Delphi Proposal to Cut Wages in Half!

The only regulation is that the vehicle must display the country of origin and the percentage of north American parts in the VIN and a label listing the country of origin of the major components. Check the first digit of the VIN on a Toyota. Except for the few built in the GM/Toyota plant, where the UAW contract requires the use of at least 75% American parts, you will find a 'J' meaning it was built in Japan or a '4' meaning it was assemble in the US of between 40% and 70% imported parts and the vast majority have a '5' meaning it was assemble in the US of less than 40% American parts. Vehicles actually built in the US of at least 75% American parts display a '1'

mike hunt

Once upon a time I had a Zoom modem than had a 7 year guarantee. The thing died after a couple of years. A bad chip. I sent it back and it worked, for 2 more years and died again. By then I was tired of the hassle and the slight expense. But it was almost worth it for me because I had very special software that only worked with this Zoom modem. And the software of answering the phone and interpreting a fax or voice worked well and at that time, this was a rarity. It sounds like something simple, but I found this combo actually worked like the proverbial tank, as long you I defragged the drive before use. It was that sensitive to operating systems and specific chips.

Had a Zoom modem, 7 year guarantee. The thing died after a couple of years. A bad chip. I sent it back and it worked, for 2 more years and died again. By then I was tired of the hassle and the slight expense of shiping and $10 fee? But it was almost worth it for me because I had software that only worked with this Zoom modem. And the software of answering the phone and interpreting a fax or voice worked well and at that time, this was a rarity for inexpensive hardware/software.

About swapping out chips? It's good training. I liked the challenge of finding and swapping out chips. I learned a little about oscilloscopes, logic probes and the quickest way to destroy a computer. Nothing like soldering on bubble wrap that was pink and conductive. Either that or my soldering technique left something to be desired.

U.S. auto parts sector vulnerable to Delphi strike

Reuters / October 14, 2005

CHICAGO -- The U.S. auto parts sector faces potential supply shocks if hourly workers strike Delphi Corp., which is pursuing wage and benefit concessions from its unions, a key focus of its bankruptcy reorganization, an analyst said.

"It's a distinct possibility that a work action does take place somewhere through the course of this bankruptcy," Fitch Ratings managing director Mark Oline said.

Highlighting that possibility, Richard Shoemaker, the United Auto Workers official responsible for labor contract negotiations with Delphi, told Reuters on Thursday, Oct. 13, that a strike "certainly is one of the options that is available" to the union.

Delphi, which filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. automotive history Oct. 8 in New York, has said it wants to negotiate significant cost cuts with its unions and plans to submit written proposals to them next Friday.

However, Delphi also has told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court that it plans to begin the process of rejecting the agreements in mid-December if it cannot reach a deal with its unions that would significantly cut its U.S. manufacturing costs.

"We have not yet seen any supply disruptions, but it remains a key risk," Oline said. "That risk will only increase as we get closer to a date where Delphi, if unable to achieve a contract with a UAW, needs to impose a contract."

Delphi has about 50,600 employees in the United States, including 34,750 hourly workers, almost all represented by unions. Delphi had sought to negotiate wage and benefit cuts from the UAW to avoid bankruptcy, amid reports that suggested it sought cuts as deep as 63 percent.

"The extent of the wage and benefit reductions Delphi is seeking would be difficult for any union to swallow easily," Oline said, adding that Fitch is also keeping close watch on Delphi's plan for its pensions.

Smaller suppliers, which can be more vulnerable to cash flow interruptions than larger companies, may feel some pressure because of payment disruptions.

A missed customer payment could be a tipping point, but that has not happened so far with the bankruptcy cases of Collins & Aikman Corp. and Tower Automotive Inc. and appears unlikely in the Delphi case, said Neil De Koker, president of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association.

"I don't suspect there will be a rash (of bankruptcies), but there will be other Chapter 11s because the industry is still struggling," he added.

The vast majority of smaller suppliers probably have no more than a few percentage points of business with any one company and should weather the storm without having to file for bankruptcy themselves, De Koker said.

Collins & Aikman, which manufactures automotive interiors, filed for bankruptcy protection in May and Tower Automotive, an auto-body frames producer, filed for Chapter 11 in February.

U.S. auto parts sector vulnerable to Delphi strike

Reuters / October 14, 2005

CHICAGO -- The U.S. auto parts sector faces potential supply shocks if hourly workers strike Delphi Corp., which is pursuing wage and benefit concessions from its unions, a key focus of its bankruptcy reorganization, an analyst said.

"It's a distinct possibility that a work action does take place somewhere through the course of this bankruptcy," Fitch Ratings managing director Mark Oline said.

