UAW vs non-UAW

Wall Street Journal - May 23, 2007

..With the collapse of the DaimlerChrysler experiment, it might be useful to stop referring to "domestic" and "foreign" auto makers. The important distinction is between auto makers bound by UAW contracts and those that aren't.

Chrysler's labor costs are $30 an hour higher than Toyota's, headed for a gap of $45 by 2009. Chrysler pays the same wage to UAW janitors and skilled craftsmen. It carries idle workers on its books when no jobs are available. Most of all, it's on the hook for the untrammeled health- care spending of 134,000 unionized workers, retirees and dependents -- an $18 billion liability that Toyota, Honda and Nissan don't face. This alone adds a cost of $1,500 per car.

How it got this way is no longer interesting -- the tired debate over which stick figure, "labor" or "management," is responsible for Detroit's uncompetitive labor deals. Both operated under the incentives of the Wagner Act, the 1935 labor law that entrenched the UAW as the monopoly labor supplier to the Big Three.

Detroit draws on the same talent pool as the rest of global industry, and must pay a competitive wage. Its executives are no more overpaid or incompetent than anybody else's. Nor is it necessary to rub its face in the superiority of the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. No car company could humanly hope to compete in the basic sedan segment with a deadweight cost disadvantage of thousands of dollars per car. Detroit would be foolish to try...

Reply to
George Orwell
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In message news: snipped-for-privacy@mixmaster.it, George Orwell sprach forth the following:

Should be fun to watch usenet's union baboons attempt to grunt rebuttals to this...

Reply to
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute

Here's what America needs to do ASAP:

1) ban the unions;

2) socialize health care

Thing is that BOTH issues cannot be put on an agenda of any ruling "party" ( i.e. neither democrats nor republicans). So, sorry guys but you are facing a tough choice: either pay that extra $ 1 ,500 and buy a domestic car OR buy Japanese...........hehe

Reply to
duszkiew

I don't fall on either side of the arguement, but I thought Toyota took over a GM plant in California, used the same UAW workers and made it profitable. I have always though management structure was a bigger problem than the unions.

CCC

Reply to
CCC

Sir, please be kind to notice that the same UAW workers will perform different building chryslers vs. toyotas...hehe

Reply to
duszkiew

The California plant is a joint venture where the worker are represented by the UAW with a contract that requires that 70% of the part used be made in the US. GM and Toyota have always made a profit on the vehicles made in that plant. It proves Toyota could offer the workers in their other plant the same wages and benefits, build the cars with parts made in the US and still earn a reasonable profit. They chose to not do that so they can earn higher profits at the expense of Americans.

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

It's the MANAGEMENT, stupid.

Reply to
DeserTBoB

Notice that this chickenshit posts behind an anonymizer. I suspect a shill from the K St. gang.

Reply to
DeserTBoB

Pretty much what I expected. Many American companies no longer provide any health care for their retirees. This requires more to work until

65, so they can get on Medicare. Yes, there is Cobra, but most don't have the $1000 or more a month to pay, and it is only good for 18 months.

-KM

Reply to
kmath50

Van Nuys was built in 1946 as part of Al Sloan's "replace transit with cars" campaign, in which GM gobbled up and shut down transit operations, notably electric streetcar operations, all over the US and Canada. At the time, GM was already getting the Key System in the Bay Area disassembled and replaced with GM Coaches, and had their sights on Pacific Electric in LA, and the Fremont and Van Nuys plants were supposed to sell Chevies to all those who formerly rode street cars in those areas.

Originally, Van Nuys was dedicated to Chevrolet production only, as the huge neon "bow tie" sign on top of the assembly building proclaimed. Higher end cars, such as the Pontiacs, Buicks and Oldsmobiles, were built at the nearby South Gate plant on a rotating basis....one week Oldses, one week Buicks, etc. Cadillacs still only came from Lansing at that time. Later, during the "Roger Rabbit" era, the Van Nuys plant was folded into GM Canada's operations, and made only Camaros and Firebirds starting with the "new" '79 year model. Just before that, Van Nuys was the assembly plant for Chevy's best seller in California, the Malibus, including the SS variants.

