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30,
So, aside from having the only permanent work force in the history of America, they can’t innovate or produce desirable cars because of the unions. Interesting… I see where you are going with this. There is no business plan at the Big Three except for what the Union writes up. I guess we know who should run the company.
As for the contracts, what i’ve gleaned from the GM deal (this is from the UAW site) Job Security for them includes two years protected status. So, that’s not really ad infinitum. Now, I’ve been in a Union and I know how layoffs work. If you get laid off you get salary for a period of time and then that’s it.
Just in:
Auto bailout bill DOA in Senate.
We’ll see after Jan 20.
A more accurate headline question would be:
Should We Bailout The Auto Unions That Are Driving The Car Companies Into Bankruptcy?
#35, Cow-Paddy, Ignorant Shit Talking Sociopath and Retired Mall Rent-A-Cop,
This just in,
YOUR EFFEN WRONG.
Again.
Did you also know that your hero in charge of Homeland Security hired illegals to clean his house?
#37, Oopps, that should have been YOU’RE.
My bad.
# 37 Mr. Fusion said, “YOUR EFFEN WRONG. ”
LOL, you cited s/g that is 4 hours old. Keep current, will ya?
# 3 Thermo said, Unions are the prob.
I can’t agree w/ you more. I can’t help but blame all the liberal idiots who keep electing officials(mostly dems) who pander to these special interests…i.e. unions, so that when they get in office they owe the unions bigtime, and pass any legislations union bigwigs call for.
Who loses out??? the people…thats who. So keep electing Obama’s and this Gov from il(who is obamas good ol boy…you fuckers deserve what you get, but I don’t cause I vote with common sense, and make informed decisions.
40
Did my sarcasm metre just blow up?
When Congress bailed out the banks, does anyone remember them drilling the executives on how they got to DC or how much salaries bankers make?
Once again, this is just more labor bashing.
Something happened to the order here… My 39 now makes no sense….
“When Congress bailed out the banks, does anyone remember them drilling the executives on how they got to DC or how much salaries bankers make?”
Well, the bankers did a great job. It’s not their fault the market failed to do what it was ordered to do…
We need to see Other Peoples Money one more time. The car companies are already dead. Congress is only talking about keeping the blood flowing for a little while longer; this can’t be good.
When anyone says something like we should fire all the execs or do this or that, just remember the guys who will decide who stays and goes and what the criteria for making cars is congress! Yes, that’s right, the 9 percent approval rating guys. Congress is acting like we’ll wake up one day and have no cars; please.
We didn’t kill the car companies, the market did. Here’s a good question, if GM gets it’s hands on 10 billion dollars then how are we going to calculate how much their cars are actually worth? Today we can say how much it takes to produce a car. But when they have money they didn’t earn, how does that work?
>> The car companies are already dead.
I don’t see cars disappearing any time soon — not even the internal combustion engine.
When did it happen that we American concluded that we can manufacture anything decent anymore?
Did conservatives sell us this line of crap in their effort to sell off our manufacturing base to foreigners for their own personal profit?
DELL and HP all went threw the same thing…
MAKING enough product/cars/computer for 5 YEARS worth of product DONT WORK any more.
This is showing that the consumer is getting Alitte smarter..
A CAR should last, AT LEAST 10 years..
A computer should last AT LEAST 5 years..
Spending money, ISNT the answer. ITS THE CONSUMERS/TAX PAYERS MONEY…NOT theirs.
Buying a computer or CAR is a miserable thing.
You have to throw ALL of the OLD one away and buy it ALL again. JUST to stay UP to tech.
General Wesley Clark makes a good argument that saving the US’s manufacturing base (esp transportation) is essential to national security.
http://tinyurl.com/6yxan7
Basically, it comes down to this: if we get in a war with an ally of China, we’ll have to beg them to make us more Humvees (or whatever.)
Worse, of course, is that any sort of conflict is OFF THE TABLE with any country that makes our transportation or other essential tech/food/medicines/etc manufacturing that we absolutely need.
One more point and I’m really done with this discussion:
Why are we only helping the “Big Three”?
Why don’t we send a few hundred million to American car companies that are already making electric cars? For the express purpose of ramping up to mass production and an affordable price?
Tesla Motors comes to mind but there are others.
Lastly, the only real technologcy hurdle is the batteries, right? How about throwing a couple billion at _PURE R&D_ for batteries?
Then, GIVE AWAY the patented technology to American battery manufacturers and SELL it to foreigners?
This kind of indirect subsidy makes much more sense, because it forces the industry to go the direction that is good for America and the world.
OK. OK. One last thing.
Congress needs to MANDATE peak-hours sellback of electricity by consumers so that they can use their electric cars to buy cheap electricity at night and sell it back during peak hours.
This helps consumers pay for their cars and reduces several other energy related issues about capacity and undesirable generation.
Greg Allan,
—
So, what you’re saying is that you’d like to lose your freedom now to avoid the possibility of losing your freedom later?
If congress dictates the terms of the auto industry we will lose the freedom to choose because congress will tell you what to drive “for the good of the community”. They cannot help themselves, that’s how it will work. They’re even talking about who can work there and how much they can be paid just to get the money in the first place.
