There have been a lot of talking heads discussing the auto industry lately and I can't say I've heard anything as well spoken as this.
You are so, so right.
Beautifully done. The steel mill where my father-in-law works, a major supplier to GM, just shut down, resulting in the loss of about 700 jobs. For a small Eastern Kentucky community, the loss is completely devastating. (Merry Christmas, Appalachia.) The mill was the last of the big employers in the area. (My dad, 57, lost his job a couple of years ago when the second-to-last big employer left.) Now the locals are talking about the trains that transported the steel that will stop running, the coke plant, the scrap metal place, and all the restaurants and retail stores that will be affected. It's a huge deal. Huge. So,you're right, it is Detroit and then it's not just Detroit. It's hundreds of towns across the country, usually in run-down places that are completely dependent on those jobs. Something has to be done, and the sooner it happens, the better.
My husband and I talk all the time about all the things we don't know how to do. It's amazing! My grandpa can tell you how to plant anything, raise farm animals, kill and prepare a pig, sew, cook, and completely build a house (he built his own very lovely house, because he's awesome). I can kind of sew and kind of cook. The skills are disappearing. There's nothing in the world more satisfying than making something nice, or receiving something unique and handcrafted. Handmade rocks.
exactly sarah---everyone thinks this is just about these three companies in one town. but everything is so connected. I heard someone on the radio say 1 in 10 American jobs is somehow connected to this industry (I have no way of knowing if that is true).
my husband and i were just talking about this last night, and my overwhelming thought was yes, let the greedy bastards die for making so many SUVs. but this. this is so true and real and sheds a completely different light on things. thank you.
i make things. for myself, for others. and when my handicraft goes terribly awry, i change my plan. start over. redo my design. maybe this, not the death of the auto industry, is what we need. i hope it's possible.
Thank you for adding perspective to this. I definitely agree, but was having trouble articulating why it was important to help these companies. I'm saddened that our posterity will pay for these issues for generations, but I believe this is the right thing to do. Comparing this to the mess of the credit/financing industry is perfect. Personally, I will be more satisfied with decisions that directly impact the lives of thousands manufacturing employees than for preserving the credit "market". If I really put my money where my mouth is, my next vehicle will be from one of the Big Three. Of course, I'm not getting a new car anytime soon.
Thanks so much for writing this, Jim. I agree with your father whole-heartedly, by the way, as does my husband, who's a high school teacher in a school where they're pushing the idea that every kid needs to go to college and become a Goldman-Sachs executive. He teaches kids who aren't quite special education but for whom college would pose challenges that a public school isn't really equipped to prepare them for. These are kids who're taught that people who make things and fix things are losers, and as the grandson of two Ford employees and someone who's struggled his whole life with learning disabilities, he's infuriated by that attitude and frustrated with the lack of resources for people who want to make things for a living.
Thank you for this.
I really feel for the employees, but I don't know if the Big 3 can still save themselves. This decline has been a long time in the making, borne at least partially out of a lack of innovation and by not making a good product. I used to "buy American" in the car realm, but after my Fords and Dodges required ridiculous amounts of expensive repairs very early into their lifespan, I switched to Toyotas. I don't think I'd ever buy an American car again.
I hope that we can find a solution that doesn't just prolong the inevitable, or reward the automakers for their stupidity, but instead looks out for their workers. Because I don't know that the automakers will look out for their workers even if we do bail them out.
I don't think owning a foreign car and wishing the best for American companies who manufacture cars in America are mutually exclusive.
A lot of people will point out that your Toyota may have been manufactured in some right-to-work state down south and my Chevrolet might have been manufactured in Canada.
You can certainly get bogged down in those details, and this discussion could certainly get bogged down by the perennial domestic vs. import quality debate.
But what I hope discourage with my ramblings is all the vitriol I'm hearing against companies that do produce and manufacture competitive products domestically, where the money we spend on them stays here instead of Japan.
Amen.
And what about all of those people who BOUGHT the SUVs? Do they bear no blame? It makes me sick that as soon as gas prices started falling, demand for trucks and SUVs went back up.
What many people don't comprehend is that the legacy costs shouldered by the Big Three (retiree health care and pensions) is something the Japanese automakers don't have to pay. The Big Three HAD to keep making the trucks and SUVs because that's where they made their profits, and it was the only way they could sustain their business. They don't make enough money off of small cars to support the many workers who are now retired.
Toyota - whose current and retired workers get their healthcare from the Japanese government - had lots of extra money floating around to invest in things like the Prius - which actually cost them money when they introduced it.
There is no way the Big Three could invest in innovative technologies like hybrids. They were doing what they had to do just to stay afloat.
I don't know why that's so hard for people to understand.
Jim, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. I don't have anything more insightful to say -- mostly because I agree with everything you wrote -- but this was fantastically composed. Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
As a Windsorite (and former auto worker) I wholeheartedly agree with what you are saying.
Living in Canada gives us the advantage of having a government who is actually willing to help with a bailout, but most people who live outside of the main auto towns in Ontario (Windsor, Oshawa, St. Catherines and others...)could care less.
The truth of the matter is automotive manufacturing basically runs the economy of the province of Ontario. Since the start of the economic downturn, Ontario has become a "have-not" province. This means that for the first time since the country's formation, a short 150 years ago, we are receiving equalization payments from other "have provinces" just to keep our budget in the black.
Yes, these companies have run their businesses into major debt, but it's not the workers who are causing the problem. An auto exec who makes 5 million a year makes the equivalent of 77 workers who make roughly $65,000 per year. Why lay off 10,000 workers who have been loyal to the company, loyal to their causes, loyal to the cities that the companies occupy when they're not the ones who drove car companies into the ground?
Bail outs are for the workers of those companies, to keep them working, to keep a roof over their heads and heat in their homes. Not just to rescue a company in crisis who's asking for a handout.
Think of this as 50,000+ people in the US and Canada BEGGING FOR MONEY because they need to pay bills and mortagages.
It would be nearly impossible to eliminate unions from the Big 3. Those unions were installed to alleviate the shitty work conditions at the turn of the century and beyond (some which really haven't changed... asking for a pass to pee or shit between breaks because you decided to eat instead of standing in a bathroom line during your 23 minute lunch.) It's easy for a company like Honda or Toyota to come to the US or Canada and install themselves with good working conditions and decent pay because they've arrived YEARS after the labour laws were changed to protect workers and are required to obey them.
UGH, all of this frustrates me.
But, thank you for writing this as well. Much appreciated.
This is absolutely amazing. I sincerely hope that some national news outfit picks this up - our country can really use your insight.
Thank you.
I don't know much about unions and I may be talking out of my ass but I feel like they've been part of the problem for a long time.
I don't have an organization that will fight on my behalf for fair pay and health insurance. No one is going to stand up for me to get wages that keep up with inflation. I'm a small business owner (who makes/manufactures things for a living) and am therefore self-employed now (that is if the economy doesn't keep going down the toilet--I may have to close if it doesn't improve in the next 6 mos. but that's a story for another day.) but it wasn't always that way. If I didn't like my job, wasn't getting paid enough or didn't like the way I was treated, I had to suck it up or find a new job. It isn't fair but it's reality. And it's the reality of most of us in the working world. Unions had their time and place and I think that has passed.
I think if we bail out the American Auto makers, we also have to re-evaluate the role the unions have as well.
With all due respect, it's been three years since Hurricane Katrina. And as someone who lives in New Orleans and has since before the storm, I know how it's as broken as it ever was. Much in this place was broken long before the hurricane. The photos you take in Detroit could be snapped in abandoned schools and warehouses here. Sad but, true, the story of urban decay rings true in New Orleans. We just dress up, make music and parade around to forget about.
Sorry, a screaming baby interrupted my tirade ...
It's not that the Big Three don't bear some blame, because they do. Just not all of it.
The complexities involved in designing, engineering and manufacturing an automobile are unbelievable. The collective, institutional wisdom of these three companies is staggering. If they are allowed to fail, it will be irrevocably lost, scattered on the wind of engineers foreclosing on their houses and moving elsewhere to design what? Mousetraps?
I hope someone gets through to those in charge just how devastating the consequences of failure would be.
My older brother has worked at the Ford plant in South Chicago for nearly 20 years. He is an awesome dad to five kids: ages 3months, 4, 6, 8 and 14.He started on the assembly line and worked his way up, going to night school to become a certified electrician. His story is not unique -- there are millions of people like him, who've lived some version of the American Dream because of the auto industry. Nearly 30 years ago, my father started from scratch when he lost his job at a steel plant just miles away from my brother now works. Like you, Jim, I'm stunned that people would look the other way when the greedy banking industry was "rescued" and condemn those, like my brother, who work so hard to sustain one of the few remaining American industries.
As a yuppie who is second generation to have escaped a Michigan automotive plant life, I cannot agree with you. I don't think any of the big 3 as they are, are worth sustaining.
This was caused by letting the big 3 happen in the first place. They sold our nation's leaders on the idea that they could only compete as large multi-nationals. And since becoming large multi-nationals they proven that was a horrible idea.
Whether we think they're going to fail is immaterial. They're going to fail. They have no plans to not fail. If the economy stays bad, they'll fail. If the economy comes back gas prices will soar, and they'll fail.
I say take anti-trust action. Split them up into their individual imprints. Make them actually compete. Have the government take over their pension obligations since it's going to happen anyway.
The only way we're going to have a healthy US auto industry is with more companies pushing more innovation. The Big 3 are a dead end. Nostalgia is nice, but you can't run a country on it.
Very eloquently explained. I've only lived in Michigan for 10 months, and am moving again in December, but the impact of the automobile industry on Detroit's well-being is so intricately connected. It is a sad place to be; with the economy in turmoil, I can only imagine how much more difficult life will be for Michiganders if the Big 3 fail.
I think I understand the point you're making, Tim, but I disagree that this is a matter of nostalgia.
The financial services industry (did you approve of its $700 billion bailout?) has proven to us that our entire economy is a complete and total sham. It's just a big fucking shell game. what a way to run a country!
I hope this isn't about nostalgia for a manufacturing past, but hope for a future of more (definitely smaller-scale and sustainable) domestic industry and manufacturing.
As always, thanks for expressing disagreement here. I do appreciate differing views.
I once (in three years living there) saw a Suburban squeenching its way down a typical serpentine street in suburban Tokyo. Seeing it, I thought about choice and how people like to have the right to own impractical things.
Now I hear people rail about SUVs (A lot. I live in that prius-infested NW after all.) and can't believe all the vitriol. Some folks literally can't fathom that a larger vehicle can make sense for some people, let alone that others are willing to pay for that freedom. Maybe they're buying carbon offsets (I'm thinking that'll be my next money-making endeavor) on the sly, maybe they carry around a bunch of environmentally sound crap, maybe they have enough people in their family that the person-miles per gallon kicks the prius's oddly shaped butt. Or maybe they'd just like to have a choice.
I am jumping on the your-blog-teaches-me-stuff bandwagon to thank you for giving me more food for thought. These recent discussions have opened my eyes to just how fragile (I'm still thinking 2006??!) our neighborhoods can be.
Last thought- I swear- in times of trouble why don't unions pitch in by giving a bit? Like donating the transport for those school supplies, or figuring out a way for the plants to stay open even if it means cutting stuff. Couldn't they let their membership vote on whether to try to save the plants or keep every benefit?
I think the unions have been pitching in by making tons of concessions every time the contracts come up for negotiations over the past few years.
I heard the starting wage for an auto factory worker is now $14 an hour. That's what baristas made in San Francisco when I was living there.
I am definitely as annoyed by certain aspects of the labor movement as I am by management. But I heard on the radio that of the cost of an average Big 3 car only like 13 or 14 percent goes to wages.
I think unions are an easy scapegoat but in reality only a small part of the problem.
Thanks for your post, I grew up in Michigan, but now I'm a foreign car driving yuppie in Miami. I sure do hope we do something to save and change the big three auto companies.
Last night, I got a "made in China" bug and decided to look through all of my son's toys and clothes to see if anything in his room was made in the U.S.A. He has one pair of OshKosh overalls and a couple of Sandra Boyton books, everything else was made somewhere else, with the overwhelming majority of his toys and clothes "made in China".
He has a lot of hip expensive wooden and handmade toys and they are all pretty much "made in China".
How hard would it be to make children's clothes and toys in the United States? Would they be THAT much more expensive?
Unions do that stuff, but remember they are non-profit orgs, they survive off the dues employees pay each month. The people who work for union offices are generally the only paid employees (paid by the union anyway..) Floor Stewards are usually given a small stipend for their service but live off the wage they make from the company they work for.
If it comes down to an issue of choosing concessions to keep jobs in a plant it is always put to a vote by the membership, but let's remember that the direct employee labour cost is only about $1800 of the total cost of a car. The airbag units I used to install on the line used to cost more.
I don't know if you noticed during the bail out hearings, the leader of the UAW was present along with the CEOs to try and convince the gov't to help out.
Whilst I agree with your sentiment regarding the employees of these companies and their families I think there is something missing in your appraisal. I believe the root of the issue here is incomplete globalisation. Our Western economies have become rich and our standards of living increased rapidly since the middle of the last century as our companies made products ever more affordable and our banks provided us with the means (credit) to buy them regardless. Much of the profit has been made at the expense of workers in other countries without the employment protections, standards of living etc enjoyed by us. The problem in my view can only be resolved with global standards in wages, employment conditions etc. This may mean that we in the west have to get used to having less and those in the east get a bit more but until there is no incentive to ship goods halfway around the world because they can be made for a tenth of the cost elsewhere then it will continue to happen. We have to accept that 'sustainable manufacturing' is inevitably more expensive if we wish to continue with our current standard of living.
I worked in the clothing industry in the UK for 20 years and watched as 1000's of jobs were shipped first to North Africa then to Eastern Europe and finally to China and Indonesia. The price of clothing relative to salaries fell dramatically during the same period. We all bought the $10 shirt made by $1 a day Chinese girl working a sixty hour week. If we had carried on buying the $50 shirts made in the UK we might still have a clothing industry that made anything as opposed to just designing it. I guess i'm saying that acting in National interest in a global market won't work, we need joined up global government to act for the good of all.
"We have to accept that 'sustainable manufacturing' is inevitably more expensive if we wish to continue with our current standard of living."
Absolutely. I agree.
I have a feeling that over here people are going to be getting used to a lesser standard if living whether they like it or not.
Hot dog, sir, I wrote my state and national leaders this morning through Congress.org expressing the same stance, but not nearly so well. You have made the reasons and the roots so clear. Thank you.
I think you have such a unique view of this situation being in Detroit and I think if a few more of us were confronted with the visual crumbling of the American economy and workforce we might feel a bit differently. And I feel the same as you in many respects, but think that our shared goal necessitates a different set of actions.
That being said...I am not in favor of bailing out the Big 3. Bailing out the financial firms with no strings attached was a huge mistake, with firms hoarding the cash instead of increasing loans. Handing Detroit a big wad of cash will end in the same mess...no accountability and no change in the shitty status quo of current operations.
The best option in my mind is Chapter 11. But the car makers would like us to believe that instant cash is the only answer and that Chapter 11 leads to Chapter 7 and liquidation.
Chapter 11 will force US automakers to streamline, become more efficient, and ultimately more relevant. US Automakers need help, but not charity in such a way as to cripple them, and us, further.
it's not really the "bailout" that I'm defending as much as I'm protesting the whole, "let them die!" attitude that I keep hearing from all types of people---liberal and conservative alike.
you're not just talking about companies when you say that. you would literally be talking about people, too.
Gah!
Part of the problem with the trucks/SUVs situation was that our gov't encouraged it: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/1...2fri4.html?
_r=1
Light trucks not made in the U.S. have always been subject to a 25% import tariff, except for a short period where the tariff was 8.5%. So the U.S. automakers shifted the bulk of their sales to account for the fact that they made the most profit this way.
If we put more tariffs on imported, manufactured goods (a la things produced en masse in China) and gave more incentive to purchase American-made stuff, I think things would be different. Of course, but then we might not be able to buy $5 t-shirts or $20 radios. God forbid all countries in the world and all of the people in the world get paid the same standard of pay and live the same quality of life.