GM lower and middle management at Van Nuys and South Gate were some of the worst, most incompetent anywhere in the corporation, and UAW simply reacted as they should to protect their membership. After many tries at getting GM to save Van Nuys (South Gate was gone by the '70s) by offering "collaborative" work rule deals, GM simply hosed it all off and bulldozed the plant rather than concede any power. The real shame was that the plant, a state-of-the-art facility in '46, was built to an "open" floor plan and could have assembled any number of vehicle types. GM simply strung the UAW along until it was ready for the unsuccessful "new" Cramaro/Fireturd series to be built in Youngstown using Buick V6s on a much-belated new platform. The F car platform that GM was cranking out until the end of the '92 run had been around, essentially unchanged, since 1979!

The local economy after the GM closure, which nearly coincided with the Lockheed plant closings in nearby Burbank, was decimated, as tens of thousands of well paying jobs evaporated overnight, causing a record tanking of the real estate market around both plants. The San Fernando Valley has never recovered from the loss, and all those lower budget houses and apartments that formerly housed UAW and IAM plant workers and their families are now chock full of illegal aliens.

Thanks, GM. Hope you go bankrupt.

Reply to
DeserTBoB

...unless the employee retired under a contract demanding it. Currenlty, many unionized (and recent union buster) companies which have reneged on their pension obligations under ERISA are being hauled into Federal courts for ERISA violations. With Bush Bird on the skids, buried alive in his foolish "war for oil" backfire, and Congress belonging to the opposite team, this may turn out to be a losing proposition for the corporate creeps.

Reply to
DeserTBoB

George Orwell wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mixmaster.it:

How it got this way is _highly_ interesting, if one studies the case of Caterpillar.

In the '80s Caterpillar's union was looking for the same sort of baksheesh the automakers' unions got, and went on strike. Cat stared them down and said "NO". The strike was long and difficult, but Cat won.

Today, Caterpillar is the antithesis of the automakers, competing very handily against foreign competitors, even at home.

Reply to
Tegger

Back then, the union thought the only competition was with Int. Harvester in the US. They did not want to know that Kubota, Mitsubishi, and a bunch of others were kicking their ass all over the world.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

Not true:

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Reply to
Lloyd

In whose dreams? Koobies and Mitsies are trash. Post-strike Cats aren't much better. The way they compete against jap trash is to engineer every nickel out of everything they make. Look at a D-series big bore versis the cheesy 3500 and 3600s made today. No comparison; the later engines were designed to eliminate ANY assembly operations they could and still throw the piece of shit together. The old D-series engines were labor intensive, but much better engines (and long lived) overall. To compensate, Cat just threw a ton of turbo boost on the new ones. They're crap.

Reply to
DeserTBoB

Huh? The words weren't from the poster, it was an excerpt from a newspaper article.

Reply to
Fred

It's the health care costs. And union contracts that pay the same wage to janitors and skilled workers is dumb.

"Detroit draws on the same talent pool as the rest of global industry, and must pay a competitive wage. Its executives are no more overpaid or incompetent than anybody else's. Nor is it necessary to rub its face in the superiority of the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. No car company could humanly hope to compete in the basic sedan segment with a deadweight cost disadvantage of thousands of dollars per car. Detroit would be foolish to try." - Excerpt from Same Article

Reply to
Fred

Go back to sleep.

When the UAW contract is up in a few months, Cerebus could always start liquidating if the union demands more of the same losing proposition.

Reply to
Fred

Such crap that Caterpillar has been doing great and has rosey forecast in its future. Contrast to the UAW shops.

Reply to
Fred

I'm sure GM's current UAW employees appreciate your sentiment. Screw 'em all, right brother?

Reply to
Fred

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