Highlighting that possibility, Richard Shoemaker, the United Auto Workers official responsible for labor contract negotiations with Delphi, told Reuters on Thursday, Oct. 13, that a strike "certainly is one of the options that is available" to the union.

Delphi, which filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. automotive history Oct. 8 in New York, has said it wants to negotiate significant cost cuts with its unions and plans to submit written proposals to them next Friday.

However, Delphi also has told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court that it plans to begin the process of rejecting the agreements in mid-December if it cannot reach a deal with its unions that would significantly cut its U.S. manufacturing costs.

"We have not yet seen any supply disruptions, but it remains a key risk," Oline said. "That risk will only increase as we get closer to a date where Delphi, if unable to achieve a contract with a UAW, needs to impose a contract."

Delphi has about 50,600 employees in the United States, including 34,750 hourly workers, almost all represented by unions. Delphi had sought to negotiate wage and benefit cuts from the UAW to avoid bankruptcy, amid reports that suggested it sought cuts as deep as 63 percent.

"The extent of the wage and benefit reductions Delphi is seeking would be difficult for any union to swallow easily," Oline said, adding that Fitch is also keeping close watch on Delphi's plan for its pensions.

Smaller suppliers, which can be more vulnerable to cash flow interruptions than larger companies, may feel some pressure because of payment disruptions.

A missed customer payment could be a tipping point, but that has not happened so far with the bankruptcy cases of Collins & Aikman Corp. and Tower Automotive Inc. and appears unlikely in the Delphi case, said Neil De Koker, president of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association.

"I don't suspect there will be a rash (of bankruptcies), but there will be other Chapter 11s because the industry is still struggling," he added.

The vast majority of smaller suppliers probably have no more than a few percentage points of business with any one company and should weather the storm without having to file for bankruptcy themselves, De Koker said.

Collins & Aikman, which manufactures automotive interiors, filed for bankruptcy protection in May and Tower Automotive, an auto-body frames producer, filed for Chapter 11 in February.

What you seem to believe to be true, is not. Foreign manufacture do not 'come to the US and build factories and vehicles.' What they do is merely assemble vehicles of imported parts, in plants build with taxpayers money via bond issues, with under paid workers, with few benefits, that were trained buy the states. To add insult to injury they take the profits they earn in this country, out of the county federal corporate tax free. American manufactures, to stay competitive, are being forced to seek lower priced parts and reduced payroll and benefit costs that are closer to those costs in the subsidized foreign operated plants.

mike hunt

In my case I'm still working and so am covered under an employer-paid plan. It happens to be a catastrophic-type plan coupled with a HSA (Health Savings Account) My employer switched to that almost as soon as Congress authorized them, to escape the premium creep. The plan does not kick anything in until you exceed $10K a year in health expenses, although if you use a preferred provider they cannot bill you more than whatever the set rates are that the insurance company has setup.

Initially there was resistance but actually everyone in the company has benefited, I know I have. Previously, what would happen under the HMO is that my employer paid something like $250/mth (This is a guesstimate, as I don't know exactly what the dollar amount was) for me and my dependents, and the copays were dinging us about $20 per visit, plus invariably we would get charged more money for tests and other bullshit that was only partly covered by the HMO. I know in one year we paid out around $1200 due to miscellaneous bullshit uncovered medical expenses. And I think it was about $3K for the birth of each of our children even though once again, this was supposed to be an hmo that covered everything.

After the switch, what my employer pays is still something like that $250 but instead only $50 goes to the insurance company. (once again this is a guesstimate, as I don't know exactly what it is he's paying) What I get is $200 monthly going into that HSA where I write checks from directly to the doctor. If you don't go to the doctor the money just keeps piling up in that account (although, it's not usable for anything other than medical expenses) So far we have not incurred more medical expenses than there has been money in the account. So it has resulted in basically all the nickel-and-diming and test fees and other bullshit being completely covered by disbursements from the HSA.

Now, obviously if there is something serious then it's unlikely what is in the HSA will cover the deductible so we will be out of pocket. But this is a law of averages game. If your not sick or no one in your family gets seriously ill for a number of years then you will stockpile money in the HSA and then when something does come around that is serious, someone breaks an arm or some such, then you are OK.

Where these plans are a bitch is if you have someone who has a chronic problem that isn't drop-dead serious, yet still runs up the costs every year into the $8-12K region. In the company I work at, nobody has that, fortunately, which is one of the reasons they were so quick to switch to it when these plans became available.

Ted

This is absolute rubbish. Every time someone points out the basis of a progressive tax system you get someone bitching that a progressive tax system means that we don't want rich people to live richly. This is absolute crap.