The sad part about all of this is that we did bail out the financial sector, which accounts for something like 40% of the GDP in this country. FORTY PERCENT! It's a bunch of guys sitting in offices having meetings and pushing paper...and it's 2/5th of our economy. Doesn't that strike anyone as ridiculous?
I used to be a Libertarian. But after the last 2 years, I find myself leaning more and more and more socialist. What's so wrong about taking care of people when the free-market system fails?
(Thanks again for your post. And thanks for the space to rant.)
so well written, Jim.
when i first started reading your blog, it was the amazing images of your family life and your surroundings which struck me.
after a time i began to notice that the image of America that i had, was worlds away from some of those images that you were posting, Jim.
images of abandoned buildings, long forgotten playgrounds and schools, housing estates and run-down neighbourhoods...i was absolutely amazed that a country which seemed so prosperous, could let those places fall into a state of such chaos and disrepair.
i love those images though, they're beautiful, like once great beasts of another time.
I live in Alabama.
I have seen the cotton industry go oversea and thousands of people lose their jobs. not only the planters and gin workers but also the textile industry as well.
I have seen whole towns fold because of this.
They did not get a bailout. We should these three companies?
Fedex employees more people than these three companies combined. These companies are not that big of a deal
The gambling industry has been hit hard too. They employee more people than the WHOLE car industry in this country. Should they be bailed out as well?
jdg-
I do agree with you that it is alarming that people are calling for heads in Detroit when Wall Street was asked nary a question (OK, Kwame's head I understand). Do you think it is a white/blue collar divide? Or maybe just the majority of Americans have no idea of all the hand waving that really goes on in finance? Anyways, Detroit is lucky to have you.
By your own admission, you were a good, though rabid, attorney. You are intelligent, well informed, well spoken and well written. You might be of tremendous service if your voice were heard beyond this blog. I hope the perfect door opens giving you a broader platform of influence. People are responsive to you. I realize Junie and Graham are your first, foremost important work. I've just felt for a long time, that something bigger will come for you via Detroit via your eyes and ears.
What, you mean financial instruments aren't real? What is reality anyway? Oh, you and your object based metaphysics! Are you saying those computer generated securities weren't real?
I'm just kidding. Exactly what you said.
I'm not sure what kind of constraints are to be put on a bailout--the obvious ones would be environmental-- but the short sightedness of this administration in this--to let our MAJOR--almost our only--industrial sector fail simply makes me sick. The inability to learn from facts hitting them straight in the face is what gets me. Fact: This phantom economy is getting us nowhere. We have to make things. This is what we make, this is what this country's been good at.
I don't agree with gearhead mama that they can't do anything innovative, like hybrids. They have to do something innovative! I think they can do something innovative and they must and they will. We so desperately need innovation in government to lead the way.
And the Jobs Bank! Let's keep that going, by all means.
I vehemently do not share your opinion on the wisdom of a large bailout for the auto industry, but I do appreciate the passion with which you express it.
Far better to spend that 50 billion toward infrastructure, universal health care, and a better all-around social safety net. Wealth is better spent on the welfare of the people, not in a very very temporary propping up of dysfunctional companies.
I have eagerly read through all of this, and while I have nothing nearly so carefully considered to contribute (I still see both sides: temporary bailout with questionable future vs. bankruptcy reorganization and questionable future), I'd like to get your (and others') opinion on this only lightly informed perception of mine:
While the American auto industry has taken every opportunity over many years to outsource everything it can for short-sighted profits (to please those selfish financial executives in New York, of course), Toyota and other foreign companies have been building factories and hiring workers here in the U.S. over the same time period. It seems that for better or worse, those companies (or domestic companies able to follow their model) may be where the future lies?
There's no implied answer there, despite how it may sound-- this is a many-headed beast and I'm way too far out of my depth to suggest a miracle cure.
I am a Michigan native, growing up in Holland, I idolized Detroit, Michigan's "Big" city. I would love nothing more than to see the city reinvent itself. But pouring money into companies that are not competitive doesn't make sense.
In no way does the blame rest on the shoulders of the laborers in the factories.
Weekly I'm educated by 70 & 80 year olds on what they beleive are the mistakes that were made by their and my parents' generations. We watched "Who killed the electric car" and they were up in arms. If automakers want money to stay in business they should be willing to look at the needs of the population and the economy, and make a product that is going to be useful to "fixing" our nations problems.
In 2 industries I've worked in, reorganization came from the top down. I've seen many companies and oreganizations have all their employees apply for their current positions, and a lot of management didn't keep their jobs. A number of laborers were given opprotunities to step up into management positions, because they had working knowledge of the industry.
I don't understand how this bailout is working, but I fear the money is not going to trickle down to those who need it, but is only going to cushion the fall for those on top.
This was so wonderfully articulated. I am appreciating the different voices in your comments. However, It is telling about the morals/mores in this country that we have some who look at the auto industry's problems as being 'union-based'. If the unions weren't so greedy, the companies would still be profitable, etc. Teachers get the same bashing. My contract includes paying for a percentage of my healthcare that will top out this contract at 10%. When we are up for renewal in a few years, I know we'll have to bump it up. That is ok. I love my job. It's not about the money, but I need the money and the healthcare for my family. I'm lucky, for now. We may have to lay off 20 teachers next year if NYS's budget continues to tank.
We can bail out Wall Street, but Main Street and manufacturing, the blue collar workers who built this country get nothing...and urban or rural schools will continue to rot.
Dutch, this is incredible. The comments are incredible. YOU are... okay. I'll stop. I know you can't stand that.
Amen, brother! I just moved out of Money Make'n Manhattan....... and couldn't agree w/ you more. Well done.
Very well said, in fact one of the best arguments for bailing out the auto industry that I've heard. You've helped me to firm up my thoughts on this one. The American economy is just not sustainable. Do you remember, back in the 80's, the pride that people felt in American workmanship? There were all those Buy American campaigns. What happened to them? When did we decide to stop making things?
Very well said. I had a conversation about this with a friend just this morning. I think it's a little clearer to those of us in Michigan who are seeing first hand what havoc the problems with the auto industry are bringing down on the "regular people." We cannot be just a service based economy, we need to produce something.
unrelated things i suppose, but they are all on my mind today, and more so after reading your post:
my dad works in the auto industry, though not in detroit. six people at his work were laid off today.
my husband, who does not work in the auto industry but with things much less tangible, has just lost his job. as of monday, we will be living in a 20-yr-old single-wide in my dad's backyard until my hubs finds a new job and we pay down some of the debt we're about to incur.
my grandparents both worked in a textile mill for johnson & johnson for many, many years. after my grandfather retired, he repaired spindles for the mill until they stopped using them. now that building has been converted into offices.
I've lived this. I saw my manufacturing job along with 1200 others get shipped off to Mexico. The town I lived and grew up in all but disappeared. I didn't want to leave, but I had to in order to survive. I went from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the big cities of Texas, and it was a huge adjustment. When I would come back home for visits, it would be horrible to walk in to a convenience store and see one of my ex co-workers working there, just getting by on minimum wage. I don't know what happened in this country. Why does this happen so much??? Why does our government not see what they are doing to us? We want to work, we want to build. And you are right Jim, it's to the point that we don't make anything. I couldn't even find a damn Christmas card that wasn't made in China. Since the day I was forced out into the cold by money hungry bastards, I've learned to adjust. But I always have that fear in my gut of being jobless, homeless. I have become very self-sufficient and I do make my own clothes, I do my own home repairs, and I'm a big believer in trash-to-treasure. If I can find a piece of junk that was made in the U.S.A., then I feel like I've hit the motherlode. We build things fine in the U.S., so I'm all for the government bailing the auto industry out. I don't want to see another town or city to suffer like my hometown, and I especially don't want another soul to feel the desperation I felt when I lost my job.
What your post (and site in general) eloquently points out is that "Detroit" isn't just a shorthand term for the auto industry, it's a real place populated by real Americans. I haven't heard many mentions of that in the national discussion. Let "them" die means let "us" die--give up on us; we were going down anyway.
Such wonderful words, and discussion. I think unless you do have a personal connection it is easy to dismiss the fallout that will hurt so many working class families.
For me, of course as a former Michigander, it is personal. It's hard to watch my dad worry that the things he has worked hard for will disappear, including his job, since his plant is closing next year. At 57 he is now unsure of where his life will take him. He grew up a poor Mexican kid from Texas, and came to Michigan as a migrant worker. He clawed his way into the middle class and gave my brothers and sisters and I a better life. It's hard not to give the Big 3 and the opportunities they once provided the credit for that. It's hard to see a way of life disappear.
Well said, Jim.
(and we hit the urban craft fair too, and bought Christmas gifts. Until both children had a simultaneous meltdown and we had to beat it out of there fast).
And does Wood havve any sewing tips? I got a machine last Christmas and am still figuring it out, but the fair inspired me to do more stuff.
Wow. As a native Clevelander who's seen more than my fair share of urban decay, I still hadn't really looked at the American manufacturing industry from this perspective.
And a timely commentary on creating! Now I'm rethinking of doing some Christmas creating instead of Christmas shopping.
Wonderfully eloquent. I couldn't agree more. Thanks for the best written piece I have read on the subject so far. This should be required reading for the idiots in Washington.
Yes!
I don't think our economy would be better off in the long run with less competition, either.
Hey, Former-Detroiter-Turned-Pacific Northwesterner here.
Just wanted you to know that the majority of us over here know how important the auto industry is to our country and agree that it should be saved and swiftly. When Boeing hurts, the whole region hurts here. I can't imagine what would happen to a severly economically ailing region like Detroit.
I know it's easy to assign a scoffing, Prius-driving face to a region when you feel like your hometown is underfire. Please understand that we get it, and I we're pulling for Detroit.
Who knows? Perhaps GM will pull it together and revolutionize the hybrid engine, generating thousands of jobs and pacifying the demand for low carbon emmission of every ironic sweater vest-wearing yuppy in the Western hemisphere. Then we'll all be happy, right?
that was an excellent post...really spot on. thank you so much for sharing.
Forsooth, this is some fine writing.
When the kidlets get older, would you consider wading into politics?
I agree with a lot of what you say-letting those companies die is pretty stupid but my personal opinion is that they should also require them to renegotiate those union contracts and force higher efficiency standards as a pre-condition of the bailouts. The same way I think the wall street bailout was necessary, but that the entire body of corporate law has to change in order to punish CEOs as much as they reward them.
However, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Silicon valley companies don't make anything or that the entire economy is a sham. You have an excellent point on Goldman Sachs (my boyfriend is actually an i-banker at Merrill and I routinely mock him for the same-shuffling wealth instead of creating it). But honestly, how do microchips and lines of code that make airplanes and computers and hospital instruments run and work and help people count as nothing? Most of those jobs might produce a product less tangible than a hunk of metal, but that doesn't make them a sham. They do, you know, make most of the world run-and actually, while the management of said companies might be all fluff and sales, the actual scientists and engineers who produce these technologies do have a technical background such that they could produce more tangible objects for you if they really wanted to (it might take some practice to get back into the shop). The guys who developed man-made diamonds are scientists who built their machine in their garage. Pharmaceuticals for instance-are those any less "real" because they're not produced with good old fashioned sweat?
Even the finance dorks do have something of a role to play-let's say you re-structure an organization such that another wealthier party controls enough of a share in the company such that they'll finance the operation's high overhead manufacturing, leaving the company to spend most of their money on R & D. Isn't that wealth produced.
Now, do the finance dorks need to be better regulated because every 8 years on the dot they get up to shenanigans? Yes, absolutely.
I get that your post is probably a visceral reaction to the sort of incendiary remarks you might hear on talk radio and as I said, I agree with much of it. That said, as much as we are intertwined with the people who produce "things"-so are we with the individuals whose contributions may seem less tangible or weenie-ish.
Oh yeah, btw, sorry to sound so illiterate but the keyboard on this computer is for shit.
It's wonderful that we have folks like you, Jim, to put human stories behind abstractions like "The Big Three". Your writing is magnificent as always.
I think the rest of what I have to say will find less agreement here. 
If it really was a case of spending $25 Bil to save the auto industry I don't think I'd have much problem with it. The fact is they've had years to do it, years to stop being so short-sighted, and they've failed. There's no reason to think that will change.
Our willingness to let poorly run companies die is one of the reasons we are as rich as we are. (And no, our "entire economy" isn't lies. We really are an efficient, mostly well-regulated country. With an emphasis on "mostly".) It's tragic that the workers are punished for the bosses' errors, and I wish we had stronger retraining programs in this country for folks out of work in a shrinking industry.
As Buffett often says, "you only find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out." The Big Three ain't wearing no clothing, and they have not been for many years now. Why toss $25 bil more down the pit?
Oh, and to answer, I did not support the $700 bil financial bailout as it was first conceived (as a way to buy crappy assets) but do support how it has actually been used, as a way to buy preferred shares in financial institutions. Frankly it doesn't really matter though, just because someone thinks finance was too important to allow it to collapse doesn't mean they have to support bailing out other industries out of some kind of fairness.
On the subject of buying local, I think local will come back in a big way if we properly paid for the damage carbon emissions are doing. I'm all for a carbon tax, it would be much more effective and efficient then a hacked together cap-and-trade policy. Sadly a large part of the country would never get behind something with the word "tax" in it.
monkey said:
"I get that your post is probably a visceral reaction to the sort of incendiary remarks you might hear on talk radio and as I said, I agree with much of it. That said, as much as we are intertwined with the people who produce "things"-so are we with the individuals whose contributions may seem less tangible or weenie-ish."
++
Sorry to post again, but after reading the posts about the need to create, and spending the summer of 2007 in the Suburbs of Denver, I think we (as a nation) need to be selective about what we create, and we need to take better care of what we have. As a biologist it bother me everytime I see a new subdivision or golf course (gag) take over more farm land or natural areas. Jim documents all these beautiful buildings falling to ruin at the hands of scrappers, while the suburbs are full of clone houses without charm. With all the talk of "green" why aren't the wonderful relics being recycled?
Sorry for the tangent.
This is a very well written post and I both agree and disagree. A bail-out will only postpone the inevitable. I live in Italy and we have helped FIAT more times than I can count. To me, the relevant issues are education & training (which you mentioned) pensions, healthcare and unemployment benefits. It would also help if the government would start financing infrastructure and green technology projects, which would create jobs.
Amen, Jim. With 1 in 10 jobs in this country tied to the auto industry it is inexplicable to me how we could just let it die, while at the same time bailing out the banks that caused this crisis. Good grief!
If the Big 3 go, so do the suppliers. Toyota makes vehicles in the states (all but 3 models, I believe) and they use local resources. They might have some cash still but do not have the cash to float these suppliers. The price of steel will go up. It will affect the entire industry and beyond, not just the Big 3.
Like you said, it's more intertwined than we ever imagined. We can continue to point blame or we can do something about it. Putting concessions on a bailout must be realistic.
Toyota stopped production at the San Antonio plant for many months. During that time, they still paid the workers and sent them out into the community to improve parks and other public things that often go unnoticed. People can say all they want about how foreign car companies are evil (my dad thinks so) but the foreign companies don't seem so narrow minded to me.
As a knitter and sewer, I also agree there is pride in being able to make something whether or not it's useful.
