Enlighten Me! :)
Congrats to Mark Phelan. Let's get the word out to those who don't know the truth. Glad you decided to return to us, jimmyb!!!
Howdy, Rick. 
!!!
Glad to see you're still with us J!
Thanks for the kind words- hope all is well w/you & yours as well.
I've been thinking a lot about you and how you are doing, especially with the well-being of the auto industry in the balance.
"The oft-cited $70-an-hour wage and benefit figure for UAW workers inaccurately adds benefits that millions of retirees get to the pay of current workers, but divides the total only by current employees. That's like assuming you get your parents' retirement and Social Security benefits in addition to your own income."
Yeah, but it is still a labor cost even though the employees are not seeing it in their paychecks.
Thanks for that valuable info!
It would be very much in the interest of current union members to jettison the retirees. I don't know if you read El Borak's blog (look it up on blogspot if you don't), but he made an excellent point about your position: 1 union worker will never be productive enough to support the benefits of three retirees. It just won't happen because nothing short of a sudden quantum leap in assembly line productivity will allow one worker to produce that much wealth in one sitting.
Personally, I have no sympathy for the retirees or their families. If you want to live a certain quality of life, then by God you have to earn enough money to live it. No one owes that to you, and if you can't earn that much money, then tough luck. Your neighbor doesn't owe it to you, your employer doesn't owe it to you, your coworker doesn't owe it to you, and the next generation of workers getting started sure as hell doesn't owe it to you.
Get 401ks and standard health insurance packages like the rest of us, is my attitude toward the older workers and retirees. Even people like my father-in-law, who makes an incredible amount of money as a software engineer with 25 years of experience, has to pay for most of his non-emergency health care costs 
Also, this is all the big 3 have to do to get me interested: take a good look at what makes the Honda Civic (especially the Si) and make a car that is even better. I'll pay a little bit extra if they can pull it off just as a reward for pulling their heads out of their engineering/management asses.
As part of a family that owns a 2000 GM and a 1996 Honda (and as the proud owner of a 1994 Chrysler Grand Cherokee) I still have to say that the Honda is easily the most reliable car, and requires the least maintenance. It is also cheap to run, easy to drive, and does pretty well in bad weather. It's the logical choice for most people.
Furthermore, as an amateur Jeep expert, I can safely say that since the 90s, Chryslers have gotten worse, not better. The WK is certainly more efficient than the ZJ, but it isn't a better car to drive, and it's much, much bigger and bulkier.
I'm pretty sure your job plays a big part in your decision to believe this article.
wondering about you after your thyroid surgery. As a vet of the thyroid wars I have one piece of advice for you: Don't let your doc dose you on tsh alone. If he does you'll never wake up.
Now that I said that may I just apologize if 1) you aren't the blogger who had the thyroid surgery and 2) if you are, I'd like to apologize for not minding my own business.
But... GM et al make the cars people want and the cars people buy, their silly-ass political mea culpa ad notwithstanding. Now that Nancy Pelosi will run GM, you're going to see what happens when liberals run businesses via liberalism.
Welcome back to the fight,JB. This time, our side will win!
I knew you were still alive. Hey to the misses, too.
hey, jimmyb! had to stop over and wish you a merry christmas, and i really hope life's going well for ya!
Welcome back, Jimmy!
Welcome back, CUG - we missed you!
Thanks for finding this little jewel - I've posted it on my blog & linked back to you.
Okay, I'm here to learn, but if the Big 3 are kicking all the foreign auto builders asses, then why aren't the Big 3 profitable.
I have my thoughts, but I would like to hear some ideas here.
Is that Japanese spamming up there? And why would they have a hispanic net address like "FernandoSolano"? Is Engrish becoming Spangrish?
Weird.
Hope you're doing ok JimmyB!
Welcome back.
The only point I'm going to touch on is number 7. Trust me, if they have health insurance and dental their cost per hours is way more than $14.00. Unless you are basing it on a 70 hour work week and no other benefits.
