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

Not when you get the drive home price or add in the Hemi ;)

Sure they'll be working, in Toyota, Honda, etc. plants; while GM is busy making corporate profits importing Korean, Chinese, etc. cars. Can't you see it? GM is the traitor to employment here by not upgrading their vehicles. GM is selling on price, not function and quality.

While we speak Toyota is building a second large plant in Ontario and will be shipping the vehicles built there around the world. The first vehicle they plan to build in this new plant has previously only been built in Japan. Of course Toyota will be sourcing parts in NAFTA where possible.

I forget to point out I also own five cars that I have owned since new. A

41, 64, 71, 72, and an 83. All are in pristine condition, with anywhere from 100K to 300K on the clock. Most of the cars I have owned over the years were sold to relatives and friends who ran them for many years. As I said before I haven't had any vehicle, foreign or domestic that proved to be problematic, in many years. Every manufacture is building good dependable vehicles today that are capable of being run to 200K or more if given the proper preventive maintance. The only real difference among them is style and price, period

mike

Toyota is also building plants in China and Mexico to ship cars and trucks to the US ;0

mike hunt

Honda does indeed build many of the cars it sells in the US of American parts but not Toyota. Most of what Toyota sells in the US are imported or merely assemble in the US of mostly imported parts except for those built in the GM/Toyota plant in California. The UAW contract for that plaint requires 75% American parts. .

mike hunt

That's kind of a silly statement, car dealerships are local operations.

I've been treated at both ends of the scale by Toyota dealerships, crappy at a Subaru dealer, and both ends of the scale by Jeep dealerships. In fact, the crappy Jeep dealer also sells Mazda, GMC, Ford, Cadillac, Buick, Lincoln, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Pontiac and Nissan at his other dealerships on the same street.

The evil Subaru dealer and the awesome Toyota dealer are both family (different ones ) operations. I got completely taken advantage of at

18 years old, by yet another family-owned Toyota dealer.

The awesome Toyota operation is by far the best dealership I have ever dealt with, from the sale, to parts & service, to a warranty issue. My local Chevy dealer, a smaller operation, has a stellar reputation with lots of folks who's opinions I trust.

You've reminded me of another interesting consideration. Dofasco is non-union! Interesting.

You own a 1941 car you bought brand new? WOW!!! What is it, and will you be selling it soon?

I figure you must have been born in the 1920s to be old enough to drive/own a 1941 beauty.

Agreed. The union has been telling them that for years (I'm not a huge union booster, but I will give credit where due).

Jane

I was born in 1926. The 41 Continental convertible is the only one of my old cars that I did not buy new. In fact I did not buy it at all, it was willed to me by a friend and fellow collector in the seventies who bough it new ;)

mike hunt

AFAIK the foreign owned plants are non union and low benefit. A major cost problem for the big 3 is pensions that the newer producers do not have because they offer 401K's instead of defined benefit plans and have not been around long enough to have a huge load of pensioners. Add it the location factor in that the old plants are often in high tax areas where they are beaten up with local taxes much higher than the low tax states have. There are some real issues there to deal with. In the US medical benefits alone are reputed to cost GM $1500/vehicle. That is part of why they do most of their assembly in Canada.

Ford was the first company to show me about imported cars - they imported Angila's int he 1960's then dropped service when they were 7 years old. Not pretty at the time. GM is no better. They were another pioneer in moving out of the country. I now live around Rochester NY. The old Delco (Delphi) is in trouble and the old Rochester products is being phased out by the french company that bought them. Major hits on the local workforce.

FWIW I make a point of not buying imported products that are sold by US major manufacturers whenever possible. I would much rather have my Hyundai with it's 100,000 mile warranty than any Korean import GM or Ford try to foist off as theirs. Somehow I think the oney should go to honest management. ;-) Chrysler is now an example of bad German engineering.

True, but Dofasco's workers benefited from the union contracts at Stelco. Not only is Dofasco non union, I believe it is profit sharing.

Does any other company have the riduculous layoff support for over 4 yrs that GM has?

In CDA the GM plants are in the same regions as other vehicle plants; southern Ontario.

Most GM cars are built in CDA? Don't believe it. Actually the shutdowns in CDA are very significant and I understand one involves GM's most efficient assembly plant.

That wasn't a great problem as most of those terrible Angila's were trash by then. I was in school at the time and we couldn't understand anyone buying such a car. Imagine that car less school kids not wanting a car.

Well I'd call it management politics to drop costs as low as possible. Ref: RWD and stupid cruise control in Chrysler models; Chrysler Hemi V8 in Mercedes models.

Politics is the reason. Most of us here think we will end up with car plant#1 expanding instead, once it is retooled for flex manufacturing (both car plants share the same building and the lines run side-by-side). GM Canada started backing away from the plant closure within a day of the announcement. There will be job losses, but not as severe as predicted. They may even reinstate the 3rd shift that we are losing in 2006. We've already lost a lot of jobs over the years...through outsourcing and productivity gains. When I started in Oshawa in '82, GM employed 18 000 people. We are now down to about 10 000, and nobody noticed.

Jane

That's 18 000 people in Oshawa alone, BTW.

There is no question that Dofasco workers have benefited from union contracts at Stelco over the years. It is noteworthy, however, that the employee profit-sharing program has been offered since 1938! I'd call that pretty forward thinking for its time.

Here's a link to this same information, plus the latest word on the $4.8 Billion Canadian offer from ThyssenKrupp of Germany, which has been accepted:

Yes it was. Another similar forward thinking company was Shaw Brick in Nova Scotia. I believe a past NDP leader came from that Shaw family.

Too bad, I held Dofasco shares as an excellent dividend stock, now I have this up front capital gain. Hard to replace that dividend in today's low yield market.

At least I expect they'll not move Dofasco out of CDA.

So where are all the Mexicans and Asians now arriving, thousands daily, going to get jobs?