Thank you for the post. As I have been listening to all of the opinions on the radio about this issue, my thoughts have continually come back to, "I wonder what Jim thinks." I'm glad that you indulged my curiosity. Very well written.
okay, so many amazing comments since I last checked. I'll address those I think I can add something to, and if I don't address a comment it's not because I didn't think it was awesome. pretty much all these comments have been awesome.
first, tabletop_joe: I certainly did not intend to disparage all pacific northwesteners with this post (I only brought it up because of one guy I heard ranting on NPR) I have a great deal of respect for the region and consider Portland to be the nicest big city in the country.
monkey, you are right on so many levels, starting with the fact that this was written largely as a visceral reaction to the callousness I was hearing on NPR. that said, I sort of stand by what I was saying about "making" things. yes, the occupations you mention certainly do a lot of extremely important things. perhaps in this postpost industrial world, they actually do the most important things. but too many of the amazing and important things that engineers and scientists invent are manufactured elsewhere. there are very few industries left where that's not the case. cars. airplanes. paper. (some) furniture. large appliances. there are a lot of engineers and designers working for these companies that still manufacture their products here in the united states---my friend is an engineer who develops, builds, and maintains huge toilet paper machines for kimberly clark. consider how many talented engineers work for the Big Three---the ones who have spent years in development of the 100+ mpg Chevy Volt (set to debut in 2010 if the company is still around) even in the face of SO MANY people ignorantly claiming that these companies are doing nothing to advance the technology of environmentally-friendly fuel efficient vehicles. what if Apple had been around for 100 years, essentially singlehandedly established the middle class in America, paid generations of American workers a decent wage, paid generations of American families health-care benefits and pensions, and produced a product that for many years people actually loved. imagine if 1 in 10 Americans' livelihoods were somehow connected to Apple Computers. now imagine if Apple came to the government and said we need a LOAN so we can keep paying our employees through the end of the year. if you don't give us the loan, our very future as a company is clouded. Apple sure as shit would get its loan, and no one would complain because it's Apple, and everyone loves Apple! if Apple had a dick, people would be lined up for blocks just for the chance to suck it.
and Apple doesn't even manufacture its products in the United States.
It's the vitriol against these companies which HAVE built the middle class, have been around for a hundred years, and have paid American workers a decent wage along with health care benefits for their families and pensions for their retirees. where is the love for these companies? Christ, they built the cars that your great-grand-dad felt your great-grandma up in out by the lover's lane in 1923! They built the car that Steve McQueen used to fly over that hill in San Francisco! They created the minivan! They're building a beautiful 100+ MPG ELECTRIC CAR! Why are people acting like they've done nothing but drag on our economy and shit on our faces for the past twenty years?
so that brings me to dynastar. your comments are well taken. I don't know that I "support" the bailout as much as I just don't like the idea of the "free market" (whatever that means---it seems to be a one-way street when you consider the tariffs placed on the exports of our cars) taking its course and letting this last remaining MAJOR industry that still manufactures its products on American soil collapse. this idea of a "blank check" to the auto industry is prevalent but I don't think it's accurate. what if any bailout were written in such a way that these companies had to make tough, smart changes that would actually make the businesses better in the long run? Sure, a blank check would just prolong the inevitable, but why not use this "bailout" as an opportunity for more oversight, regulation, and the changes needed to make this industry better?
Amen and amen and amen. That could not have been better stated. I wish a few congressmen could take note, you know? Attach to a petition and I'll bet you'd collect several thousands of signatures in a heartbeat.
I'm only bothered by the fact that GM and Ford upper management took private planes to the hearings to beg for assistance (an expense of $20K each). How about lowering upper management's multi-million dollar salaries and selling the private planes before asking for a handout?
I have always felt pretty far removed from what goes on at the national level. Here in Montana, we are somewhat sheltered from the storm. However, this definitely is affecting our local area too. And maybe that 1 in 10 American jobs is a fact. The Stillwater Mine is laying off several employees and if things don't pick up, there is a potential for the mine to shut down completely. They provide materials to make catalytic converters. This is one of the highest paying employers in the state, and they pay 40% of the taxes in Stillwater County. Talk about a major slam to our local industry if something like that happens.
Personally, I have been torn on the subject of bailouts. I feel, like a lot of people, that you shouldn't reward those that couldn't plan their business well and smaller companies would never see a bailout. But when you see businesses go down that have such a far reaching effect, you can see why there should be someone that steps in and corrects things.
you know, I was waiting for your opinions about this. I was listening on NPR and wondering what Sweet Juniper thought. You have some really good points. I'm not in favor of bailing out an industry that has gotten it so wrong, but I am in favor of helping the people of Detroit who have been affected by this for so long. Thanks for putting a human perspective on the real problems.
meredyth (and anyone else who has made similar comments or feels similarly) could you elaborate on why you feel this is an industry "that has gotten it so wrong They're one of the few actually still MAKING things in this country, so I feel there have least been doing *something* right (lobbying?).
Is it the SUV thing? Is it the quality thing? What exactly is it that has brought you to this widely-held conclusion? (and I don't mean google the talking points, I mean what is it that you as an American and a consumer feel these companies have gotten so wrong).
I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm just genuinely interested.
Thank you so much for this. It's beautiful and inspiring. Listening to the vitriol against the auto industry has upset me. I'm not sure why people are so angry.
I don't think people have ANY idea how big the ripple effect of this will be. Not only will the last person have to turn the lights off when they leave the state, the devastation won't stop at Michigan. This is huge. It will be the death knell for a city and a state already gasping for breath.
My friend said her job would be safe because she is a teacher. Umm. No. Not when families have to move and the school numbers drop. Or doctors when the patient numbers drop. Or the stores and restaurants that will have no one in them.
I'm scared for Michigan. I have family in the Big 3 so I know a little of the ins and outs of what is happening and I'm optimistic that they can pull themselves out of this hole.
Thanks for the response, Dutch.
Do you realize that your comment threads are the most civil and well-written on the entire internet?
The whole Auto industry dilemma is upsetting.
On one hand I think that the companies have been making a poor product for many years and deserve to do poorly as a result.
I personally abandoned my "domestic only" car buying when I did nothing but pay for repairs on these disposable cars. After that I purchased a German made VW that had not cost me a penny in 8 years, and just purchased a Japanese made Mazda. I have to say I was pleased with the quality of these vehicles over others I had purchased in the past (and I have gone through a lot of cars - and owned at least one of each of the Big 3 at some point).
On the other hand - so many other industries, towns and people are affected by the poor decisions made by the Big 3 and I find it disgusting that their lives will be impacted due crap decisions made by men who get ridiculous bonuses each year. 20K to take a private plane to a meeting? Seriously at this point the bastards should be flying Southwest stand-by....
Also, watching what is happening in the American economy (and now trickling into Canada) makes me realize how FALSE the whole economy is. A total sham.
I grew up in Michigan in a 'GM family'. Even though this industry provided a comfortable living for our family of four, I am still against a bailout. (I was also against the bailout of Wall Street.) I saw first-hand how the UAW worked--legalized blackmail, which essentially bled the industry dry. High hourly rates, all encompassing health insurance, and retirement packgages that were astronomical compared to just about any other industry could not be sustained forever. The union bosses forced workers to decrease production in the plants in order to avoid increased quotas. If a line could be run efficiently with 4 workers, the union would insist on 6 workers. My father spent most of the year 'laid off' for 10 years before he retired. This allowed him to collect unemployment payments, while younger employees without seniority could keep their jobs and work overtime. There was a time in our history when unions served a useful purpose. That purpose has evolved over the years into something that drives industries into the ground. There is, however, enough blame to go around. Management has screwed up for years. They have not kept pace with the innovations and quality of foreign-made cars (whatever foreign-made means anymore...) I have the ability to buy GM cars at a deep discount (another union 'perk' for relatives of employees and retirees), but choose to buy non-GM autos for their superior quality and gas mileage.
I do not wish for the U.S. auto industry to 'die', but I do not believe loosely throwing money at an industry that is poorly managed and controlled by the union will save the industry. Just look how the upper management chose to travel to Washington this week to plead their case---3 men on a private jet. That is certainly telling. It doesn't give me much hope that management plans to tighten their belts and do what is best for the industry.
Wow! Thanks! You really gave me a different perspective. I never thought about it that way. Thanks for taking the time to explain it so clearly and thoughtfully. I confess I was one of those people thinking (to myself) the auto industry in America screwed themselves by not making more fuel efficient, environmentally practical cars, let them go and hopefully new car companies will fill the vacuum. Now I see that if that happens, the companies that fill the vacuum won't necessarily fill it here in America. So my new wish is for us to help the big 3 out, but to encourage them to do it in a way that considers the planet, economically and environmentally. Thanks again for your insight.
thanks for this post. I've felt very conflicted over this issue. Recognizing that I don't understand the complexities of it all, I keep thinking that I wished I knew your thoughts on the subject. I'd be way more inclined to "bailout" the US auto industry (mostly because of the people they employ) than the financial sector of the US. The banking/money industry has made me sick throughout this whole thing. First by being such greedy whores and now after they've received BILLIONS of dollars in free money and they're still hoarding it. At least Big Three would use the cash to pay people's salaries and produce a product.
I've been reading your blog for a couple of years now, but this is the first time I've ever commented.
I grew up in Indiana about five miles away from the Chicago Ford plant Aleks mentioned above. About 20 years ago, that region was decimated by the closure of several steel mills that had been the lifeblood of the local economy for many years, and it has still not recovered from that massive loss. Poverty and underemployment has now become a multi-generational issue as a result, and we as a nation really should take the lessons learned from areas like this to heart.
I just don't think that most people really understand the economic catastrophe that will result from closure of the Big 3 if some sort of bailout does not occur. I've read recently that somewhere around 3 million jobs will be lost if the Big 3 close down, and hundreds of thousands of retirees (many of whome are not yet eligible for Medicare) will lose their pensions and medical insurance as well. There is simply no way that our economy can absorb such a massive loss of jobs, and the impact to Michigan's economy will be too horrendous for us to imagine.
We simply can't afford to stand back and say "whatever happens, happens, they deserve whatever they get." Because we will all suffer as a result. If done correctly, we could turn this problem around and reshape it into an opportunity to reinvent the US auto industry. With proper oversight and enough incentives, the Big 3 could be transformed into an industry that once again dreams big, and innovates even better than the competition, while still providing its employees with sustainable wages and benefits.
Interesting post. My step-mother, who grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, expressed the same sentiments to me when I visited with her last week. After hearing her opinion on it, I definitely changed my thinking because you're right: what happens to these big employers affects the rest of the country as a whole.
To those of you who are pointing out that there are larger employers in this country: yes, of course that's true. But will FedEx employ the people that GM/Ford/Chrysler lay off? No. So to point out that there are larger employers and use that as an argument against a bailout is illogical.
Jim, you asked about why people feel that these companies have gotten it wrong. I come from a family that generally only buys American (and German). My first two cars were Olds', with the second being a 2002 Olds Alero. I had more problems with that can than I can even recount. It spent more than 120 days in the shop for non-routine maintenance during the four year span I owned it. So, from my perspective and experience with American cars, quality is a huge issue.
Furthermore, the SUVs are also a huge issue for me. Yes, the SUVs were what kept selling and so I don't fault them for continuing to sell and market SUVs - that's simply capitalist. Anyone who says that they should have stopped making those cars when people were clamoring to buy them is wrong from a capitalistic perspective.
However, there was no reason that those companies couldn't, or shouldn't, have seen the writing on the wall with respect to the price of gas and oil, beginning in about 2001. They certainly had the opportunity and money to develop smaller, fuel-efficient cars. They just chose not to do so. That's a lack of foresight that has nothing to do with the continued marketing/manufacturing of SUVs.
Finally, I live in Wisconsin. We have a lot of people in this state that are dependent on the auto industry. The GM plant down in Janesville just closed. It employed more than 1500 people who now have no jobs just in time for the holidays. The situation down there is grim. So I see, every day, the effects of the auto industry's lack of foresight and folly.
Maybe a bailout is the right answer; I don't know. What I do know is that this country is hurting, and that the problems in the financial sector contributed to the problems that the Big Three now face. So to support the bailout of the companies in the financial sector, but oppose the one for the Big Three makes no sense to me. If they do bail them out, there should be conditions and strings attached - just as there were when other bailouts happened in the auto industry.
I think what I agree with most, Jim, is what I think (maybe?) underlies this very well-written rant-that at some level, growth should be real. What the finance industry does, and I swear they do it every 8 years on the dot and NO ONE ever learns their lesson, is basically create "wealth on paper" by manipulating and shuffling money through complicated schemes and legal instruments, thus creating the illusion of beneficial economic activity. This is usually done through complicated credit instruments or puffed up IPOs or whatever...they're very creative and it's a cycle, just as much as the recessions are part of a bigger cycle (I have a blog post from 2 years ago on blogspot more or less predicting the current meltdown...when I was in my 2nd year of practicing law...geez, if a dumbassed 27 year old can see it, why can't all the ivy league grads at Lehman and Goldman?) That? Is f*cking parasitic and needs to stop and they ought to be put to work doing what they should be doing-helping companies organise and reorganise such that they actually produce real growth-by which I mean, thinking up solutions to help free up costs for R & D, hire more people, and create real jobs. This is totally possible-the example I mentioned above is actually a real deal my boyfriend structured that got announced about a month ago and I'm proud of him when he uses his brain to come up with real solutions like that. However, too often it seems to me that the finance guys just come up with what amounts to a chi-chi ponzi scheme.
As far as manufacturing goes-my personal opinion is that the biggest single factor that will drive manufacturing "local" again is the rising cost of energy, which would make goods produced far overseas too expensive to construct and transport. This is likely to be inevitable until and unless they come up with some extremely cheap and renewable form of energy. That said-I see nothing wrong with a shrinking manufacturing sector in this country-provided, and this is only based on the following, that we invest in our infrastructure, especially education, to transition our population to jobs that require more skills than the old manufacturing jobs of yore. There's no reason to look down on our industrial past-but I do think that the future of the US lies in biotech, medical research & and research and development for environmental and computer technologies. We can't force the manufacturing of everything here-but I do think that every child in the United States deserves the chance, and is most likely intellectually capable, of being part of that highly educated workforce. And I think that while everyone should know how to wield a lathe saw or whatever, I do think that we ought to hope that every child graduates from high school understanding the quadratic equation.
Also, seriously, other than some milton friedman worshipping academics, I truly don't know anyone in finance (and I know quite a few people) who really think that NOW is the time to let GM, Ford & Chrysler go bankrupt. Almost everyone I know thinks they ought to precondition bailout on increasing gas efficiency standards.
This is all kind of a simplified version of what I believe but you know, overly long blog comment and all of that.
Great post, though!
First off: Amen! Great post and good comments. Not sure how this fits in, but a few years ago a car wreck forced me into having to buy a car ASAP. I didn't have the cash and wasn't comfortable with getting a big loan (I'm un-American in my attitude toward debt) so under duress I ended up with an eight year old Saturn sedan. I was worried and dismayed. What kind of potential piece-of-garbage-gas-guzzler had I wound up with? But lo and behold! This car gets 40 mpg and two years later (now with over 120K miles on it) hasn't needed any major repair yet. Point being: Fuel efficient and reliable American-made cars do exist. But they aren't widely advertised and nobody seems to want them and/or there is not enough profit to be made on them. Priorities are out of order.
As always, very well said.
dude, i haven't even finished the comments yet, but this?:
"if Apple had a dick, people would be lined up for blocks just for the chance to suck it." made me laugh so hard it woke up the bean who was snacking his way through a vax-induced nap/coma...
i promise to comment later, but suffice it to say i agree w/ you 100%- off to get the pnut from school...
YES. Could not agree more in any way whatsoever. I hope this message becomes more mainstream. Please, let it become more mainstream.
Very well said. This sheds new light on the issue for me. I'll be passing this on...
You're right, they are one of the few industries still making things. And I don't mean to denegrate that fact. They, and all the manufacturing industries that have built this country deserve to be recognized for what they contribute. Especially those who work there. What I meant by saying they've gotten it so wrong was that as other auto manufacturers have become innovative and worked to become more progressive, like Honda who recognized the need for smaller, high quality vehicles years ago, my perception is that these companies have continued to force feed the consumer giant SUVs. And I know, it's what the buyers wanted. And I know that Toyota came out with the Tundra to compete, and that even the best cars have a long way to go. I understand that. But I think they also have a responsibility, to the country, to their employees, to the consumer even, to try at least to be on the cutting edge of technology, instead of at the back playing catch up when they realize that more fuel efficient vehicles are also of high importance. These CEOs, who are in charge of the direction the companies go in, should be people who are intelligent enough to at least be aware of the warning signs and start taking action. I don't know how easy that is to do with such major industries. Maybe impossible. But now that they are in trouble I do hope they are given the time to turn into an industry that works progressively. Maybe I'm blindly optimistic here. But I also think that by transforming these industries that DO make things into industries that can make them greener or more efficient we will be able to keep these jobs for longer.
