Employee Discount for Everyone

That is the American business way: make a buck now worry about the future later.

Wrong! GM's 'Employee Discount for Everyone" isn't really any more discount than the rebates were before this program. Besides, the GM employees not only get the standard employee discount they also get to add on all of the rebates and sometimes extra employee discounts. The only thing hurting GM is the American public that thinks it's really cool to support a foriegn company instead of keeping their dollars in the U.S.! BUY AMERICAN! BUY UNION!

The Buy American slogan is a good one. Most people I know speak quite ill of unions...I wouldn't use that in a slogan for the general public's ears.

Well I for one think Unions are good. Higher wages and benefits for members. Better quality and workmanship for customers. Most anti union folk have never belonged to a union and really don't understand exactly what unions do for their membership. So remember, if you want it done correctly the first time "BUY UNION"!

Proud retiree of UAW Local 362 Former member of UAW Local 455

I understand that. But what you or I think matters not. If the general public mostly sees unions in a unfavorable light (rightly or wrongly matters not), and one wants to sell cars to that same general public, it's best to leave the word "union" out of slogans or risk turning them off.

A job in the Marketing Department you will not get! ;-)

"Better quality workmanship for customers?" Unions were a good thing back in the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately they came to dominate industries to the point where it didn't matter if the product was crap (it often was) or not. Look at the state of public education today, speaking of crap products controlled by unions that have workers who get above market wages regardless of the product they put out. At one time people were sympathetic to unions, but as product quality petered out people got wise to buying the best product, not the union product.

Most were never sympathitic to unions, most thought it was communist. Most think that union members are liberal. Most don't have a clue! YOU can thank unions and their members for the wage and benefit structure you enjoy right now. When union members gain, the general public gains in wages and benefits. You will notice it's the non-union folk that are suffering loss in wage. Remember too that union members can only produce their employers allow them to produce.

If you want a job in service(sweeping floors, flipping burgers, etc) keep buying products from far away lands. You will be proud of your childs shiny floors and well done burgers.

By the way, every GM plant in the U.S. has the representing UAW Local listed on their sign in front of the plant.

Buy AMERICAN! BUY UNION!

Quote: "So remember, if you want it done correctly the first time "BUY UNION"! "

Why is it then.. that there are numerous issues with my GM vehicles (I own

3) and after searching on the net, it seems that the same problems keep coming up? Case in point: The targa top on my Corvette is delaminating on the right side. Can I just give the union a call and have it replaced? I'm not the only one with this problem and I *know* they built about 150,000 (at least maybe closer to 200,000!!) Corvettes between 1997 and 2004. How about the drivers seat rocking? That's case in point number two. Should I go on? I can probably come up with at least 5, 6, 7, or 8 more examples of defective, poor quality workmanship, (or design.. same thing). To be honest, the only reason I still buy GM is that I happen to have a TON of experience repairing my cars (because they weren't built right the first time) and don't want to have to re-learn different systems. (Ford, Honda, Toyota, etc..) So, in closing, I would just like to say, that in my opinion, unions are only good for the employees who have to pay somebody to protect their job. It gives them a sense of security that they can't be fired and probably gives them a little extra money on Friday. The product that comes out of the factories would probably be the same quality regardless of whether or not it was a union factory or not. I do have to wonder how much extra GM tacks on to the price of the cars to cover UAW related expenses.

Every one of the problems you mention are NOT controled by union members but by management or engineering departments. UAW members do not design cars nor do they purchase bulk parts for cars. Union members can only do what management lets them do.

UAW related expenses? Sure GM tacks on a price per car BUT so do all the other car makers. Even the NON union ones. in fact, all companies tack on extra costs for various reasons.

By the way, workmanship and engineering are not the same thing. Give employees good parts and tools and good engineering and they will produce a good product.

Yikes, what a discussion! :-)

The bottom line is it would be best to leave the word "union" out of marketing materials if one wants to sell the the greatest number of cars they can. The word simply turns too many people off. It does not matter why this is so (ignorance, perception or whatever). Ego is the downfall of many. You personally may be proud of the union (and that is fine), but using the word in marketing the product these days will translate to fewer sales and less $$$ available for future union employment contracts.