The best thing that can happen is bankruptcy where the court appoints someone to figure out how to make the business viable or to liquidate. I wonder if someone would buy GM if it was 30 cents on the dollar? Just a though.
It’s interesting how numbers just get thrown out there. If the Big 3 could reduce cost the hourly cost to $45/hr the cost of a vehicle would only go down $800. The cost of labor is only 10% of the total cost of building a vehicle. But then again most don’t mind spending upwards of $2500 more on equivalent cars from Japanese companies.
Go figure?
#47, GREG..
What the USA/Gov needs to do, is build a Corp layout and PAYMENTS(business plan), that ALL corps should be run by.
Only reasoning for WHAT IS HAPPENING, is that the CORPS want the GOV to take the business and kill the Unions..
Here is a good quote:
“Let them fail; let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same thing. If I lose everything in the collapse of our financial structure, I will start in at the beginning and build it up again.”
Henry Ford, February 11, 1934
#52 Nice quote!
BTW for those of you blaming or defeding Unions or Blaming or defending The execs… It’s Both of them. The failures they have created require a team effort.
How come when I voted in your poll, it locked up my computer, and I had to re-boot to get back to the internet????
The USA, world’s largest consumer of automobiles can’t keep their own production profitable? Maybe if americans would buy american cars, I have an excellent idea! Instead of bailing out the big 3 the government should offer $2000 rebates to anyone(american) who buys a car from these guys. It’ll be a lot cheaper and more cost effective, and it’ll allow the taxpayer to decide who they want to help by their choice of car obligating these companies to be more competitive. Of course the CEO’s of these inefficient mastadons would rather have a handout, who wouldn’t? I just think it’s a bad idea to set the precedent of bailing out private industries.
Oh, and let’s not forget Ronnie Raygun’s free-market system… Maybe it’s time to dump the idea, and bring back import tarifs. If volkswagon or mazda turned out to be much more expensive…
OK, this whole thing is such nonsense! It astounds me that we are wasting so much energy over what amounts to 1/28th of what was approved without so much as a blink of Congress’ eye.
Oh, and I don’t think that a $2000 tax credit would make me want to buy an American car.
Won’t somebody please think of the children!
AND
the Auto makers are saying..
IF we QUIT making cars, you will loose the TAXES from the Workers, FROM the Purchasers, from the registrations of NEW cars, from the insurance carriers, from traffic tickets…from property tax, from the Property tax of our EMPLOYEES,…
My bro had a long career as a design engineer at GM and was laid off 2 years ago, one month after receiving an employee commendation. Nice. Here’s what he has to say:
“In the time that I was at GM, all I ever heard was work harder and things will turn around. I, as well as a lot of other people (non management white collar), busted our tails in doing so only to see our medical insurance go up, our profit sharing reduced or disappear, cost of living adjustments taken away and raises disappear while the executives and UAW’s (the UAW was never asked to sacrifice nor would they) did not.
“Quality of the vehicles is not the issue here. We designed and engineered vehicles to be of the highest quality. However, sacrificing on the part of the executives and the UAW as we had, to get back market share by lowering the price of the vehicles, was out of the question as far as they were concerned. If they had, these companies would have been in line with their competitors in what they pay their workers and executives and could have beaten them in the market place. These two entities refused to do so and now they have to ask for help because of it.
“I understand people’s defense of these companies, but I was not laid off because of my excellent work performance – but because they had to lay people off and my name was picked. Yes, this was what I was told in my exit review. In other words, because I was not someone’s relative or a suck up, I was let go. They always wanted to hear (upper management) that everything is great (the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ syndrome) and that the system is not broken, even though they knew it was.
“I was in a meeting one time where they had people from different departments meet to come up with ideas to improve the profitability of the company. At that time, Ford was one year away from releasing the Mustang to the market. I suggested that we needed to bring the Camaro and Firebird back to compete with Ford and that would get market share back for us. I was belittled and told by the person who was running the meeting (who was a director) that we are GM and we are not desperate for market share. That was in 2004 and when I left that meeting, I realized that no matter what I did, the company was going to be in a world of hurt within 10 years and that I could do nothing to change it if this was the way that they treated their people. This meeting was nothing but a dog and pony show.
“Another example is the apology that GM is spewing out about how they are sorry that the lied to the public about the quality of their vehicles and that they will do better in the future. This is the same crap, line for line, that they have put out twice before within the past 15 years when they were in trouble. When I started reading this statement the other day, I was half way through it when I realized that it was the exact statement that they had released through the media to the public twice before. I stopped reading it because I got upset over the fact that this bailout really is a con game on their part.
“The executives of these companies and the UAW today are not the greatest generation like their forefathers, but the greediest generation, and the rest of us are going to have to pay for that greed.
“In fact I wish Congress would of asked people like myself to go before them and weigh in on all of this. They should have forced all of these companies to file for Chapter 11. If they had done so, then the executives and the UAW would have had to really change. What they got is what they wanted and the changes that they will have to make will only be half hearted. And when the spotlight is off of them it will be business as usual.”
#57 the idea was a cash rebate to stimulate sales, but there are other formulas. It won’t do any good to pump these companies up with taxpayer cash if they continue to have such low sales figures. It would only delay the inevitable.