That's why, as a taxpayer and consumer I feel they've gotten it wrong. I want Detroit and all the areas that depend on it to be revitalized and to become the beautiful city I know it once was. I think your photographs show its potential just as much as they show the destruction. I want to see the change come, I just want to see it happen in a responsible, conscientious way. If a bailout can make that happen then I will be glad we've done it.
the more and more I read about this, the more I'm beginning to think people simply want to punish the car companies for what they have done wrong in the past (note the lack of any talk of the Volt by those libs opposed to the bridge loans).
And yet while seeking to punish these companies for the mistakes of the past, there is little or no gratitude or nostalgia for the amazing things they have contributed to our nation's history and culture. I'm not saying these companies are worth saving because of their history, but why should we only remember (and punish) them for the recent negative aspects of their history?
I think we agree that the future of these companies must involve painful change. And I think we can also agree that guiding a behemoth corporation towards that change can't be easy no matter how many undeserved millions the CEOs are paid. Again, I am not defending or really advocating a bailout. I'm trying to combat the strange animosity and even perverse joy I'm seeing in those who would stand by and watch this industry fail---particularly among progressives.
AAAAmen--- well thought, well written and well said-- maybe we need you in Washington
A fan in Toledo
Who killed the electric car?
not the engineers designing this:
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/
(a car that will be built inside detroit city limits---if the company even exists in 2010).
Jenny Holzer sad "People who don't work with their hands are parasites."
Jim,
The auto industry's problems are not just recent history. The UAW has been a big part of the problem since the 30s. Genius of the American auto industry, Henry Ford, fought to keep the union out of his company. He had the right idea. Look at the wonderful Job Banks program the union brokered that forced 12,000 auto workers to sit and do crossword puzzles, read the newspaper, and watch videos for $31/hr plus benefits. That is the UAW at work--draining the industry. Read the 2005 Detroit News article about this program:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/auto.../A01-
351179.htm
The tax payers cannot be expected to offer up money blindly without solid information on how it will be used and how it will be paid back. We can't trust the management, and we can't trust the union. It seems that neither one would use a bailout wisely.
Let me tell everyone first hand how this will trickle down faster than a flood if the big 3 fail. On Friday Lear Corp shut down 80% of their world headquarters in Southfield. They are all laid off until Jan. This is a major Tier 1, Fortune 500 company that is worldwide. One of the top 3 auto suppliers in the world. My husband is a highly specialized test engineer for them. They were swamped with work. Yes they do a lot of work for the big 3, but they also do a lot for Toyota, Hundai, Kia, Mercedes/Daimler, etc. 3 days after their shut down the effects are already be felt by Toyota. Watch any news and you'll see that Toyota is now hurting because they can't get their parts/needs from Lear.
On the local level, drive down Telegraph at lunch time and notice how all the restaurants have plenty of room, even the fast food places look empty without all the Lear employees that frequented them. A lot of these little independent restaurants depend on the lunchtime crowd to stay afloat. Suddenly lay off 10's of thousands of people and who will eat there?
This is reality. Michigan will be ground zero of the world wide economic collapse if the big 3 fail.
yes, yes we should save them.
Amen on the best articulated argument for the bridge loans I've heard yet. I'm a Detroiter and I look around at how we're suffering now and I can't even comprehend how bad it will get if the big 3 go under. My husband lost his job at a supplier for the big 3 a year ago and still hasn't been able to find anything steady/permanent/full-time so we just keep tightening our belts in hopes for better times. Unfortunately, I don't see those better times coming. Thanks for writing this. Seriously.
On another note--to AmyinMotown, if you want very good sewing lessons, check out Haberman's Fabrics in Royal Oak. Lessons for all skill levels, affordable, and very useful.
I don't have anything to offer on the big 3 bail out but thanks for sticking up for vocational ed. My husband teaches in a "manufacturing, production and technology" academy (in California of all places). Sometimes I worry their won't be a domestic manufacturing industry to employ these kids but mostly I"m happy they're learning a useful skill that could turn into an honest job. College isn't for everyone and heck knows we need more people who can actually MAKE something.
Important for everyone to remember that the Detroit car manufacturers make something. It's not ersatz, it's real.
When we were in France this summer, there was one aspect of their economy that really impressed us. For the most part, aside from the odd Jeep or PT Cruiser or flash German car, the French drive French cars. They drink French wine. They eat French cheese. While that makes economic sense, it makes them a little uni-dimensional in other ways. This is just one of many observations, but economically part of their success.
Yes, great post. As so many have mentioned above, your reminder that many people’s lives are attached to the companies in question is greatly appreciated. The other point that stands out is how few of us are making things these days, although I see hope in the recent renaissance of making and crafting.
For what its worth, here are my hastily composed thoughts about recent events and the possible bailouts:
The past seven years I have watched in complete disbelief as the median price of homes bolted beyond the three-times-the-median-income standard. I was equally amazed at the salaries that those in real estate, the mortgage industry, finance, etc. were able to receive despite not creating any true added value. For example, with the technology tools that we have at our disposal for listing and searching for properties and the fact that homes were virtually selling themselves, what justified the commissions that real estate agents were taking? (For the record, I am a teacher and artist/crafter.)
We should not have bailed out the finance industry, at least not under the terms that we did. The finance industry was nothing more than a debatably legal Ponzi scheme and gambling house that was tied directly to the rest of the economy. Now we’re supposed to believe that the same so-called experts that created the mess are supposed to be able to fix it.
If we bail out the auto industry, and I believe we should in some way, the terms should include breaking up the companies into smaller, more personal (read human-sized) companies that can innovate more rapidly to keep up with a rapidly changing world. Why not have some of those plants retool to build trains and light rail cars and such rather than having to import them each time a city improves its public transportation system? Or what about bikes and motorcycles and scooters? A restructuring might also include some worker-run factories like those that emerged after Argentina’s last major crisis or some democratically run companies like Ricardo Semler’s Semco in Brasil. At a bare minimum, the auto industry should no longer be allowed to lobby against higher fuel efficiency standards, public transportation projects, etc.
As part of any restructuring, rescue, or bankruptcy, the government will likely end up taking on the legacy costs of the Big Three’s retirement and healthcare commitments. We must also consider the fact that some of our inability to compete globally (and not just in the auto industry) is likely due to our lack of a national healthcare program. Too much of the money we spend on our current system is siphoned off by insurance companies that once again add little to no value. I am also convinced that our lack of a national healthcare program stifles innovation by limiting entrepreneurial endeavors to those that are already wealthy, those that have no preexisting health conditions, and those that are willing to gamble without health insurance. This is also a freedom issue as it also leaves many with no other option than to work for someone else. (I say that as part of a family that thankfully does not have any preexisting conditions.)
All that talk a few years ago about privatizing Social Security bothered me and not just because they kept using the Chilean system as a shining example even though so many Chileans are upset with the system. (More disclosure, I am married to a Chilean.) Just think about where we would be if privatization had happened and a large proportion of that money had been invested in the same markets that have now imploded. It seems to me that we should be finding ways to strengthen the safety net that we have and while I am sure it is an unpopular suggestion, we younger generations must also admit that since our life expectancy is so much longer than it was for Americans when the system was created, we’ll have to work more years to make the system sustainable. (Side note: Also, a possible long-term solution might be that instead of taking our retirement at the end of our careers, we should take it one year at a time every ten years or so (sometimes coinciding with unplanned unemployment). That way no one ends up taking twenty or thirty year retirements that cost more than they pay into the system. A retirement spread out over the years would also allow us to enjoy some activities many can't do when they are old.)
Despite all of these problems, like you, I see our situation as a great opportunity for change. We’ll need to change our consumption habits no matter what happens, so we might as well think clearly about what we value and the direction we want to move as a society. Localizing more of our economic activity would probably make life better in other ways as well – there’s something to be said about being able to go visit the source of your food and the creator of your belongings.
If America cannot have an auto industry, what sort of industry can we have? As others have said above, the move away from manufacturing has gone on for years. (OK, this has gone on for generations.)
The manufacturers of the machine tools in the abandoned class rooms are, for the most part, out of business. Machine tools are made in Japan. The Japanese are world leaders in production of machine tools...Someone mentioned the closed down steel mills, and we know that steel mills have closed across the country.
People vote with their wallets.
Where will it all stop? Maybe it will stop after the entire world has the same standard of living.
Just heard Jim Cramer on Today Show say that the auto companies represent the two most despised groups in America, "more than the Wall Street Gangsters", to use his term. Namely: Labor and
Capital.
I live in Metro Detroit. It is news to me.
More despised than the Wall Street Gangsters? Holy Jeezus! Who knew?
Where does this emotion come from?
I can understand why some people might balk at what they perceive as a 'Bailout' as though we are giving away our tax dollars but why in the world would you despise any of these workers or even the CEOs?
Jim,
I have to agree with you about America needing to have a strong manufacturing base. Lately, the gov't and others seem to be proponents of only service type industries.
My husband is head of manufacturing for one of the few textile companies remaining in the Carolinas. We are fortunate that his company has found innovative ways to produce and market high performance fabrics like Kevlar and Nomex. The Carolinas lost hundreds of thousands of jobs here to China, all in the name of "free" trade. Of course, it is no where near free trade as China blatantly floats their currency, so as to make any of our products too expensive for them to import. When I worked in marketing for a major textile company, we had a slogan that said, "If you woke up this morning, you were touched by US textiles." Today, you would be hard pressed to be able to do it.
US legislation alone killed the textile industry. I hope it doesn't do the same to the auto industry.
And you are correct - all that Carolina textile machinery went on a container to China and other parts of Asia.
I agree FNF--- where does the emotion come from?
it reminds me of the 1980s and the whole Ronald Reagan "black welfare moms in Cadillacs" mythology that really got both liberals and conservatives riled up. people really hate the idea of someone getting something for nothing if they're not getting it themselves. so the mythology of UAW worker extravagances that CANNOT be real anymore (if they ever were) rear their head, and in the echo chamber these lies are repeated until people become calloused and downright cruel.
what these people don't understand is that this isn't just about Rosie the mythological lazy UAW cross-word puzzle-doing six-figure-salary-earning riveter. the auto companies have been hemorrhaging those jobs for years. this is about the guy who opened a restaurant near the auto plant who employs 30 people and has had to lay 10 of them off because there aren't as many customers since the most recent round of layoffs. it's the other small business owners and the handymen and contractors who don't have any work now that no one can afford to pay their mortgage let alone fix up their properties. it's about the non-union engineers working hard to design the Chevy Volt or the designers working on the new Mustang and the secretaries who work at the office buildings and all the people who work for the companies all over the country who supply auto parts for the Big Three.
Yes, there is a population of people who actually "make" the product with their hands---a population that has been spit on and despised so vigorously in the media for the last few days---but there are so many other people affected by these companies that still make their products here in North America.
I don't know how to combat this surprising and elitist hatred of the American blue-collar worker, but if people understood that this is about WAY more than just those workers maybe they will have a little more sympathy.
I'm going to be a total bitch, but here it goes...anyone who wants to rag on the union for the fucked up mess the auto industry is in, can suck my ass. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I ask the question of who killed the electric car, because the technology was there years ago. But it didn't go anywhere. It was shelved - for various reasons. American car companies should have been able to develop an affordable hybrid or electric car of some sort way back when. However, our oil-soaked government has a way of screwing stuff like that up.
So, I guess what I'm saying is the government should fix this problem they had a hand in creating.
Thanks so much for supporting the blue collar workers! It breaks my heart to see the negative views that supposed 'liberals' have of the people (workers) who DESIGN, MAKE, AND BUY the stuff they ALSO buy. In the state of michigan small business owners wouldn't make any money if those overly paid automotive workers didn't buy their goods too.
Mentioned before, 1 in 10 people will be affected by the collapse of the automotive industry in the US. In Windsor, just across the river from Detroit, the estimate is 60 jobs/services in the city are attached to ONE high-paying automotive job (either one of the Big 3 OR a Tier 1, 2, or 3 parts plant). The first to go: Physiotherapists, restaurants, Chiropractors, bars (that rely literally on the THOUSANDS of DRUNK 19 year old Americans who come across every weekend....), small business owners... you get the picture right?
Here in Windsor the number of Ford plants has been reduced to 2 (soon to be 1)from 6, the 2 GM plants are basically closed and the last 600 employees making transmissions in the city are on the way out the door in July regardless of GM getting a loan to survive. We are lucky in Windsor to be making the mini-van which saved Chrysler 25 years ago, but that said every 4rd van on the line ISN'T a CHRYSLER, it's a Volkswagen Routan! Essentially VW is allowing the plant and it's nearly 4000 employees to stay viable, because the plant in St. Louis couldn't (or wouldn't... I'm not sure the logistics of it) produce the van on their lines, despite their plant being YEARS younger. Windsor Assembly has been around since 1929, and besides the offices, new paint shop, and technological equipment the plant HASN'T changed since. It's hot, sticky and I dare ANYONE who hasn't worked in a car plant to say that the wages automakers are lucky enough to make aren't fair. That was a hard fight and rightly won.
...let us also remember all of the OTHER thousands of employees who work for the Big 3, but in an office or design department WHO AREN'T unionized, but also make good money and have benefits. Regular production workers are considered a small portion of that expenditure. The companies dole out the same benefits to the employees who don't have the CAW or UAW to protect their interests. Are you going to chastize them because make good money too?
A comment about sustainable engineering: the University of Windsor has been working with the Big 3, who coughed up MILLIONS of dollars to provide students with the opportunities, space, materials and learning environment to help contribute their work and designs for sustainable production and manufacturing. Many of those students went on to gain employment with the companies who invested the cash in the city.
Yes, I agree that yesterday's hearings were a complete sham. The CEOs were bumbling idiots, and they should be the ones to suffer-- not production workers who do what they're told and do it with pride in what they produce. Be like Lee Iacocca, reduce your salary to $1 until the companies start turning around. Perhaps, and I know this may make you American's SICK, but how about making the companies who get a loan a "Crown Corporation" until they can turn their businesses around? This means that they are run like a coporation, but the government keeps tabs on every expenditure and expense. It happens in Canada, and it might actually work in the good ol' U.S. of A.
Ugh.
Very moving post.
But what words do you have for someone who was dead-set against the $700 bil bailout of the financial industry from the very beginning and continues to rail against it, whenever possible, on her personal blog?
I didn't and don't support Paulson's action, and so I don't feel like I can support this bailout.
My biggest problems? (1) I don't think they will kick out the senior executives and wipe out the existing shareholders, which I think is absolutely necessary, and (2) if you do the math, the loan $ probably won't be enough to save the companies (merely delay the end date) unless the companies shut factories and cut jobs anyways, which basically negates the goal of the bailout in the first place.
What words do I have? Hmmmm. I hope, for your sake, that you don't have anyone in your life or anyone important to you who is directly or tangentially involved with the auto industry. How's that?
I wish every member of Congress could read this post. It's spot on. I love the idea (in the comments) of the executives taking a cut - a major, major cut - until the companies can turn themselves around. What better incentive?
My husband is working in a steel mill now, and it's damn scary. Currently, they run two weeks out of four. This is a frightening time, to say the least, and I agree that if the American auto industry fails, the impact will be so big, we can't imagine the fallout. Worse, what we can imagine.
I stumbled across this article from the American's for the Arts Cultural Policy Listserve- it is a pretty neat call to action to revitalize cities.
http://www.freep.com/article/200...55/1070/
opinion
Seattle faces very different problems than Detroit, but how to provide equitable housing and cultural vitality are issues we struggle with in-depth too.
They should interview YOU on Good Morning America. This is the best assessment I've heard so far.
Thank you for this post. It offers a perspective much different than other arguments (for and against) that I have heard.
I support the bailout of the Big 3. I am still looking for the right words to explain why. This article has helped me make some progress in that area:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/stor...59-
2dfa3a3211bf
I encourage everyone here to read it, especially many of those who have already posted their thoughts. I've come back many times to read the additional comments and I am hoping that others are doing the same.
Dee,
Lovely words you spew. Try making an intelligent case for your cause instead of attempting to close your mind to the debate. I grew up in Flint, MI in a large family of GM employees-grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and siblings. They covered the gamut: skilled tradesmen, line workers, Union bosses, and an upper level executive. Believe me; I do know what I am talking about when it comes to the UAW--from the inside out. The UAW took advantage of their position and sucked the life blood out of the auto industry with lots of help from management's inadequacies. I hope the auto industry can be saved--a government loan with plenty of strings attached to ensure that the money isn't blown with ‘business as usual’. And the UAW needs to become a part of history that we look back on as well-intentioned in the beginning, but self-destructed when it became more self-important than the workers it claimed to protect.