I -want- rich people to be able to buy toys and such because doing so encourages them to make even more money, thus paying more taxes, thus helping me indirectly.

The only time a progressive tax system is counterproductive is when the highest tax brackets -exceed- 50% of income. However up to 50% is no problem. If someone is making a billion bucks a year in income, losing 500 million of it to the society that is paying him the billion bucks is certainly fair. If he wants more money he can then make 2 billion bucks next year, and he will then get his billion.

The money that these rich are making has absolutely no value unless the infrastructure exists to manufacture these toys that they want to buy with their

500 million bucks. And you, I and everyone else make up that infrastructure. If we wern't working, those few rich wouldn't have the 500 million to do what they wanted with. If we wern't working then even if they had that 500 million they wouldn't be able to buy anything with it. Do you really think it would be any fun to own your own Lear jet and Rolls Royce if every road in the country you lived in was a dirt road, since everyone in the country was dirt poor? Would there be any point to being rich enough to get your own way politically whenever you wanted, when the only thing that the government of the country your living in was doing was beating the crap out of people?

When they took Saddam out in Iraq and went touring through his palaces, how much of the toys that were in there were manufactured in Iraq? I don't think more than a few percent. That's the issue with being rich. There's no point in being rich in a world where everyone else is destitute. Its's only worth being rich in a world where there's lots of toys to be able to spend your money on, and lots of things to do with your money, whether it be starting companies, funding save-the-whales campaigns, or whatever your fancy. And all those choices of things for you to do to amuse yourself cannot exist unless there's sufficient money in the rest of the economy for them to be created.

As they should. "more taxes than most of us" IS their fair share.

Well that's a whole different issue, it's irresponsible giving is what it is. In a way it is encouraging corruption and graft and supporting criminals is worse than not donating anything.

Ted

Nothing. But you said "Those at the top already pay more than their fair share of taxes" and that is absolute crap. The fair share of those at the top IS to pay a higher rate than the rest of us.

What are you talking about, income tax was started by Abe Lincoln during the Civil War.

Exactly. The problem today is that many of the super rich do not feel that they ever have excess money, no matter how much money they make. You are proving my point, here.

That happened in the 1950s and clearly it was completely stupid. That is why they stopped doing it.

Marginal tax rate today is about 33%

Same difference. They give millions away to charities that help out the poor, if those charities didn't exist the government would have to step in and pick up the tab, thus raising taxes.

The problem today is not in overtaxing the rich, far, far from it. The problem today at least in the US is that the federal government wastes billions on stupid things - like continuing the Iraq war long after we were done in there and should have left - and the local state governments waste millions on stupid things - like paying off drunkards and such that have claimed stress-related disability and got fired for it - that everyone, rich and poor alike, is disgusted with sending the government any more money. As a result we support these tax revolutions and such where the goal is indiscriminate and illogical tax cutting, which makes things in government work even worse and drives the few good people left in government service out of it, which makes the whole system even more awful, and thus just feeds the drive for cutting even more taxes.

None of the tax cutters spawned by the Reagan revolution has ever once proposed any viable alternative to government. These people's hope is that somehow if we starve government of tax money and thus force it to shrink, that it will get better on it's own. Their answer to government waste is to just stop funding government - it is not to go in and find who the wasters are and hang them from the nearest sour apple tree. But of course, if the money-wastng branch of the government happens to be the same branch that has voted itself in charge of enforcing religion and morals on the population, then we never cut their budget.

Ted

Which is a blink of an eye in historical terms.

Birthrate may have dropped in the US but population increase has not.

I used steel as an example as that is easily understood. You apparently missed the point about entropy.

It isn't that the steel has been depeleted, it is that it's in a far less easy to extract form. There are other resources that are much scarcer that are much more esoteric that will run out long before iron does.

That's why it worked for 12 million years. What did you think humans were doing before the emergence of tool-use. Or are you one of the Adam and Eve people?

Ted

"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote in news:newscache$1zbgoi$3f3$ snipped-for-privacy@news.ipinc.net:

It didnt 'work' for 12 million years! It HUNG ON for 12 million years!

Until man EVOLVED, if you want to look at it that way.

Your point is either escaping me or wraps back on itself.

I cant figger out whether you advocate a return to primitivism or what!

MY POINT is that man has learned to overcome the obstacles put before him; which the 'hunter-gatherer could not.. Thus the extinctions of whole 'communities' to use the modern term for Neanderthals et al.

There's a LOT of truth to this post. I know it's hard for GM supporters to accept, but the company is in VERY serious trouble.

