R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

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[Basil]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

ROTFLMFAO

Ummm, in all seriousness, does anyone have an estimate on how many wars
this nation has fought and how many Americans have died to stop this kind of
Communist system?

And by allowing the system that we now have to continue we dishonor their sacrifice. We do not have capitalism. We have capitalism for an elite few, who are bailed out when it goes awry, and socialism for everyone else. That is not the ideal for which many have fought and died. Who is that said that we have now privatized the gains and socialized the risks?

[*T*]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

$28+ hour plus great benefits for doing semi skilled repetitive labor isn't enough? My best friend's father in law was a GM assembly line worker. Retired in his early 50s to a lake front home and his wife never had to work a day in her life. He was making a lot more than just " a living wage".

I agree that GMs problems can't all be laid at the feet of the Unions, but they need to either do their part to cut costs or they'll end up with nothing. Then let them enjoy finding a job in the real world where they'd be lucky to make half that wage with almost no benefits.

American car makers long ago sold out their future for immediate profits. Same scam we are seeing today with the home mortgages. The people responsible for the auto mess are sitting on the beach in some exotic location, trying to decide which Bentley to buy. They took the money and ran long ago. Part of their scam was selling out to the Union demands as long as the costs could be deferred.

Decent pensions & welfare state doesn't seem to stop the German, Swedish and Japanese car manufacturers kicking GM/Chrysler butt.

Could the problem be ... not the unions ... but they have been making crap cars that nobody wants?

[flintlock]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

GM has no problem selling cars. They sell millions of them. The cars aren't the best, but neither are they the worst. Blaming American cars misses the real issue. They don't cost the most either. Consumers get what they pay for. Chocolate vs Vanilla.

Their problem is they are not profitable selling them. They are a huge inefficient bureaucracy, not a vibrant growing company. They make lots of stupid decisions. They have a bloated managment. Another of those stupid decisions is paying more for labor than the market will bear. Not just wages, but insane benefits. You unionistas seem to have no problem with the fact that a guy painting houses for a living makes $12 hour, has no medical insurance, no retirement benefits, and works in an industry where wages have gone way DOWN over the last decade, even in a supposedly booming economy. Where's all the conspiracy talk about exploitation of workers in the construction industry? The fact is, people want their cheap McMansions, so I guess its ok to exploit those people.

I'm an Electrician. I'm a blue collar guy. So I'm no capitalist Pig, exploiting the worker. I just understand there is always two sides to a story, and both sides are always looking to get something for nothing. We all know how lame American car maker's managment is. Corrupt even. Been that way for years. But Americans know something is seriously wrong when some guy who sweeps the floors at an auto plant makes more than the teacher who teaches his kids, or the skilled auto mechanic who fixes his Chevy.

Im not trying to turn this to turn into a Union bashing post, but the fact is if those workers were worth what they are making in a free market, they wouldn't need a Union to get it. Its the nature of manufacturing technology. The better we get at it, the less and less we need workers, even while the population grows. America needs to start MAKING more things, and wage structure will sort itself out. The sad truth is, for every union manufacturing job, there are 100 people lined up who could step right in and replace that worker the next day. Its not rocket science. We need more jobs for lower skilled folks, not just higher wages for a select few of them.

I am completely on board with the idea that we need to provide good jobs with a living wage to all Americans. I gripe about it all the time to anyone who will listen. My only concern is what some people consider a living wage. If paying some auto worker more than he is worth because he was lucky enough to get a job at an auto plant means two other Americans stay unemployed, that concerns me. I dont think the union workers wages are too high really. Its the value of the benefits. And many Union workers haven't a clue what those benefits are really worth because they haven't gone out and tried to buy health insurance in a long time.

Ask the Eastern pilots how their refusal to budge worked out for them. Dire times call for dire measures. Americans simply won't stand for bailouts for the unions and not other jobs, which is what all this is really about anyway.

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

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[ASH]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

Decent pensions & welfare state doesn't seem to stop the German, Swedish and Japanese car manufacturers kicking GM/Chrysler butt.

I think you have the right data but the wrong interpretation. (That said, I'm not an expert in this area.)

I was of the impression that it is precisely because the state -- rather than the private company -- shoulders the burden of health and retirement benefits for German, Swedish, and Japanese auto workers that their companies enjoy a cost advantage over the American manufacturers. The labor costs have been socialized. If GM, Ford, and Chrysler could unload the costs of their retired workers on the state, and reduce the cost of their current workers -- again by making their healthcare and pension plans the government's problem -- they'd finally have competitive labor costs.

[c1ue]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

One of the original points of having a union was that Capital - with its central accumulation of wealth - could easily deploy said wealth to affect legislation for its own advantage.

The idea of the Union was to counterbalance this by aggregating Labor's resources - both in votes and in cash (union dues).

The idea that unions are inherently bad misses this point.

If Wall Street can spend millions lobbying, then either the entire practice of lobbying must be stopped (impossible) or a counterweight must be presented.

[GRG55]

Re: R.I.P. Auto Bailout!!!

One of the original points of having a union was that Capital - with its central accumulation of wealth - could easily deploy said wealth to affect legislation for its own advantage.

The idea of the Union was to counterbalance this by aggregating Labor's resources - both in votes and in cash (union dues).

The idea that unions are inherently bad misses this point.

If Wall Street can spend millions lobbying, then either the entire practice of lobbying must be stopped (impossible) or a counterweight must be presented.

Bad collective agreements with unions are as much the fault of the corporations management as anything; after all who agreed to the terms? And one thing for certain, GM's management has been suffering the effects of insufficient diversity of the gene pool [e.g. inbreeding] for a long, long time.