Having seen some of the Health Insurance policies the local Chrysler plant guys have, that may even be a very generous under estimate.
Which myth explains this?
GM sales in 2007: 9,370,000 vehicles
Toyota sales in 2007: 9,366,418 vehicles
source: http://
www.monstersandcritics.co..._just_behind_GM
GM profit/loss in 2007: ($38,730,000,000)
Toyota profit/loss in 2007: $17,146,000,000
source: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=.../is?s=GM&
annual and http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=.../is?s=TM&
annual
Mr. Phelan aside, this could be a meaningful conversation about what the auto industry's problems are, if people want it to be. Or we could keep making up myths and swatting at them with statistics.
Bruce
Good to see your Ok Jimmy.
I drive a Ford SUV and won't ever get into a sissy little Prius. Aside from being a death trap I can't afford to pay my mechanic to fix TWO motors. I also can't afford to send him to electrical engineering school to figure it out.
Plus where do you put your long guns in a Prius?
Seriously: Detroit NEEDS to put out the first ALL ELECTRIC PICK UP TRUCK.
Think of it: Most tradesmen need a PU. Most don't drive it further than their job site and back home everyday. 100- 150 miles between charges would be plenty for most guys out there. (More is always better)
I'd buy one as soon as it rolled off the line. Just like the MINI VAN exploded so would the electric PU!
I would just like to ask, after giving the three companies the money, what next? And what if they continue haemorrhagging?
How do you stay part of the UAW when you are a conservative? I'm a conservative and in the MEA, so I'm union too- just wondering about your line of logic.
JimmyB, Glad to see you back, I hope all is okay. I hope you and your family have a Merry Christmas!!!
Have a merry Christmas, JB.
Merry Christmas, CUG!
Merry Christmas, CUG.
Happy New Year to the UAW’s affluent officers Ron Gettelfinger, General Holiefield, Bob King, Cal Rapson and James Settles …from over 500,000 betrayed UAW retirees.
“AUTO RETIREE HEALTH CARE IS THE SACRIFICIAL LEGACY COST AND THEREFORE RETIREES ARE THE PROBLEM! LET THEM ALL DIE AND DECREASE THE SURPLUS POPULATION!”
All defenseless auto retirees, both hourly and salary are being treated as underclass. They are targeted and have been sold-out by government, corporate and union politicians. As many retirees suffer from cancer and other serious work related health issues their crucial health care benefits have become negotiable political pawns.
It is foolish and unwise how America’s politicians have successfully painted unionized workers as the enemy in light of how our entire nation has benefited from the wages and benefits negotiated by unions.
That said, UAW retirees legally owned their health care benefits until UAW officials recently went to court to slickly garner the ability to negotiate them away.
These benefits were negotiated and paid for over a working lifetime of worker earnings deferrals and hourly contributions. Union officials betrayed the trust of retirees as they refused to vest the negotiated monies and frittered them away into profoundly less important benefits.
Just as significant is the glaring fact that UAW negotiated 30-year auto pensions are overwhelmingly and unjustly unequal. UAW negotiators refused to keep pension cost of living buying power up over the years allowing these older retirees to fall gravely behind. These second-rate older UAW retirees, who trusted these union officials, are now falsely labeled as rich retirees while in reality they have become America’s elderly poor.
Many of these unappreciated low-income, sacrificial, unionized “legacy-cost elderly retirees”, who have given so much to our nation, are tapped-out with living costs.
After a career of struggling on assembly lines, being denied the innovative pension building tools available to today’s retirees and being exposed to physical hazards unique to past auto assembly these deceived older retirees cannot afford to buy healthcare, which they now desperately need.