You are entitled to you own opinion however currently the top 5% of the taxpayers in the US pay nearly 50% of ALL the taxes paid to the federal treasury. That is indeed at a higher RATE and MORE than a fair share of the cost of running the wasteful inefficient federal government you referenced. Personally I pay more in federal income taxes annually today, than the total amount of my income for the first 40 years of my working life.

mike hunt

Just for the record steel does not come out of the ground. Steel is an amalgam and is the mostly recycled man made product. At the current rate of consumption the world has enough iron ore deposits to last a thousand years. ;)

mike hunt

"Ted Mittelstaedt" > >

Every time we manufacture another car we lose a bit of the steel

That may be your opinon but the fact is NO foreign manufacter that assembes vehicles or makes parts for their vehicles in the SU that offers wages or benifite anywere near equal to those offered by domestic manufactes that build vehicle and parts for domestic manufactures, peroid. Domestic manufactures also pay federal corpertate income taxes on the profit they earn in the US, Japanese coperations do not ;)

mike hunt

I am not advocating a return to primitivism. With the current human population that would be impossible anyway since the Earth has long since passed the point at which primitivism could support the total human population.

What I am explaining that you seem to be missing is that the human specie has a problem when the systems that are setup which sustain it are not self-regenerating. These can be technical systems or even political systems.

Look at political systems for a second. A dictatorship is unsustainable as a political system because it depends on one man, and gains legitimacy through force - which means that any one of the population it is governing can morally kill the dictator and take his place. That makes for constant violent power struggles which spawn civil wars. Sustained technological growth, or civilization as we know it cannot exist in this environment since there's no possible way to do any kind of long term investment projects or anything large like that. China for example is constructing the world's largest dam on the Yangtee river - well in a country in which civil war is a constant that could not happen because that dam would be a military target, and if war broke out it would be destroyed and kill millions through flooding.

So another way of looking at it is that a dictatorship political system is not self-healing and self-regenerating.

Gettiing back to technology, quite obviously basing energy systems on oil is not self-regenerating. Basing them on nuclear is not self-regenerating unless you are only building breeder reactors (and in that case your going to have a hell of an arms problem with plutonium diversion) Basing them on something like wind or tides is self-regenerating because no matter how much energy we take out of wind, the sun is constantly fueling more wind movement.

Today we have an incredible number of systems, technological systems that is, which are not self-regenerating, and in fact quite a number of these are going to run out within a few centuries.

Our first priority should be to adjust these systems to extend their expiration date, as you will, and right after that our next priority should be to replace them with systems that are self-regenerating. This can be done with innovation, but it also can be done by reducing consumption. Population reduction is the quickest way to reduce consumption, that is why China does not allow more than 2 births per couple.

But you see, man really hasn't learned to overcome obstacles put before him. One of these obstacles is man has not learned to wean himself off things like oil as an energy source, which we know is finite.

If you could tomorrow put together an inexhaustable energy system, or an inexhaustable food production system, or an inexhaustable whatever production system, then you could be perfectly fine arguing for unlimited population growth.

But we don't have that now, and as such, an excellent first step would be to do what is necessary to make world population growth flatten out. An excellent second step would be to adjust global systems so that all of the people we DO have on the planet get a decent education, so that they can be working on building the self-regenerating systems that we need.

Ted

So what? All that indicates is that 5% of the US taxpayers are making such an unbelievable amount of money that they could spend the rest of their lives buying everything they set their eyes on all day long and still die richer than you can imagine.

Bullshit. Yearly income of $326,451 and above, the tax bracket is 35% That is only about 10% more than most of the middle class pay. And it does not mean, contrary to what you are implying, that rich are anywhere near turning over half their income to the government.

Wrong. The wasteful inefficient federal government's operations are what allow the superrich to make so much money that they are funding

50% of the government.

You can always quit complaining and go back to what you were making before, then pay less taxes. Would that make you happy?

Believe me lots of people out there would be happy to trade places with you and would be perfectly glad to pay the government even more in taxes than you do.

I really feel sorry for you, Mike. Your attitude is exactly that of the nouveau riche kind of person that any of the old Eastern money would be disgusted with. You wouldn't last more than 15 minutes at dinner with any of them before they would have you tossed out on the street. Quite obviously all your money has done nothing to make you feel any better about yourself or anyone else.

Ted

That isn't true Mike. I've toured the Nummi plant in Fremont California, and they do the vast majority of metal stamping on site, thus the unibody itself is completely made in the US. Most of their engines come from Toyota factories in the eastern US. Tires, batteries, wheels, windows, interiors, etc are also sourced from US factories.

The Japanese automobile makers are increasing the US content of their US vehicles all the time. There is no cost advantage to them in sourcing components from their home factories in Japan.

John