Jim-Did you read the Detroit News article about the Jobs Bank Program? This article was written in 2005...not that long ago. You can scoff at the notion of auto workers making big bucks while doing crossword puzzles, but it is not fiction. I don't believe in any way it was due to laziness. It was another UAW brokered plan that the employees had no choice but to accept in order to keep their jobs.
Kay, I'm sure there were a few welfare queens who drove cadillacs, too. but that doesn't mean a few outlying and extreme examples should create these bogeymen on whom this current predicament is blamed.
the auto industry (labor and management) have plenty of systemic problems, but the current situation has been caused by the credit crisis, not the unions or the past mistakes of management. the auto industry has been suffering a long time and the credit crisis will deal it a crippling blow unless something can be done---as I've said before--- hopefully something that will force improvements on the industry.
Very pointed blog. As a resident of Detroit, I believe that our future economy is deeply rooted in buying local. In reading some of the comments, however, I remain puzzled about the lack of knowledge about the Big 3. Some facts:
(1) Fuel Efficiency: The most fuel-efficient Chevrolet Malibu gets 33 m.p.g. on the highway, 2 m.p.g. better than the best Honda Accord. The most fuel-efficient Ford Focus has the same highway fuel economy ratings as the most efficient Toyota Corolla. The most fuel-efficient Chevrolet Cobalt has the same city fuel economy and better highway fuel economy than the most efficient non-hybrid Honda Civic.
(2) Lack of Hybrids: Ford and GM each now offers more hybrid models than Honda or Nissan, with several more due to hit the road in early 2009. Add in the FlexFuel vehicles and the plug in concepts, then you're on par with Toyota.
(3) Quality: An independent J.D. Power Initial Quality Study scored Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Mercury, Pontiac and Lincoln brands' overall quality as high or higher than that of Acura, Audi, BMW, Honda, Nissan, Scion, Volkswagen and Volvo.
Well said. Thank you.
I don't remember why exactly you moved the family to Detroit. I recall you writing about it way back but cannot recall. I do think, after reading this post and seeing your photos that your being there right now will have a huge impact on the way outsiders such as me look at both Detroit and the automotive industry for years to come. You've absolutely changed my mind about the bailout, Jim. And that takes more than a good lawyer. That takes a genuine heart. Thank you.
Brilliant article. Thank-you for writing this.
I would safely say there is not a person living in the Detroit areathat doesn't know someone who works/worked for one of the Big 3.
Many, many of my family members work/worked for the auto-industry. My dad moved from PA to Detroit when he got an apprenticeship with GM just out of high school. I was always amazed at what my dad could make and fix (he was a tool and die maker). We never needed to "hire" someone to come to the house to repair something. My brother worked for Ford (recently laid off), and it's amazing to me that he can put together anything without a manual. My uncle retired from Ford after 40 years. It's sad for me to think of this as an era that has slipped away.
Thank you.....better said than I've heard.
This post brought tears. Thank you for writing an opinion that has somehow become abnormal.
I see a lot of people complaining about liberals opposing this bailout, but you do understand that it's Democrats in Congress pushing for the bailout, while Republicans are the ones vehemently opposed to it, right? Just because NPR (which isn't exactly all liberal, all the time) had some negative opinions about the bailout doesn't mean it's a great liberal conspiracy against the auto industry. Quite the opposite in fact.
Once again, a lot of people seem to ignore the fact that supporting Republicans goes directly against your economic interest, unless you happen to be the CEO of one of the Big 3.
Will, it wasn't NPR saying the things that upset me, it was the people calling in (one guy from Portland, in particular), as well as friends of mine (your typical coastal elite latte-sipping obamaphiliacs) who were using the "environmental" angle to say that the Big Three dug their own graves and now they need to lie in them. That's completely different from the right-wing "free market" attack, so essentially the auto companies are facing two separate fronts.
And we all know how that goes.
I have yet to hear one of the attackers from the left say anything about the Chevy Volt (probably because it's long-term development over the last 5 years or so completely refutes their whole "these companies haven't even been trying to innovate with environmentally-friendly vehicles" argument). All I have heard are talking points about the mistakes of the past and the egregious point that these companies tried to make and sell the vehicles that MOST Americans wanted (at least until gas rose to $4.00 a gallon).
You're absolutely right about the GOP being against the economic interests of the middle class. My whole point about manufacturing in the United States I think could be used to form a further rift within the conservative movement. I mean, how unpatriotic is this "free market, export all our jobs and import all our goods" attitude that the right embraces?
nos⋅tal⋅gia
1. a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.
Very well put. Sweetened with the perfect amount of the above.
This is a hard line, but...
The ordinary people who work for the auto industry ARE in fact responsible for the ultimate decline of their companies. The failure of the US auto makers is not simply a result of bad decisions at the top - it's indicative of a lazy corporate culture that stretches from top to bottom. Ultimately, these people are responsible for themselves, and to say that they are powerless to change the environment in which they work is a classic case of passing the buck. Let 'em die. That's how economics works.
What do YOU make? Blog posts?
I loved this post. As a native Seattlite who lives in Portland and is moving to the South, the hipster judgment is not something I'll miss.
As the child of a lifelong Teamster who works for a large US company, I agree, where is the love for these companies that have paid good working wages to American families for 100 years? I have always been amazed by the derision for large US businesses, yet we'll enthusiastically promote multitudes of companies that put the credit offshore.
Your average Seattle or Portland hipster wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbuck's, yet they will happily drive a Volvo or Toyota to the craft fair while preaching about the virtues of buying local. Starbucks IS a local company (no, I do not work for Starbucks and have never been employed by them). They'll also rail against Microsoft (local) while typing away on their Apple laptop. The same people who scoff at the Big Three are plunking down half their paycheck at Trader Joe's (actually owned by Aldi, a German company, the owners are coincidentally some of the richest men in the world).
All that to say is I think you make some very good points about how our "buy local" values are hypocritical.
"Prius-driving yuppies in the Pacific Northwest calling for the death of this massive American industry while patting themselves on the back for buying butter made from the milk of organically-fed Oregon cows"
I think this is the best summation I have ever read. Akin to vegetarians wearing leather shoes without even realizing their hypocrisy.
I drive american cars and I try to buy American products. I am disgusted with the current buy now, pay never peter pan mentality.
While I don't agree with any of the recent bailouts, this was an eloquent defense of an industry that actually creates something tangible.
I stumbled across your post and think it and the comments on it are thought-provoking.
You asked what those of us outside Detroit think the Big 3 got so wrong. I can tell you my opinion.
It seems to me that Detroit wrote off us Prius-driving, arugula munching urban dwellers even before we wrote them off.
They haven't been innovating around my lifestyle. I look at the cars coming out of Detroit and see no evidence that they have any idea how I live my life. Nissan and Toyota have design centers here in SoCal. The people there know how I live, because it is how they live, too. They produce cars that make sense in my environment. Where are the western outposts of the Big 3?
Why did the Japanese companies come up with the boxy utility vehicles like the Scion and the Element? They are hugely popular out here. Where are the practical, fuel efficient, but sort of stylish wagons and small minivans from Detroit? These are the sorts of cars that I will be buying next. I need a car that can haul stuff home from Home Depot without bankrupting me on my daily commute or making me feel like a jerk who doesn't care about the planet. Detroit doesn't really have anything for me to even consider buying in this category.
I do not want to see the Big 3 fail. But I am also not sure that I want to see a big chunk of tax money go to them, particularly not until I hear their management explain how they are going to fix their companies.
Also, where should the bailouts end? I work in biotech. Big pharma, the "parent" industry of biotech, is struggling, too. I fully expect one or two of the big guys to fail soon. This will undoubtedly mean tough times for my industry. But I would never support a bail out for them. If their really very well paid executives can't get their act together and come up with solutions for their problems, they should fail. This will hurt some of my friends and maybe even me. But I know that the pharmas and biotechs that survive will keep innovating to meet the market needs, so there will be some jobs out there for us. And if I can't get one, then I need to look for a job in a different industry. I think the government should provide the safety net for ME, with unemployment benefits, retraining assistance, and yes, health care, but I do not think the government should provide a safety net for my company.
Finally, why does the failure of one or two of the big three car companies have to mean the end of the car industry in the US? It might be the opportunity for a stronger industry to emerge. What is to stop a group of suddenly out of work car industry engineers and executives from getting together and starting a new company? Yes, making cars is expensive, but let me tell you, so is discovering new drugs. New biotechs get funded because people will always want cures for their diseases so it is possible to put together a viable business plan and get venture funding. I think people will continue wanting cars to drive, too, so it should be possible to put together a viable business plan and get venture funding in that industry, too. In fact, the Tesla car company has already done this. Surely others can, too?
I came here by the way of Bitch PhD, and I just want to say, Amen. In the mid 90s, I used to work for the steel industry, and those were the proudest years of my life. I worked for an industry where you could point to something and say "I made that." It was depressing to see the industry decline, and I left before they had to lay me off because so many US companies were shutting down. People seem to have no concept about what this means to real people, and your blog is the first one I've seen that has actually shared that side of it. Bravo!
Cloud said it better than I could. The end of a company (or companies) doesn't mean the end of an industry.
Also, for the record, Japan is hurting, too. Very much. It's bad everywhere.
http://www.earthfiles.com/
news.p...ory=Environment
I came back just to catch up on further comments (and there were plenty)but I also wanted to make another point.
As opposed to bailing out the existing companies why not look ahead and use the money to support the communities, the people that matter through business start up grants, funding retraining costs, urban regeneration programmes taht create alternative employment? I think more people would find this an acceptable use of US tax revenues than handing it over the the current regimes in the car companies.
Also here via Bitch Ph.D., and intending to link to this.
Nicely done. Also, what you're doing is like archaeology, except that you can still ask people what those shards were used for.
A comment above said "People can say all they want about how foreign car companies are evil (my dad thinks so) but the foreign companies don't seem so narrow minded to me."
I have to agree with that statment. I live in an area where there is a large Honda plant. Honda takes very good care of it's employees without any union intervention. They (employees) have fantastic benefits, great wages, tons of company perks, and 4 weeks of paid vacation time (2 weeks vacation and 2 weeks of paid factory shut-downs)
I think the UAW has to take a lot of the blame for the demise of the US auto industry. I also disagee with the bailout without any strings atached. I agree that the Big 3 need help because I realize how many jobs are at stake here. However, just to throw money at them to maintain their status quo is irresponisble. They need to restructure cmopletely and so does the UAW.
BTW, I completely disagreed with the Wall Street abilout too.
Also here from BitchPhD and to say thank you. I'm a transplanted Michigander (we're everywhere!) who has lots of family at home. My brother just lost his job this week - auto supplier. Even if he gets a job in some other part of the country, they'll never be able to sell their house.
I'm a chai (don't like latte) drinking Obamaphiliac who absolutely thinks we should bail out the automotive industry.
I wanted to add one more quick comment. My husband works for a GM car dealership. The owner of this dealership has mentioned to our local newspaper and radio station that if this bailout happens, he thinks that the only way for the Big 3 to survive is to restructure management and to have the UAW have a much smaller role in the industry.
Um, foreigners are people who are equally worthwhile to Americans, and there is nothing morally superior about buying American. If anything, foreigners working for low wages need the money more, and lifting a family out of poverty in a developing country is much more a matter of survival than in the US where safety nets, however imperfect, exist.
I am sick of this condescension towards buying from 'brown people' who are 'exploited labor'. By U.S. standards they're exploited, but they're often desperate for the jobs because by local standards they're well-paid. The largest contribution towards reducing global poverty is coming from the rise of manufacturing in India and China. There's nothing noble about standing in the way of that.
On a side note, letting the big three go bankrupt may save (American) jobs, according to professional economists: http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2574
This is very thoughtfully written.
The auto industry should not carry the burden of blame for building SUVs and other large vehicles that the consumer wanted and in many cases need such as trucks.
GM and the other Detroit manufacturers offer many fuel efficient vehicles. They weren't or aren't popular. When the gas prices rose those who have larger vehicles suffered the most. It's not the Big 3s fault that these consumers bought them.
GM and the rest of the Big 3 continue to innovate with more efficient vehicles. Toyota has the perception of being fuel efficient. But their Toyota Tundra truck gets worse mileage than the Big 3 trucks do.
Americans need to think twice before being so negative about American built vehicles. Sure the Big 3 need to make adjustments to their business plans but the world's economy is impacting them through the previously high oil prices and credit crunch. Those causes are both political and the result of misleading credit practices. As the Chevy Truck theme sings; "This is our country."
Thanks for listening.
Well put. Your wife's quilt came at just the right moment as I curiously browsed the quilting aisle at JoAnne's. My mother made gifts when I was growing up, and the dialogue they provoked was priceless. Her energy and talent brought her an admiration that was rare inside the home.
One problem with the Big 3 taking Chapter 11 Bankruptcy is that I believe people would be inclined not to buy their cars, for fear of them ending in Chapter 7. No warranties, no parts, etc., would be the worry. It would further increase their disadvantage in the marketplace when competing with the foreign cars.
And, I would like to comment on the perception that American cars are of inferior quality. That was certainly true at one time, and for longer than it should have been. However, having driven Ford products for the last 10 years, I can attest to their quality and durability. There is nothing wrong with these vehicles.
Thank you for writing this. I have a difficult time talking to people in my East Coast, Liberal town because no one here would dream of driving an American car. To them, American cars should have died off a long time ago.
The media, particularly NPR, have been obsessed with Bashing the big 3. I was picturing Tom Ashbrook with a pitchfork and torch calling for the entire city of Detroit to burn. But what people forget is GM made electric technology affordable to U.S. customers 25 years ago. And they were mocked and laughed at because who the hell wanted an electric car for $30,000? American memory of the 70's oil crisis was a distant dream when 69cent gas was on every corner. Americans DEMANDED trucks, SUVs, big big BIG cars. "That's the American Way". So, the American car companies responded. Scrapped the efficient, low fuel vehicle plans for what the people wanted.
GM is incredibly BAD at marketing and timing, but they are great at building cars and engineering the impossible. Their technology opened the door to the Japanese to mainstream "hybrid". Really, I chalk all of this up to bad timing, bad advertising, and the court of popular opinion.
Coastal Americans have always enjoyed bashing the American car companies. There is literally NOTHING the big 3 can do to please anyone on the east or west coast. Electric, hybrid, magic fairy dust - coastal dwellers will not buy it if it comes from the big 3. That's just how it is. So, they cater to the market that responds. Pick-up trucks, SUVs, minivans.... call it what you will.
Is that changing? Are they trying to regain the goodwill of American yuppies? Sure. But, it might be too late. I hope not, but I fear the worst. Those bankers that swindled away our trust and tax dollars are laughing all the way to their Hampton summer homes in their BMWs and Mercedes.
Additionally - I love that a $25 billion load is called a "bailout".
$700billion free and clear to the banks.
$80 billion and then $72 billion to AIG, free and clear.
But a $25billion LOAN is a bailout and people are ripping apart a legacy that made this country.
Additionally, for those that say GM was not focusing on the right technology while mass producing SUV's, here's a brief timeline from PBS that sums up the fact that GM was at the forefront of electric vehicle technology:
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223...r-
timeline.html
did they get some things wrong, only 3 or 4 short years ago? Yes. But they brought the technology to everyone else.
Didn't we bail out Chrysler? I thought that was fairly successful - and I believe the money was paid back.
This seems to be more about busting the Unions than anything else - the Unions that just had a huge impact on this very important election. It isn't a coincidence that the Financial industry is full of Republicans, and the Unions are full of Democrats.
If they can hold out a couple of months, Obama will make sure the money gets to them. (I hope.)
First of all Jim I echo just about every thought you expressed.It is heart wrenching to see how panicked all of my
neighbors (GM and Ford people)are.Many are educated and are putting out resumes... but taking a new job elsewhere my very well mean walking away from a house here.