Closely read, copy and share the following links…
http://www.speroforum.com/site/
p...idarticle=16991
http://unionreview.com/insights-...ays-
autoworkers
http://westfallmike.tripod.com/P....com/
Page12.htm
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.co...od.com/
id6.html
http://www.intellectualconservat...th-whitey-hale/
http://www.uawndm.org/ndmportal/...article&
sid=157
http://westfallmike.tripod.com/P....com/
Page14.htm
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.co...d.com/
id17.html
http://www.umflint.edu/library/a...es/
westfall.htm
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.co...d.com/
id50.html
http://westfallmike.tripod.com/
http://www.google.com/search?hl=...westfall+uaw&
bt
I cannot believe that this country has not banned the existence of Unions yet. The only benefit that I see to unions is to increase the negotiating leverage of employees. The same employees who are not qualified in the first place to compete within industries that our country has an absolute advantage in. The most recent story I heard was regarding a potential union of cash tellers in banks.
When I heard this, the first question that came to my mind was how can a labor force that can be easily replaced through outsourcing and hold no absolute or comparative advantage be able to unionize in an effective manner; however, I kept reading. Apparently, this union was trying to get access to the $700 billion relief fund (TARP), by way of the banks (or more specifically the tellers). Normally I wouldn't give a shit, but the unions were one of the biggest contributors to Obama's campaign funding!!! Personally, I am a strong proponent of Obama, but I really hope he does not become a subsidizing addict.
This is obviously a less publicized union issue than the UAW and the auto bailouts, but my animosity towards what the UAW has done to the auto industry is just as strong. This is an organization has been primarily responsible for turning a quintessential US industry into the business version of a dead man walking. When it costs these companies 40% more to pay the people to make these cars, how the fuck is $35 billion going to change any of that? The UAW will not make the necessary concessions, so why do we need to bail out this industry? These are the same questions that are being asked by an educated individual, the problem is that much of our country is still blue collar, and these democratic constituents are constantly being appeased by the politicians.
Screw supporting the Unions, and the other undereducate. We should be investing in education. How about an education tax credit for technical college rather than some bullshit $600 tax rebate that no one spent anyway. One of the biggest influences of Silicon Valley and the birth of the internet and other technologies was the Cold War. If the government had not pushed for so much education in the fields of engineering and other sciences, we may not have seen the internet for a decade later.
I do not side with the Democrats or the Republicans, but at what point does this country wake up and realize that subsidizing anything is simply perpetuating a loosing battle with market forces?
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/1...nion/
index.html
Re: #2. J.D. Power is mostly about initial design flaws, not how they fall apart a few years after you buy them.
Note that Ford has caught up with Japan, but has not pulled ahead. Implicit is that GM and Chrysler are still behind.
Good to see you posting again. I was initially against the bailout, but after thinking about how consumer choice can turn on a dime, while changing the models that the companies sell is like steering an aircraft carrier, they do need help in the interim. The consumer is fickle; maybe the SUV and big car market will be back if fuel prices stay low, and here they might get retooled for 1978 Yugo type cars once again, so time for a second bailout a year from now.
There is no easy answer. Simple, but not easy. If we get Hilarycare, and the government pension guarantor picks up the auto pensions like they did the steel ones (bad news for pensioners getting a fraction of what they planned to live on, and they give a sorry deal to those poor guys who did nothing to cause this mess), then we can come close to evening the playing field with the other companies whose home governments have nationalized or otherwise cost-shifted those expenses, freeing them to make profits.
As for the even playing field question, do you mean to say that the Japanese government pays for the health care of the Americans who work in US factories for Honda and Toyota?
After the bailout, what if the companies continue losing money at a prodigious rate? What then? Continue bailing them?
That's some great information on the 7 myths. My greatest complaint with the LOANS (not bailouts) was the huge double standard between the auto ind. and the banks. I have a brother and several cousins that work at Ford plants and a niece at toyota. My niece was the most pro union of the bunch until she started working at toyota, I guess she drank the kool aid. We constantly gripe at each other now when we meet as I am a UAW member myself. I may just print this page and send it to her as a gift. thanks again for a great blog.
Now to add to the stats for Number 1 is the recent revelation that one single Toyota model sells more than all of Chrysler.
Please always remember who spouts off these myths the most.
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