GM to cut 30,000 Jobs & Close several NA Plants

You must have been one of those "4F's" that couldn't get hired into GM. Sounds like a little jelousy going on here. Jerry, you just wish you could spend 30+ years in one job and draw a decent pension don't you? How about decent health care? Still got all your teeth? Can you afford to buy Rx or are you on the Federal dole? Am I UAW? Hell Yes! I earned every benefit I have! All you non union SCABs did in your life is benefit from Union won gains. Free lunch? Ya right. Oh by the way, there isn't one UAW member that earns $65 an hour. More like $26 and benefits vary.

Why don't you get a copy if the GM/UAW contract and read it(if you can) then you will see the whole picture.

NOYK in Florida living on a decent UAW won pension from GM. Buy American-----BUY UNION!

Doug, I am surely not jealous of any GM worker. I'm comfortably retired and was quite well paid in the Tech. area during my working years. In fact, I feel as well off as anyone and don't have an ounce of jealousy regarding anyone. However, I do believe that the GM worker is overpaid and has too much control over the company. I would have this same complaint with any US industry with similar situations. Most of the GM union jobs could be performed by McDonalds employees at a fraction of the cost. This is hurting the US competitiveness in this global economy and that's what I was attempting to point out. I actually expected some strong union folks to take offense to my comments. That's fine by me, just mark my words - those companies with unions as strong as GM's will not survive unless the unions make huge concessions (unlikely - they are spoiled) . I find this sad. Most GM employees know that they are overpaid for what they do and have many more benefits than the GM competition. However, due to human greed, they will not give up much in order to save the company - therefore, goodbye GM and their union jobs.

Jerry

"doug" wrote in message news:nsmdnRV225n--B snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...

PHILIPHD

I don't dispute what You say, but how much more

pressure can Ford and GM take? Korean vehicle

prices are even hurting the Japanese import sales.

I protested NAFTA- a certain disaster- when it first

was implemented and I was right, but let's face the

facts. Most likely the Chinese industries are being

bankrolled by American investors.

Hey, I'm not disappointed! I expected big negatives from lazy, greedy union folks. Hang in there, you might be lucky and maybe the global economy will collapse and the US become isolationistic. Then, you union turkeys can regain their total control over US companies and have all your unrealistic demands be met. Buy union?? - you gotta be kidding. That may have worked

40 years ago. Today, folks buy based on value for their buck. That's why the strong unions days are numbered.

So you don't think the UAW's recent give-backs on medical benefits is a huge concession? Think again!

If you really want your car assembled by McDonalds workers...hell, that's too insipid to respond to.

What you are really saying is that you don't believe that blue collar workers are entitled to earn a fair wage.

Just as I suspected - a white collar elitest who chafes at the idea that a person whom they consider to be beneath them intellectually and socially is making a decent living. Overpaid is a loosely used term - just remember that GM workers have received only cost of living increases for years. In exchange for reduced pay increases, they negotiated for health coverage. A pretty savvy move, I think. Not bad for blue collar workers, eh?

BTW - did you volunteer to give ANYTHING back when the scourge of outsourcing in the tech/IT industry? I doubt it - as you said, you were well paid and now comfortqably retired. Pushed out, no doubt, by the very same people.

Jerry is full of shit.

Dave

But where is it written that people who don't have skillsets that make them broadly employable can expect exciting jobs? And accidents, for better or worse, are part of any manual labor scene.

While this is true to a degree, your argument assumes that workers would never gain ground due to a free-market economy. And because of that, your argument is flawed. When a worker and/or a skill is in demand, its price goes up, so wages and benefits have to rise if they want to keep them. One only has to see the wage power that white-collar individuals outside unit environments have to see the benefit of this.

Wal-Mart's benefits suck because most of its employees are classified as part-time. And no executive ever feels the pain that the worker feels, no matter what.

Do you know there are many teachers in this country that don't do better than that? And they pay for their education and the continuing training necessary to keep up their certification.

I'm by no means anti-union; all I'm saying is for years people in that industry ignored problems staring them in the face and are now paying the consequences of it. During the glory days of manufacturing, we didn't have a true world economy. You didn't have companies in virtually all major Asian economies making goods that were exported abroad, and those that were made things largely regarded as inferior.

One of the problems with business in general is it never changes until the market forces it to, and then the correction is usually more painful than it necessarily has to be. If things had changed sooner, the pain would be less severe now. But you simply can't compete on the world scale and pay the generous terms that were agreed to when that competition was much less a threat.

If there's anybody to blame its Roger Smith. He's the one that started this whole domino effect!

Plus avoiding the storage costs on unsold production.

I'm in the market for a replacement for my '95 Chrysler. After looking at a few GM models- no way. Not even those Korean build models. Current Chrysler and Ford cars don't meet my requirements either.

I saw a cars that do suit me at Toyota and Honda. How come they produce the cars I could be happy with? I'm talking function here; not quality.

I expect many of the laid off GM workers could get employment down the road at Toyota or Honda.

I honestly can not see how people can find a Honda or Toyota an attractive vehicle. I have never seen one I would purchase. Same for Kia. Sure, GM has some ugly-as-sin looking hulks, but they also produce what I think are the most beautiful cars on the planet. Well, the ones normal people can afford anyhow ;-)

attractive

I used to think the way you do at one time 80 K.