I used to drive a big old GM Yukon when I had sll 6 kids still at home. I loved it and it was a great product. A few kids left and now I am driving a Ford Edge, which I absolutely LOVE. There are times in our lives where a bigger vehicle makes sence.
I am a conservative, and I agree that it's shocking to hear let them die there in Detroit. LOAN them the money and guidelines then get out of their way! We need to keep this manufacturing base here. Post World WarII Detroit ushered in an whole era of prosperity for all the rest of us to use as a base to build our lives on, enabling us to reach further.
Post 9/11, post Katrina, the Detroit auto manufacturers helped strengthen the national economy offering 0% loans to keep all of us going.
Now we need to keep them going. Buy American, demand cars you want and shame on all the media who continue spread myths about Detroit cars. It's time to show some loyalty and encourage their restructuring, the intellectual capital is already there.
We seem to be a generation of people who don't know how to make stuff. I was going to run to Home Depot for wood steaks for my tomato plants that were getting unruly. My dad said,"hold up there Mayor". He walked into the woods and 5 minutes later had cut 6 small sucker trees and showed me how to steak up my "maters" the old fashioned way.He also makes chairs and stools out of trees.All my relatives in the south are much more resourceful that I'll ever be.
I'd say we all need to look to this resource (our parents generation) to further our education on how to do stuff.
I don't disagree with most of what you have said here concerning the Big 3 and all of those whose solvency will be impacted by a bail out.
However, I must ask that New Orleans not be used as a measuring stick of any sort for a recovered city. When you say New Orleans looks more like New Orleans, the truth in that statement is that yes, The Big Easy does look more like itself circa 1994 when the number of murders skyrocketed past 400. It was named the Murder Capital of 2008 in January of this year. Yes, the touristy areas only cosmetically effected by Katrina are and have been back up and running for 3 years. The areas where people lived their lives are mostly still in wild disarray and sadly the concern for that area is non-existent three years after Katrina. There is still much work to be done for those who want to stay and make the city habitable, enjoyable and livable for the residents (1/3 of which have still not returned) and not just the fair weather tourists.
New Orleans Crime Facts 2008
http://www.wdsu.com/crime-stoppe...pers/
index.html
http://www.nola.com/crime/#
I apologize for being so off-topic but I don't want people to get the impression that it's all good in Katrina Alley or that being ''like New Orleans'' is anything to strive for because it absolutely is not and so much help is still needed.
Thanks for listening.
let me respond to all those disgruntled New Orleans residents unhappy with me for saying that their city isn't as shitty as it really is (let's have a shitty city contest!). I'm sorry I said your city isn't as shitty as mine. I am sure the parts of your city that are as shitty as my city were probably already that shitty before the hurricane and for a lot of the same reasons.
I guess all the federal aid money I've seen being spent there and the celebrities building neighborhoods and brad and angelina investing in your city have given me the wrong impression. and made me a little jealous, because we haven't received any of those things. I was merely trying to tie in the compassion Americans felt for your residents after the natural disaster to the lack of compassion Americans are currently expressing for the residents here who will suffer as much if not more because of this economic disaster.
I just can't understand the people that I speak to in the US right now, how eager they appear to be to both allow the financial system to fall (let Citi go, who cared about the trillions that it carries, let alone the 100,000 it employs) and the auto industry (they deserve it, they failed and that's capitalism). I was speaking to my mom, and when she cited that last, I pointed out that we left the US for a better lifestyle and that we won't be returning any time soon to acountry where f we lost a job we would starve, have no health care, and have no roof over our heads. I asked, if she really wanted unfettered capitalism, why do the Big 3 have to cover healthcare, versus every other country's care makers in every other country.
I also asked, if she wants them to go down, what she thinks should happen to the enormous number of people depending on those jobs and related jobs: should their foreclosed homes rot on the market? Should they starve in the streets with their kids? Should they die without healthcare or schools? If she wants to let the companies go, what will be the cost of rescuing the workers? Because I think that my generation, the 50 and under, does not think that it is moral to allow Americans to starve and to die for the "concept" of capitalism. That is the reason we have government: to have a safety net.
Then she wouldn't talk to me any more.This is my country, the US, I hope to return one day and I pay taxes and vote in it and I am ready to join the ranks of all civilized nations and have a safety net that allows folks at the bottom to be treated as human. I acknowledge that one day I may need that net. If not me, then someone I care about.
Here's my background... way liberal, one car family (due to budget). Our one car is a secondhand 95 Accord and it gets a average 32 miles to the gallon, still. I have a collection of vintage magazines from the 70's that advertise cars that get 30 miles per gallon. The fact that we've been unable to top that in 3 decades is shameful. And I have never heard of a Chevy Volt, but am thrilled to know about it. My opinion of the auto industry is that they have actively worked to keep fuel efficient cars off the market, but that is not the faults of the Unions or the workers.
And I do hope those industries get bailed out. Who would hope for more unemployment than we already have?
Also, I think lazy people are found equally within all sectors, no more in the cubicles than the auto lines. Trash men are the only people I've ever seen consistently working their butts off.
oscar the guy who trained me for my first dishwashing job was the hardest-working person I've ever met, and he was earning minimum wage.
and I say that after working with lawyers who billed 2400+ hours a year.
I would any add, Wendy, that the assembly line itself is less tolerant of fooling around than the cubicle. I think I saw an I Love Lucy episode about that once.
My husband is a supervisor in a call center office and he's so frustrated with the work ethic of his employees. He tells them over and over again that the internet is for work uses only. He has a log of how long they spent with each consumer's account and he'll find they spent 30 minutes, but they only talked to some one for 3 minutes. He's able to figure out that they only actually worked half the day. He's fired 3 people over this after multiple warnings and it's still going on.
He gets part of his pay on commission, based on how well his team does. We're barely making it right now because he rarely gets commission. The employees also get some commission based on their individual performance.
When he goes to confront them about it, he usually also catches them on myspace or in a long conversation with an office mate. Their response is usually that, "Don't you have anything better to do than check on us constantly?" He spends hours after they all go home catching up on paperwork at work.
I miss my hubby and I'd love to have spending money again. I just wish that people would work when they're at work.
I love this original post and I love your second post today. I know so many lazy office workers who complain about the lazy factory worker. How many people are posting comments when they are being paid to work? Such a great point.
I'm a former Michigander who left the automotive industry in the 90s for the up-and-coming Pacific Northwest. Last week the manufacturing plant I work in announced that the remaining production would move to China by mid-2010.
Can I just say that I LOVE my HHR? Great for our family, and it's SO much more awesome than a minivan. Oh, and 31 mpg, at an average speed of 41 mph.
With respect to your comment about "if you took the internet away", my husband's office has one computer that is connected to the internet. The rest (for 7 employees) are not connected, but are connected to each other by an intranet. The main reason was because they'd had a virus a few years back that had done a ton of damage.
They get together with other, larger firms for meetings, and my hub's boss is always complaining that "they never get anything done, just want to talk for a couple of hours!". And they're always getting so much done.
Granted, they're a tiny company, but it's a very, very valid point.
And yes, why all of the hate toward people who decided to work with their hands? Some of those folks have more common sense/intelligence than most of the PhDs I know...
Hi- I'm a bit confused by your Nov 24 post. I thought the liberals wanted to support the auto industry and the conservatives want to see it lie in its grave. I'm probably out of touch on this issue since I'm not located in a UAW state, but isn't it usually the liberals who want to give free hand-outs and the conservatives who want to everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? It's so interesting to see the regional differences in the definition of liberal and conservative. The Detroit definition and the Southern definition seem to be very different!
I loved your last post. I wanted to apologize for my last post. I can't help it though..anytime someone wants to rag on the union, I get super upset. I've worked with a union for many years. They did wonderful things for the people in my small town. But my last few years things were different. We were basically just fighting to keep the benefits and pay we had. And you were correct in your assessment of white collar workers. When the company I was working at shut down and moved to Mexico, the union made sure our seperation benefits included paid tuition for retraining. My husband and I jumped on it and we both now have a degree and one of those white collar jobs. And believe me, it's a walk in the park compared to working in manufacturing. Before we actually had to work. Oh well, again, I apologize for my trash mouth. Just couldn't help myself.
robin, liberals and conservatives are sort of colluding to doom the industry right now, for different reasons.
conservatives are thrilled about this opportunity to finally bust the unions. my first point in today's post would be directed primarily towards those conservatives.
now, certain liberals also want to see the domestic auto industry die because they hate SUVs and have always looked down on people who buy SUVs as well as the companies who make them. they don't want to hear about the innovations domestic auto companies have been making towards greater fuel efficiency because it undercuts their whole belief system.
*the big 3 should have focused on fuel-efficient cars and other strategies in the first place, especially knowing that the suv/hummer-fad would be short-lived and is ridiculous and environmentally fucked. they've only been around, what, 100 years to figure it out.
*it's not the government's job to rescue a company, even if it is an American icon, and the fact that our companies' downfall can wreck our cities, well, indeed. I think we need to go study some political theory.
all that innovation can be brought to the table at a company that hasn't fucked itself.
I think it's possible to both respect Detroit's attempts and successes (and I totally want to buy a Volt--skipped the Prius because of it--and am just waiting for the possibility to do so) and feel angry at the unions, too.
I'm a lazy liberal from the Bay Area who is obviously futzing around on the Internet in the middle of a work day. I would NEVER suggest that union workers are lazy. Far from it. These are tough, hard-working people who only want the best for their families.
But I *also* think that as a whole, unions (not just in Detroit) and their corporate counterparts have been inflexible and uncreative in their conversations with one another. Unions seem so hell-bent on protecting workers (and execs seem so hell-bent on preserving access to corporate jets) that they lose sight of the reality that if everyone doesn't sacrifice, everyone will lose their jobs.
I feel the same way about teaching unions, especially having grown up the child of two public school teachers. The unions once did very important work. Now, they're making it hard to proceed with any creative plans to land unconventional new teachers with a different perspective from their predecessors.
Lindsey, I agree with you completely with those criticisms of the unions. It's the bogeyman of the lazy $70 an hour crossword puzzle master that I have a problem with.
Very eloquently stated Jim. I couldn't agree more, and I'm actually heartened by the fact that you seem to have caused many people to question their thinking that the Detroit auto industry deserves to die.
On today's post, regarding the "liberals" who love to dump on union workers, I have a couple observations. These are the same people who try to "buy local" for everything but then don't think twice about about buying a foreign car. I don't criticize everyone who drives a foreign car, but many of these "liberals" never even consider buying a union made American vehicle, and apparently have no idea that there are excellent products, many with very good fuel economy, made in union factories right here in the USA. To name a few: Ford Focus; Chevy Malibu; Saturn Aura; Pontiac Vibe. The Mazda 6 is made in a UAW plant in Flat Rock MI, but the Mazda dealer is not going to go out of its way to publicize that, apparently assuming it would turn off a lot of people.
And I think it does have to do with wrong sterotypes of the American union worker. A guy I knew years ago had a great quote about all the Saab/Volvo driving "yuppies" in the early 80's who would never dream of buying an American car because they were supposedly built by slovenly American union workers. He joked that these yuppies "think their cars are all built by tall blond people wearing lab coats."
Here's another one: I read a story once about a union organizing drive at a health food grocery chain somewhere out West. The workers, mostly "working poor" single black mothers, were handbilling customers in a parking lot filled with (mostly foreign) cars bearing bumper stickers for every progressive/environmental/liberal cause you could think of. "No nukes," "save the whales" and so on.
But the vast majority of these customers ignored or were even rude to the women handbilling. It just was not in their world view. They could not be bothered by real working people. It was like, "get out of my way, I have to get my tofu."
Somehow we have lost our way when people who think of themselves as progressive draw a blank when it comes to unions. A lot of this has to do with the "elitist" attitudes I'm describing. But part of it is that the unions have not done a very good job of selling themselves to the public and reminding people that unions have been at the forefront of most of the social justice, civil rights, and progressive movements in this country for many, many years. One pet peeve of mine is that the UAW has a PR guy whose job it seems is almost always to say nothing more than "no comment."
We're going to need unions now more than ever. Next time you're down on the union movement, remember this: they're the people who brought you the weekend.
Hypocrite! You lambaste the American office worker for "only [spending] about 20 percent of his or her time actually working," yet here you are doing the SAME THING - why don't YOU quit blogging and start "making something?" Go get a factory job, Mr. "Gentleman of Elegant Leisure." Put your time and money where your mouth is. I'm sick of bleeding hearts like you who feel like they deserve better than what they've earned.
I wish you could defend a bailout without whitewashing the companies' environmental record. It just makes me feel like I'm being scammed, even though, on the merits, loans to the big three may well be necessary. The CEO of GM is a global warming denialist. They have successfully fought off reasonable increases in CAFE standards for years & gotten sweetheart subsidies for SUVs; I expect them to be pretty politically effective in opposing meaningful action on global warming too. The Volt is not likely to make much of a dent due to price/technological limits, though I sure hope I'm wrong about that one. And one 30 mpg car--whoop de do. Please. You're right about the unions though.
Can we also talk about the fact that GM operates offices and plants in several other countries, employing 10s of thousands of world-wide workers which will be affected in the case of a failure of corporate GM in the US? And in these countries most GM cars get significantly better MPG then the US brands? And, from what I understand, the US market is the only division of GM that is losing money - the worldwide markets are profitable.
It's not that the innovation and technology isn't there, it's that GM could not introduce it to the US market in a profit-making car. This market for YEARS has been all about big, bad Hummers, trucks and 7-passenger mini-vans. I can't really blame the company or the workers for producing what their customers wanted.
Let’s shift focus to what a shut-down of just ONE of the Big 3 could mean (and I chose GM because of the number of people I know who are/have worked there, including my husband). According to what I can find, GM directly or indirectly, it supports nearly 900,000 jobs in the US alone. Imagine all of those people losing their jobs in the next 12-18 months and what that will do the economy. GM's annual direct payroll is close to $9 billion – now let’s remove all the local, state and federal payroll tax revenue from our coffers and see how that affects 100s of cities and several states.
Has there been mismanagement? Absolutely. Bad business decisions are made everyday and companies live to tell the tale. Have the Unions been a part of the problem? Absolutely. I know in my previous home of Toledo, OH, where Jeep Wranglers and Liberties are made, that Union contracts demanded that the plants run at 80% capacity minimum, whether they make money or not. Even when they were shut-down due to overproduction/slow sales, laid-off workers were paid 80-90% of their salary. There is a lot both sides can do to help preserve the auto industry in the US, but I don’t think that the management and Unions can do it without outside help.
No other company in our history, so far as I can tell, has legacy costs close to that of the Big 3 – there is no business plan equipped to handle such a handicap (my research shows anywhere from $1600-$2000 in legacy cost per new vehicle produced). How can any company, even if flawlessly managed and manufactured turn a profit in the face of such hurdles? I would much, much rather have our government help the industry with a LOAN then see this industry crumble and have millions more people on unemployment. We are all going to be paying the price, one way or the other – why not try to preserve the existing jobs?
My god, I really rambled there...sorry. I just think that so there is so much grey area in this conversation that isn't addressed. Thanks, Jim, for providing and outlet.
"This market for YEARS has been all about big, bad Hummers, trucks and 7-passenger mini-vans. I can't really blame the company or the workers for producing what their customers wanted."
Please. Please. They lobbied for, and got, preferential treatment & exemption from environmental regulations, and did everything possible to convince customers to want gas guzzlers. This complete whitewash is NOT the way to win over environmentalists. (I don't blame the workers, obviously, & I agree with a lot of the comments above about how liberal hostility to or indifference to organized labor is a crying shame.)
katherine, I'm not whitewashing anything. I'm not asking the crunchy Big-Three-hating liberals to just abandon their beliefs or arguments, but I am questioning their refusal to acknowledge that the Big Three are working on projects like the Volt (and pouring money into research into fuels like hydrogen) and that the Big Three do make fuel efficient cars alongside their gas guzzlers.
the Big Three actually make at least fifteen vehicles that get better than 30 mpg. Unfortunately, they're not the cars that the majority of Americans have wanted to buy (though they have had to manufacture them just the same to comply with the CAFE standards).