You can also thank the union structure for the death of the steel industry. I live in Pittsburgh and the unions killed it. So, yeah, guys a generation ago could come right out of high school and earn $80,000 to $120,000 (equivalent of today's dollars...back then it was much less in actual 1978 dollars). Problem is they killed the golden goose. No NO ONE can do that.

Not true, this is uttely dependent on the marketing region. Some regions it would sell more cars. These campaigns are usually designed with a regional component as well as a national component.

Ted

Hey, I'm a Union member myself - IBEW - although it's been about 20 years since I worked in that industry.so technically I'm inactive.

You can't paint all unions with the same brush. Unions are very individualistic. Some have done a lot of good things - there's a lot of guys who would be dead today if it wern't for IBEW training - but there are others like the teachers unions who it is very hard to see what it is that they do that is good for either their members or society in general.

And not all unions help their members either. Years ago my wife worked at the local Zoo here, and one day she had a dispute with her supervisor who was an idiot. She had worked there 5 years the supervisor for

4 months - and the supervisor's past job was being some sort of lead worker at a restaurant. The supervisor wrote my wife up and she filed a greviance and grieved it. The Zoo just sat on it and stalled and stalled, kept putting her off, never judged it good or bad. The union didn't lift a finger to help my wife even though lots of witnesses where there and supported my wife's version not the lying supervisor's version. And my wife had been paying dues into that union for the last 5 years. My wife eventually quit. We heard from friends that 3 years later the supervisor got fired so obviously the Zoo never thought much of this supervisor.

I think there's still a need for unions these days, Walmart for example is crying out for one. But do you see the AFL-CIO putting a lot of money and muscle into trying to organize Walmart employees? No! Instead they are putting their effort into trying to organize doctors and computer programmers!

These far away lands like India and China are where the US was before the union organizing efforts got going. Yet do you see the unions in the US today spending a lot of time and money supporting organizations like the Indian New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) Hell no!

If the AFL-CIO quit trying to organize computer programmers in the US and concentrated on organizing them in India, it would raise wages for those employees over there, helping those people, and some of the work would come back to the US, helping the people here. In fact that is exactly what the NTUI in India is advocating - they don't like US companies outsourcing to India anymore than we do here. Outsourcing doesen't provide stable employment anyone can depend on anywhere, and the outsourcers in India hire employees on contract there, as they get contracts from here - it does not help to create a stable high tech industry that can be used as a future growth industry for that country either.

Ted

Very well said.

It has been my experience that a union or local is only as good as it's members. You sorta get the representation you deserve.

Roy

I thought everyone knew by now the quality of a product was a function of management. Guess not, many seem to still think it is a function of labor.

mike hunt

";-p" wrote:

I believe if you did some research on the demise of many industries in the US between 1970 and 1990 that the fault lies in the unreasonable evirromental laws. The steel industry and many other 'dirty' industries were forced to meet environmental laws by dates certain, rather then giving the companies time to develop new technology to meet those goals. In the interim import product, that do not have those requirements, came into the US un retrained.

Companies were forced to spend billion on non productive equipment in what proved to be a futile effort to clean up the air a water, rather than developing cleaner more efficient way to achieve the same result over time.

A good example is the automobile. Companies were forced to spend billions to change factories over to FWD vehicle using small engines, with dubious pollution control devices, so they could still build five passenger cars the US consumer wanted. All that did was delay the far superior designs of today. On can buy one of the newer better handling RWD cars today that still gets better mileage than did the small unsafe under poser cars of the eighties. By setting a date certain, rather than goals, we actually delayed the better more efficient vehicles of today by ten to fifteen years,

In essence we exported the pollution, and all of the jobs, that were provided by steel, cement, chemical, paint, plastics and the oil industries etc.

I did a search and found the stating wage for a steelworker in

1955 was $1.47 a hour. The highest rate for a skilled craftsman in the steel mills was $2.12

Twenty year later in 1975 it was $4.03 and $5.11

The death rate among steelworkers was the highest of any industry at the time

mike hunt

"D.D. Palmer" wrote:

That is a good point. There is likely some truth to that.

People think all kinds of things. ;-) Keeping marketing materials away from "touchy" topics is always best.

Probably both contributed to some degree...among other factors.