Then I bit the bullet and purchased a pre-owned

3 year old Honda Civic sedan with 35K on the clock for my daughter to use at college. That was 11 Years ago. That Honda is still going strong and apart from a brake job, a new muffler and routine oil changes and a coolant flushing, the car has NEVER been in the shop even once for a major repair. It's now got 160K on the clock and still starts and runs like a Singer sewing machine. The body has aged and it "ain't pretty" like it used to be but it still runs 4 my daughter and she loves it.

I wish that I could say the same for my wife's Ford Tarus sedan (..scrapped and replaced with a Honda Accord last year) and my GM truck which has had 2 major engine service procedures before it reached 80K miles.

I would like to "buy American" via a Ford or a GM product, but the likelyhood is very low at this time as I have found that Honda builds a far more reliable car that Detroit. The only exception to the rule is Subaru, my neighbor has an Outback Wagon that has been plagued by oil leaks and cooling system problems from day one. My mechanic echoed the same, saying that Subaru's engines all have known problems with blown gaskets and oil leaks and not to touch a Subaru product of any kind with a 10' pole. My next truck just may be that Honda pickup their now making. It may be more plastic than metal but if it's anything like my daughter's ultra-reliable Civic it looks like it will be a keeper.

It's a damm shame Ford and GM can't design and build cars and trucks which are just as reliable in the long term as Honda. Subaru is another story however and their crap might as well have a GM logo affixed to it.

I guess these things are all subjective and just one guy's experience. I have a hard time not commenting here, though, with respect to this due to my experience with GM vehicles. I've got a '93 Chev. diesel pickup with

208,000 m. on it that has been without any major problems. Particularly the turbodiesel engine. Absolutely rock solid reliability and this truck has not been coddled at all. Had a '79 and an '83 of the same vehicle with the exact same experience. Even the paint jobs never faded out on me and they still looked good until the last day I had them. The only Jap car I ever owned was back when I was working in Saudi Arabia. A Datsun that spum out a rod bearing and left me beside the road. A friend I worked with bought one of those new Nissan small pickups. He'd had it about a year when he started in our work parking lot and the crank pully broke off at the crankshaft. You read that right. The crankshaft snapped off flush with the front of the engine. I'm not saying this has never happened to a GM vehicle, just that I've never heard of it and I've been around for 56 yrs. I just do not agree at all with this business of GM not building reliable vehicles, but, again, it's just my personal experience.

Garrett Fulton

My wife's Honda Accord was built in Marysville Ohio with major engine components supplied by USA based suppliers. Looks to me like Honda is NOT "outsourcing" it's parts to suppliers and sweatshops in Mexico and China, which both GM and Chrysler have been doing for several years now.

Wal~Mart benefits do not SUCK. Hell my wife works for Wal~Mart . 16.75 Hr. Health / dental / visual, Incentive checks, two weeks vacation, one week personal time. Holiday pay, company sponsors events for the employees. If your a member of a volunteer organization you can fill out a paper and get money ,time and items donated to the organization. 4 day work week. Safety bonuses.

As for the stores. They employ a LOT of folks who others would not. They also like to provide entry level jobs that even ex union folks can handle.

I can accept that. But, I can also say that I have had relatives (just as yourself) who have had Chevy trucks last well past 400,000 with nothing major done to it, and the other day a friend stopped by with a Cavalier which had already rolled the odometer once, and they were quite pleased with the car as well. As for Honda's, I cant really comment on them as I have never owned one, and I have a strictly GM family (I live in Oshawa Ontario, so a lot of them work at the plant there, and a couple more work for GM dealerships), however my mother's boyfriend does have a Civic. Though, I once again can't comment on it as I have never driven it, and he does not know much about them as he trades it in every 2 or so years. I guess basically, every car company makes the occasional 'pearl' and every company makes the occasional 'lemon'.

If they don't like it, they're free to leave.

Yes, you normally do have to go back that far to remember when unions contributed positively, rather than vampirically sucking on the tit of capitalism in order to justify their socialist existence.

The fringe

Regardless, if an employee is valuable to a company, that company will do whatever it needs to do to keep that employee. Sound familiar? It's called "merit," something that frightens the entitlement nuts in the unions.

Certainly

Of course unqualified statements like this are hilarious. But even if it was true, they probably kept their benefits by earning them, something else the unions have no concept of.

The unions are sponsoring a lot of negative press against them because they failed to organize them. I also know an individual that worked for them a number of years and was very pleased with the experience.

I have never owned a foreign make automobile, and have driven mostly Chrysler products my entire life, but I can comment on what I observe with this newgroup when it comes to GM cars.

It seems that there are many repeatable design flaws that show up on the usenet like crazy with GM cars. To be specific, Impalas seem to have consistent ISS issues, water leaks, funky BCMs, engine cradle squeeks and pops, and plastic intake manifold failures/leaks. This is not caused by assembly line workmanship (ie unions), but rather poor design engineering management. YES, all cars have design flaws, including the Japanese, but the GM of yesteryear would not have allowed this kind of car in the public domain. This is why they must learn to live with shrinking market share.

My first GM car is a 2001 Impala LS. For the money, it has been very satisfactory, but I still am disappointed that many design flaws are reminding me that there are better cars available.

With my Chrysler car experience, I accepted the fact that they were much cheaper cars then the competitation, therefore, I understood a lower reliability rating. With the year old poor resale of a Chrysler product, you can get a very nice car for the price of a KIA, and even with the reduced relibily, they are good cars for the money.

IF GM wanted to improve, they could, but they won't. American management style will not allow the changes required to compete in a global market. Therefore, GM is shrinking, and learning to be profitable with less market share, which keeps management and Wall Street happy, and that is all that matters.

Have a nice Thanksgiving.