I have acknowledged there has been plenty of corporate stubbornness I've never been happy about. I have no doubt Waggoner denies global warming exists--he's an asshole in a class all his own. I also think it's kind of a "chicken or egg" problem with the public's desire for SUVs (um, the big three very savvy marketing departments who pay very savvy advertising companies). But if you want to get your fingers really dirty, let's start talking about ALL THE OTHER industries and factors that contribute to global warming that make our tailpipes seem insignificant (um, agriculture? trucking? CHINA?) That said, I think we can acknowledge GM's missteps without denying they have done some good things, too.
I don't like GM's mistakes. I also don't like the untruths being spread by zealots who get their information from the echo chamber rather than from actual research.
Two things.
In response to Perry, above:
I think you might be attacking the wrong person here. What do you mean when you say Jim, like the "American office worker" he "lambastes" only spends 20 percent of his time working? I don't think he has ever claimed that his blog is his job. He's a stay at home parent to two small children, which is more than enough "real work" for most people. And when you say you're "sick of bleeding hearts like you who feel like they deserve better than what they've earned"--what are you claiming Jim is saying he "deserves?" I'm confused.
And, in response to Jim:
You said: "certain liberals also want to see the domestic auto industry die because they hate SUVs and have always looked down on people who buy SUVs as well as the companies who make them. they don't want to hear about the innovations domestic auto companies have been making towards greater fuel efficiency because it undercuts their whole belief system."
I'm one of those people (although I still think I'm pretty moderate, not liberal) who dislikes American auto makers' slowness to embrace green standards for building and design. I don't want to see the industry "die" because I know what that would mean to America's job market, but I would like to see the Big Three (and other American manufacturers) be at the beginning of these environmentally friendly trends instead of reluctantly tagging along after the rest of the world has already acknowledged what needs to be done. I don't think a few late gestures toward the environmentalists really counts as shattering my belief system--in fact, it supports the idea that they're just doing too little, too late.
the "too little, too late" argument does make some sense to me. I still think the Volt is going to be amazing and have been planning to buy one since 2006.
and naptime is over, and so is my ability to be so involved in this discussion (at least for a few hours). thanks for the stimulating discussion folks.
I see no debate here about public transportation, bikes and scooters. That's weird.
Thanks for this great pair of posts!
I especially appreciate your point about the hard-to-quantify importance of making *things.* I think this has very real implications for the national psyche and economy alike.
I also hope that federal government will turn this crisis into an opportunity. If they choose to help out the auto industry, the money should be issued together with a broad package of vastly more stringent environmental standards. If we're already so close to a 100 mpg Chevy, why should a new SUV pulling a lousy 30 mpg even be allowed on the lot? My boyfriend's 22-year-old Honda Civic does better than that! Carbon emissions will not be curbed by the market. Any financial package offered to automakers must push for broad implementation of the ambitious fuel efficiency standards already within reach.
I'm not a hater,but I don't understand how a company can charge $20G for a vehicle when it didn't cost anywhere near that to produce it could dig themselves into such a hole. Million dollar bonuses? Evidently, no one has earned a bonus in quite a while. I say fire everyone that doesn't work on the line.
I have a friend living and working in Detroit. Even during a layoff, he gets paid much more than your average worker gets for unemployment.
One of the problems with a bailout is that it makes people like you and me, who don't really know much about the balance sheets for the big three, feel like we have the right and the obligation to determine how they do business. I can't believe all the calls for the big 3 to start being environmentally friendly. Since when is that prerequisite for gov't funding?
I would expect the gov't to behave like any responsible angel investor -- to demand that, in exchange for certain subsidies, loans, etc., the big 3 turn a profit.
*
Are you laughing? Yeah, me too. Congress never was a responsible angel investor. Still, a girl can dream.
Is the Volt even out? I heard a 2011 date? The Prius is on it's third version I think. You can't blame a person for wanting to buy what is already out there in green car technology. And the price tag of a new Volt? 35k? Are you kidding me? Being one of those PNW 'hippy' types you like to stereotype and generalize so well and cleverly, I'll just keep my 15 year old Toyota Van with mud and rust encrusted all over it and 150,000 miles on it and it still purrs like a baby kitty. The fact that people even buy new cars kill me. There are enough cars. Make something else.
Farmer Jim gives me my eggs because he is closer to me than any store; Walmart or pricey Co-op. And some of the "white trash' (your words NOT mine) who are my neighbors and frequent Walmart for their kids clothes STILL buy their eggs from Joe because they know Joe, love Joe and think his chickens rock. There is no absolute.
I just ask you/challenge you to re-evaluate your stereotypes. Your writing would be much more effective if you didn't create containers to stick people in. That just turns people off. One person's phone call from Portland has fueled you to point fingers at a population?
I live in the area you make fun of, not in a city, but a very rural valley, and yet I live across from a dude who flies a confederate flag. Behind him an elderly couple who fly a gay pride flag flies. And we fly the Pirate flag. Out here in the country, we are liberal and conservative, local and international, punk rock and hippy. Country and Heavy and Metal. Treehugging AND Logging. All of us agree and disagree, live alike and different. Although I get local eggs and produce, I am not 'crunchy' and you use that term, a term that should be applied to dried leaves, or food. Not people.
I have a friend whose father is very high up in an alternative fuel dept. at one of the Big 3. She claims nobody is serious about Green Technology. It's an insider joke, hence why they have yet to really bring forth the Volt.
But I do stand on the fence about the bailout. And you do make some very thoughtful, provoking points (outside your style of putting people down) and I truly respect the amount of personal and intellectual energy you pour into your work.
sigh...
For the majority of an office worker's day, they have the luxury to walk out of their cubicle, ask their work neighbour about their dog while standing at the edge of their desk, call and make dentist appointments on company time, call their kids at home to make sure they haven't burned the place down, run down to get a coffee in the break room or take a 3 minute break to pee or poop when they're not officially on their break. Even if one office worker stops to chat with ONE other employee for 5 minutes, twice per day when they're not on a break, they're still not working for an extra 10 minutes during that work day and those co-workers you talked to, aren't working either.
You can't do that on an assembly line.
In university I worked on the Chrysler assembly line, and my dad still does (and has for GM AND Chrysler for almost 30 years). Depending on the plant, a worker has a set amount of time to perform their job. At the minivan plant across the border from Detroit, on-line assembly jobs are given 43 seconds to perform. What does this mean? It means you put in the driver's seat, or lay down the wiring. Install the air-conditioning unit or snap in all the tubes that run fluids into the motor. Plug in the airbag or force on the rotors and bolt on the wheels.
You will do this same job about 85 times an hour (depending on the problems that may slow or stop the line temporarily with no warning) until the buzzer sounds and the line ACTUALLY stops moving. It is usually only then that you can have a seamless, uninterrupted conversation with your work neighbour for at least 7 minutes until the buzzer goes again and warns you that you have 2 minutes to walk back to your station and get ready for the line to start moving again.
I mentioned this in a previous post, but line workers actually have to either raise their hands or type in a request on their work monitor when they need to use the bathroom. Your area float worker or repair person will only be able to come to relieve you when they aren't relieving someone else or repairing a job that didn't work.
Getting paid a wage that is FAIR and LIVEABLE IS the reward for the concessions workers make to bust their asses for 8 hours.
And, really... the only time a regular (non-trades) UAW (or CAW worker in my case) worker would be making 70.00/hr would be if a plant worked on a Sunday, after they had worked 48 hours from Monday-Saturday.
Let's remember, unions and companies NEGOTIATE contracts for thousands and thousands of employees. If the car companies really couldn't afford the contracts, they wouldn't agree to the concessions. There have been a number of contract re-negotiations over the years (in the US and Canada) that have included wage freezes, small pay cuts, cuts in benefits and cuts in retirement package offerings for their hourly wage workers.
Ok. I hope this is all the fight I have left in me.
Like a couple of other commenters, I was seriously bothered by the CEOs flying private planes to their Congressional meeting. I mean, really?! To me, that just proved how out of touch these companies are. I don't want the average worker to suffer, but I'm sick of the fat cats getting fatter. Is there any middle ground here?
I would really love to find one of those white-collar jobs where I'd only have to work 20% of the time -- clearly, this educated bleeding-heart liberal is doing SOMETHING wrong, because I've always toiled in white-collar sweatshops.
And speaking of sweatshops....my mother's father died before I was born, but my mother spoke of him often. He was a machinist, who ended up working much of his career as a precision grinder for Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut, making parts for airplane engines.
He'd had polio as a boy, which partially crippled him, so that kept him out of World War II -- subsequently, while his friends who came home from the war all went to college on the GI Bill, he was stuck on the factory floor his entire career.
He was proud of his work, and even won some internal awards. But my mother said he swore that neither of his kids would ever work in factories, that they would work in offices someday.
It's one thing to appreciate people who make things, and it's another to romanticize what they do. My grandfather wanted to move onward and upward, but could not, because of his circumstances.
Maybe there's a metaphor there for the auto industry. Maybe the engineers and innovators want to move onward and upward, but can't, until they're freed from the fetters of the corporate fat cats in their private jets?
Even if the auto makers are bailed out this time, the companies have to re-invent themselves. They have made some progress (as you note), but they have a lot of catching up to do.
I understand your excitement regarding the Chevy Volt, as I too am looking for a gas-alternative vehicle. Unfortunately, I am confused on why you seem proud of the car manufactures for finally developing this technology, which is still not actually available from a US made autoplant.
Hasn't GM already made a electric car, the EV1, and then demolished it? If The Big 3 are so interested in alternate fuels, why did they let big oil push them into making only only gas fueled vehicles. Shouldn't big oil help dig them out of their debt now? Or better yet, just use the blue-prints for the EV1 that was in production. America has already had an electric car - in the 1890s and then again in the 1990s, seems odd that we have to wait until 2010-2011 for them to 'reinvent' their own design.
I'm missing a lot of this but only getting snippets.
I want to say something intelligent but for now let me just say: FUCK YEAH.
Let the revolution begin mothereffers.
Again, I'm being ridiculous but it's the only way I can stop myself from going into a blind killing rage about this discourse about the lazy union worker. There's been this slow, insidious (but amazing) takeover of people's brains (since Reagan?) where they are crazily CRAZILY siding with THE WRONG FUCKING PEOPLE. Do you not get it office worker? YOU ARE NEXT! I don't care if you have a B.A. or not. From Williams or Swarthmore even. Geezus.
How did they do it? How did they get people to despise work? When did this bandwagon get built that everyone wants to jump on where it is A-OK for someone to work like a dog and need foodstamps to make it through the month (while being roundly criticized by these assholes for the need for help--if they even get it) while all the outrage is saved up for some small sliver of the hard working population who actually gets paid enough to live on.
You make me want to sound smarter because what you say is so right but this gets me too worked up somehow to think straight.
bethany, what do you mean? is the Volt technology already available from a non-US-made autoplant? I am excited about it because it represents actual innovation (freedom from petroleum for nearly all daily use) rather than the "slightly better than usual" reliance the Japanese (and American) hybrids have given us.
and yes, this technology has taken longer to develop and perfect because this switch from petrol to a virtually complete alternative is HARD. the Japanese haven't gotten it right yet even as they've taken a quicker step in the right direction.
I don't understand how these companies can spend so many millions on the development of these new technologies (including the many millions they have spent to develop working hydrogen-powered no-emissions vehicles that are cool as hell but still too expensive to market) and people still love the mythology of this being just a "joke." is it a "joke" to all these engineers developing this technology? who's your friend, m? what's her dad's name? shouldn't that be real news if it were true? if that's true, it sounds like your friend's dad is one of the first people who ought to be canned.
as for the whole stereotype thing, I've already answered way up in these comments my actual feelings about the whole PNW thing. If you still feel stereotyped and offended, understand that you are my people and that sometimes we CAN be easily stereotyped and by writing about this I am hoping to challenge and shake up some of these accepted values and beliefs that we all share. I am myself a crunchy elitist liberal who would be very comfortable living out his days in some wacky diverse Oregon valley with pirates and racists and hippies buying his eggs from Farmer Joe. this isn't a regional criticism as much as it is a questioning of people with a certain "progressive" ethos and a shared disdain for the domestic auto industry. No one likes being challenged but I find that if we just keep chugging along without ever being questioned we don't really give ourselves a chance to grow.
the Volt is supposed to be in showrooms in 2010 if GM is still around. And its price will be affected by a $7500 tax break for consumers. But I'm not exactly some kind of paid shill for GM here.
I bring up the GM stuff because I find it interesting how my fellow liberals attack it. What it comes down to, I think, is that there is just a huge population of people who WANT to hate these companies.
And that's a major PR problem. One that's not my job to fix. this still doesn't have anything to do with what car you choose to drive. to me it has everything to do with the spreading of untruths and the total lack of compassion for the people of THIS region. you can drive your foreign car and not wish total ill upon the domestic manufacturers. you can be frustrated with them without gleefully dancing on the graves you feel they've dug for themselves. you can live in the pacific northwest and bring your organic goat cheese home from the farmer's market in your Prius and not go out of your way to hope that a region of your own country will fall into complete financial ruin. And you can totally disagree with me about any of this if you want to. I promise I won't hold it against you.
Dutch, I hope that entire post wasn't directed at me. My only knowledge comes from 'Who Killed the Electric Car' and a techie husband. None of which qualifies me to get into an internet pissing match with an esquire.
The internet rumors state that Prius has a plug in version available 2009-2010. Still has a gas option, but it's the closet overseas electric I've heard of.
I still don't understand how GM could make a purpose built electric vehicle in the 90s, that worked, throw it away, and now not be able to produce another one. They've had more than a decade to perfect the design, battery, and engineering of a car that was once on the market and working. Did they throw away the design plans when they demolished the cars?
I work in healthcare, so please allow me to try to make a comparison. Imagine that a drug company developed a cure for cancer. The tried it on a few people and it worked. The cancer was cured. But the company realized that if everyone was cured they wouldn't make as much money, so they stopped making the miracle drug. Can you imagine the public outcry? Now imagine if they weren't making a profit and asked for a bailout.
[no bethany, my late-night comment above wasn't just directed at you, just the first part. the rest is directed at m and the other comments that followed- Ed.]
Edited By Siteowner
Very good article, speaking as a white collar employee with a coffee stain on my shirt cruising the internet at work, you couldn't be more right.
And let’s not pretend that this country has designed an effective bankruptcy system. Congress is basically saying lay a bunch of people off and pay the investment banks and lawyers $2 billion and you can do business as usual. It’s not logical.
I sent your post to a friend in Oregon, he was inspired:
http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/1...roup-vs-
th.html
My thoughts here are not real original, and I am probably way off, but I think your comments Dutch versus some of the others may reflect your Calvinist heritage.
What is worthy about helping people - they have a certain dignity. Any action for high ideals(aid to war-torn areas, ongoing aid Katrina and Tsunami areas, aid to autoworkers and automakers) needs to include an unconditional love of the beneficiaries.
Secular humanism in replacing the low and demeaning picture of human beings as depraved, inveterate sinners and replacing it with the potential of human beings for goodness and greatness explains why initially philanthropic action is so immensely worthwhile. A lofty humanism puts forward a great willingness and high goals to strive toward, for example the current efforts to reduce global warming, past civil rights movements, etc.
But on the other side faced with the immense disappointments of actual human performance(perceived laziness and lack of motivation, executives that are out of touch) one cannot but experience a growing sense of anger. Any effort made toward helping 'these people' or anyone will be efforts gradually overcome by feelings of contempt. with this view of reality, perhaps the best that can be done for them is to force them to shape up.
I drive a Honda that gets 35 MPH. Prior to that I drove a Honda that got 48 MPH. (It was not a hybrid, it was 92 Honda Civic Hatchback that had almost 200,000 miles on it when I gave it to a friend.)
The sad reality is that 30 MPH is NOT good gas mileage. Great, they are improving the gas mileage. But improvement is not enough. The gas mileage has to be good.
The auto industry has the technology to make high quality cars that last for 10 plus years and get 50+ MPH but they instead choose to make crappy cars that get such poor gas mileage it has you thinking 30 MPH is good! The only thing they are interested in is making as much money as possible. That includes making things like hummers and gigantic SUV's. One hybrid (that gets poorer gas mileage than my 1992 Honda) is not going to get them off the hook.
wow, I hope you never have to take those 35-48 MPH Hondas out on the highway. Get out of the way, gramps!
