet tutoring and kids are being taught after school by teachers in India.
 
thedguy said:
I remember during the grocery store strikes a few years back in California, one of the strikers tried to convince him not to go in, and after finding out that the guy was a cashier and made $19/hour, had ALL medical paid, plus retirement... he told the guy to "fuck off". They were on strike because they were going to have to start a paying a $5 co-pay on prescriptions and doctors visits...
$19/hour for a cashier? Can the world just end already? :?

Like education, teacher unions and unions in general are useless in the new flat world. Wait till we see a huge shift to internet tutoring and kids are being taught after school by teachers in India.
Having taken a 16 credit hour semester online (heh, and having had a few Indian T.A.s), I can tell you that's a terrible idea. Let's hope the world doesn't get quite that flat.
 
$19/hour for a cashier? Can the world just end already? :?

As well as fully paid medical benefits AND retirement. What was a bit sad was the 16 year bag boys were getting $12-14/hour. But being under age they didn't get any of the union benefits and for some reason all those medical benefits didn't apply to them, but they still had to pay for it all.

It was rather funny to see that after about 3 days of the strike all the bag boys just up and quit, many went back to work as scabs.
 
Really, GM's major costs these days are the retirement health insurance benefits that they have to pay. They are basically an insurance company that builds cars to offset the cost of providing health care.

Add high wages for the union employees currently working, and that's why they are losing money like it is their job.

My problem is, this is all public knowledge, so why on Earth would you strike right now?

I'd rather take a pay cut and lose some benefits, THAN LOSE MY FRAKKING JOB BECAUSE THE COMPANY GOES BANKRUPT! Ever tried finding a job in a recession?

Idiots.
 
Their health car costs have largely been cured, they now just dump a smaller amount of money on the UAW and tell them to take care of it.

Retirement is slowly being solved with buy outs. The one doing the strikes don't seem to understand that the Big 3 do not just print money, if they don't make/sell cars, they don't bring in money to keep the company afloat.

I'd like to see how many of these people actually graduated high school (and also how many have GED's). I'd be surprised if any have even bothered with college.
 
Not all unions are bad, but UAW is rediculous. If they keep this up sooner or later there will be no more Ford and GM for them to milk, they need to understand this. Being a parasite leeching off a host is fine, but being a cancer and killing the host is not a good plan. GM needs to move all their factories to Mexico and other central American countries. It'll probably be cheaper in the long run to build new factories but don't have to worry about pollution regulations and UAW.
 
Exactly what I wanted to say - It's BL all over again.
That's a facile and inaccurate comparison. BL was a cludged together mess of separate companies in a time of de facto socialism and high unemployment in the UK. Things are a little different for GM. Yes, GM and Ford are in serious trouble, but they are savable. They just wont be titans for very much longer.

I wouldn't bet against a slow comeback for GM. Ford may take a little longer, but I think they'll get there as well.
 
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