I jest. 48 mpg 92 Honda civic hatchback? 48 mpg? really? why would anyone buy a prius!!!
I agree that 30 mpg isn't ideal, but for a nice full-sized car like the Chevy Malibu I think it's a good start (and the 30mpg numbers are for the non-hybrid version). the Malibu is not the only model the Big Three offer as a hybrid---they offer more than 15 hybrid models.
But really, Denise, I was hoping to get more people like yourself talking about the CHEVY VOLT (see the post!) a full-sized car that doesn't require gas at all for trips under 40 miles and will get 100+ mpg for longer trips.
I don't think this has anything to do with what YOU drive. it's about what accusations you make and whether or not they are true.
I still haven't seen an anti-Detroit liberal explain how the development of the Volt and hydrogen-powered vehicles doesn't fly in the face of their argument that "Detroit should die because it hasn't been innovative." It's been slow to innovate, sure, but why should we punish it or even kill it just as it's on the cusp of introducing these innovative products that make the most efficient Japanese offerings look like Hummers?
and this isn't a critique of your comment denise, but a more general question about the liberal attack: the Big Three are corporations smart enough to understand the importance of demand in the market. I think when the real demand started to be there for these more efficient vehicles, the Big Three responded as any smart corporate behemoth would, maybe a little slow but the response is there. I think one reason for the slowness may be that the Big Three understood that so many of the coastal liberal elites chastising them for not offering tiny 40+mpg hybrids had already written these companies off and would NEVER buy a domestic auto in the first place no matter what the gas mileage. When I first moved to California, I was blown away by the fact that very few people drove domestic cars. Part of it was the wealth of the population (I saw plenty of gas-guzzling German SUVs and Lexuses) but also I think people out there had just written off the domestic automakers. as I said before, that's a marketing battle that the Big Three lost long ago.
but for these populations to be so critical of these auto makers, to say the Big Three should have been building cars that even they wouldn't have purchased seems kind of like a paternalistic argument to me. It's like saying, "forget about market conditions, you stupid companies should have only been building fuel efficient little cars so that Bubba and Billy Bob out there in the heartland wouldn't have been tempted by those SUVs or trucks."
the market has changed significantly. the liberals want to punish these companies for reacting to the way the market has been for a decade or more. Bubba and Billy Bob are starting to think about more fuel efficient vehicles. And I have no doubts that the Big Three, if given a chance, will cater to this shift in the market.
It's not about the big three for me. It's about auto makers in general that haven't been looking to the future. The chevy volt is great, I hope it makes it to 2010 to be released. But I still believe the best way to save the auto industry in the US is for the big three to file bankruptcy, reorganize, eliminate their excessively expensive labor contracts and adopt some of the foreign auto makers practices. Hire people with the skills - their current employees even, minus the union bits - and pay them fairly with benefits - none of which they'd send to union fees, etc. The unions were great back when work conditions were ridiculous, but I don't believe its necessary any longer. I think bankruptcy is a viable solution that doesn't have to screw anyone or involve any hatred or anger. They need to streamline and focus. That's my two cents.
-Melissa
Perhaps the Detroit 3 actually were thinking strategically when they started to market SUVs. You'll all remember that just before the SUV became popular (before there was the term, SUV) the US economy was emerging from a pretty bad recession that saw my dad laid off from his auto manufacturing job. The Detroit 3 were hurting, and I'm guessing, struggling to figure out what to do about their declining market share.
The small cars of the 70's and 80's did not perform anywhere near as well as their foreign counterparts, (My father-in-law's Ford Fiesta burst into flames on the highway with his infant daughter riding in the back. My own parents' purchase of an early 80's Dodge Omni was a complete disaster of a lemon.) and their larger, more typically 'Detroit' V8 autos weren't much better from a quality standpoint. The one area where the Detroit 3 did shine was in their truck production. Guess what. All those people interested in buying American started to buy trucks. But these people weren't interested in the typical F150 or Silverado pick-up, they wanted something a little more practical for city driving, and so the SUV stepped into the mix.
The SUV was not born of nothing. They have always existed, but in a more 4x4, rough and ready kind of way. (remember the Scout by International) The Jeep Cherokee, Ford Bronco, and GMC Jimmy all existed pre-1990, but people thought of them as these kind of off-roading type of vehicles. Well, take off the thick tires, remove the roll-bar, and add power windows, and you suddenly had a vehicle that lots of people wanted.
The Detroit 3 stumbled into the SUV craze, and they reacted with vigor. Soon, those early Jimmys and Cherokees got makeovers to appeal to the masses. Luxury SUVs started to pop up. Some even came without four wheel drive. People liked them because they were great utility vehicles and they fit into people's lives very easily. (I hated them because they represented everything I despised about the flourishing suburban lifestyle) Soon each of the car companies had several versions from which to choose. The foreign auto makers even jumped into the mix (an SUV Porsche??!) and started making their own luxury versions.
Now here we are today complaining that the Detroit 3 weren't acting smartly. I think that they responded to demand. I agree with Jim that people didn't want the small car offerings of the Detroit 3, because those offerings were largely crap. I believe that this has changed. Consumer satisfaction and reliability rankings consistently see GM and Ford rising in their ranks. (forgive me Chrysler, you are not there yet) My own foray into foreign car ownership lasted for about three years as the Volkswagon Passat I was so excited about became the kind of maintenance hassle I typically feared of the Big 3. Since then we've purchased two American made cars, a Vibe and a Mazda 6, that represent the kind of cross continent cooperation that I think is critical to automobile success. (both are terrific cars, by the way)
The gas price crises of this summer has defintely spurred the Detroit 3 to think differently about their product lines. (I am personally excited about the infusion of their European cars into the US market) What's different now is that they finally have the quality to accompany the product, and I am hopeful for the future. If only there is a future.
Thanks for the great posts everybody.
For what it's worth. The problem of SUV's was one that if not created was exacerbated in 1992 when the CAFE standard for "light trucks" which SUV is a euphemism for was virtually eliminated.
Why the big three resisted making more efficient engines is something I don't understand but they have spent a great deal of lobbying money doing so.
I can only guess that the power that comes from less efficient engines is easier to manufacture because the engine can be simpler.
This legislated profitability reached the height of insanity 2 years ago when they provided a specific $40,000 tax break for the purchase of the biggest heaviest SUV's for businesses. The result? NYC is choked with giant SUV's being used as livery cabs.
I know New Yorkers didn't ask for their tax money to be used to subsidize the purchase of vehicles that ruin our roads, make it more dangerous to drive, produce more pollution per mile and suck up scarce parking / driving space. But when you make the incentive that ridiculous, people will react.
These changes were aggressively lobbied for by the big 3. They threatened bankruptcies and job loss if they didn't get them. So our government caved and gave it to them and here they are again with their extortion routine.
So, the promise of a fantasy car 2 years from now that should have been on the market 10 years ago but was yanked by GM because they determined that they couldn't make any money on replacement parts on a vehicle that wore out less often (their electric car). They recalled them all, forcing their owners (leasers) to relinquish their cars. Then, they crushed them.
They should be split up. If they are too big to fail then if we won't let them fail we should break them up if we bail them out. More competition, more variety. And we should force them to put SUV's under the CAFE standard again.
The political reason that it was easy to just bail out the banks vs the auto industry is that the cost of retooling in the two industries is different. We can change (and must change) the regulations that govern the banks. Hell, if we had done a reasonable job of trying to enforce the regulations on the books by providing law enforcement resources to review the garbage that Wall Street has been producing we'd be less badly off than we are now.
Regulating the auto industry has been very difficult. There are legitimate issues with retooling but they are exaggerated and exploited and hence the industry stays stagnant.
Overall I believe there has simply been too much money floating around in the financial sector. The artificially cheap price of borrowing caused investors to borrow to make more. When lending money became a way to make money with no risk at all to the lender (SIV's and credit default swaps) everyone wanted to be a lender.
This had the knock on effect of making money far to easy to get for the consumer. Ridiculous levels of home value appreciation followed on from too much available money to pay for homes. Inflated home values encouraged people to take out home equity which was used to buy cars that we would not be able to afford.
This sham economy has been going for a while now but has never been much more than a Ponzi scheme.
In my more radical moments I have an urge to argue that the assets of individuals responsible for creating this moral hazard should be seized. Not all of this artificial "value" was successfully extracted by clever Wall Streeters, but I definitely feel that they should have to give some portion of it back. Not realistic, I know but that's the feeling in my gut.
Awesome post, and I really agree with this bit from your Part II:
"It's no secret that Americans don't like to confront real issues of class. . . I think this ugly response to a mythology perpetuated about blue-collar workers is particularly shameful because so many American white-collar workers in both the public and private sectors are incredibly lazy themselves."
So true! It's OK as long as you can hide your pooch-screwing behind an open spreadsheet program?
I am not about to go buying American cars or anything totally crazy like that, I've always considered them to be pieces of shit, but you bring up extremely valid points about the value of the American worker and what these companies do for our nation. It's very easy to be insulated from this when you are on one of the coasts, driving a Japanese car, surrounded by relative affluence. Thanks so much for opening our eyes.
I think the reason that the Detroit 3 resisted making more fuel efficient engines is that, generally speaking, the less fuel an engine consumes, the less power it has on the road. It is the same reason that the 48 MPG Honda Civic no longer exists (or the 50 MPG Geo Metro for that matter): these kinds of cars are just not suitable for most people's freeway driven suburban lifestyles. They do not have the acceleration on the highway when surrounded by a ton of cars going 70 MPH.
Now why, you might ask, are people living the type of lifestyle that seems to require a big comfortable automobile? That is a question for another blog, but brings up the ramifications from policy decisions made as early as the New Deal and beyond. (Federal Housing Authority, Federal Highway Act, the long American tradition of Manifest Destiny?...) Why do we allow our countrysides to be demolished in the name of acre sized homesteads? I'm not saying the Detroit 3 haven't supported this outward migration, but I am saying that if our government had displayed more forthought, we wouldn't have had all of these govt sponsored subsidies to spread our cities out, thereby creating enough room for large vehicles to be practical in the first place.
i have read this post and the follow-up, as well as all the comments many times over. i really appreciate this kind of commentary--this has made me think a LOT about things over the past few days.
the auto industry's state and the pictures you take of detroit remind me so forcibly of other industries that have been killed off in the US over the last 15 years. i grew up in a small southern town totally fueled by textile mills, and now, they are all gone. so many buildings with kudzu growing over the walls and through the windows, collapsing slowly back into the earth.
i was a textile designer myself for years, but when NAFTA passed, heralding the end of that industry, i saw the writing on the wall and went back to school to learn something else. i was fortunate enough to be able to get a second degree and start a new career (at 30) in a different industry. that job has also since been moved overseas. now, with two college degrees under my belt, i am an admin. at least i have a job, right?
my sister, on the other hand, has no education to speak of. she has worked like a dog her whole life in the textile industry--moving from plant to plant as they have closed, one by one. now that there are no more textile jobs to be had--she is scraping the bottom of the manufacturing barrel working a crappy 3rd shift job in a place that makes auto parts. she's gone from making $16/hr to less than $8 over the past 6 years. she is a single mother with two children at home. she's 50 years old. my mother just told me she's about to lose this job too. what is a person like her supposed to do?
i have no real point or solution here--just to show that it's not just the auto industry that's facing doom--it's ALL manufacturing here. it's a sad state of affairs how little is actually made here in our country nowadays. i have come to look at buying local and handmade things as almost a moral responsibility.
I can speak for GM and say GM is making good products today.
Two of the most award-winning vehicles for 2008 were GM products — Cadillac CTS and Chevy Malibu. But no one wants to buy the car of the year or the J.D. Powers best car in initial quality if it's got a GM emblem on it.
It's going to take some time for all of the new models to roll out and for the public to slowly start to view the domestic vehicles positively again. In the meantime, those of us who work in the auto industry (yes, me included) fear for our livelihoods.
I don't want to wind up another Detroit mama on welfare, but it just may happen.
So I guess the government pays one way or another, eh? Save an industry, or shell out lots of cash for unemployment benefits and social services.
I'd leave the state if I could, but to do so would mean I would have to give up custody of my son. But then I guess maybe that's what I'll have to do. People had to move their children away to live with relatives during the Great Depression. I guess this is no different.
It's just one little life. I know mine is insignificant, but the lack of national compassion is certainly a sobering experience. I never knew we were so universally despised here in Motown.
I thought we were just hard-working folks trying to live a little life and do a good job. That's all I wanted. I didn't need any more.
And now I'm about to lose what little I have.
It's remarkable that this is such a satisfying thought for the rest of the nation.
Quote:
"I am not about to go buying American cars or anything totally crazy like that . . . [but] thanks so much for opening our eyes."
Sounds like eyes wide shut to me.
I can't fault anyone for going with the car model they like best be it foreign or domestic.
I've always bought Detroit cars, usually Chrysler products, mainly because I liked them not out of any conscious "Buy American" ethic.
I know people here, around Detroit, that forbid visitors from parking their import in the driveway if they came over to visit.
That to me is whack.
But in some of these comments there seems to be a obverse side of that same coin. As though "buying foreign" is taking a stand for Truth, Justice & The American Way(?)
How whack is that?
To me the most bewildering thing about the push to not do the "Bail Out" is overwhelming Ad Hominem tone of the opposition. Especially when you contrast it with the glib way the Wall Street Bail Out slid through congress.
Why are the Big 3 characterized so negatively while mortgage lenders hardly get called out at all? Most blame the borrowers who should have known better.
Maybe we should set up Car Counseling programs for peeps that buy the wrong vehicles just like we have Credit Counseling for those bad folks that went in and twisted the lender's arms until they gave them bad loans.
If something is repeated often enough without challenge, it is accepted as fact. Is it really true that the Detroit 3 deliberately foisted nothing but SUV's on the auto-buying public, or did they possibly provide the vehicles that were in demand? Which came first? Have there been throngs of people trying to buy 4 cylinder econo-cars at the domestic dealerships, who have said, "Gee, there's nothing here but V8 trucks, so, oh well, I guess I'll buy one of those." I suspect not. One could probably make a credible case for the Detroit 3's stupidity in giving the moronic public exactly what they were asking for. If this is the case, exactly who are the bums who should be left to wallow in the mire of their own making? Something to think about.
I am kind of confused. I don't hear liberals banging on about letting Detroit die as you say. The folks I hear that from are conservatives. You know, the ones who want to shrink government so small they can drown in a bathtub. The same crew who think that the free market should just be a free for all--social darwinism and all of that.
I think what you are getting at though is those who are green and well off enough to buy a Prius being condescending towards those who drive whatever they can afford. Such as the old pile of crap I currently drive. I could get a lot more green but I can't afford a newer ride.
Yes, condescension is always ugly.
I admire your passion and angst. But frankly I really wish you had had even a modicum of that concern for truly poor, non-unionized, textile folks living in shotgun mill hill shacks in nondescript southern towns (never making more than about $15 an hour) getting the boot fifteen years ago when you were out buying cheap textile crap from Asia at your local dept store instead of the pricier and higher quality stuff made in North Carolina that was sitting right next to it on the shelf.
Ditto for the furniture industry (which is now pretty much gone to Asia as well) and too many others to name. Some of us were onto that "Buy American" thing a long time before you were. And little good it did. Solidarity from the likes of the good folks in Detroit making three or four times our wages and could better afford our products than we could sure might have made the difference.
So yeah, when plants came south, we were happy to get a job back.
Maybe Detroit needs to do what some of those dirt poor southern towns did starting twenty years ago? Reinvent themselves. Get so low and so desperate you find solutions. I guess those "dumb hicks" had the added bonus of fully understanding that the nation as a whole and DC in particular was in no shape gonna help them out. Why should they when it was so easy to ignore it and continue on with their "lazy hillbilly, redneck" meme and all.
Hard working people are all the same. Wish you had been on board so fervently back then.
I truly feel your pain now, dude. But some of us have been there and done that before and this ain't nuthin' new. And yes, I am for federal help for the BIg 3 (mainly because we have to) even though it would be very easy for me to resent their chutzpah to even ask given the good folks of Detroit's deafening silence during the woes of others.
People like to buy a lot of cheap crap. As long as they want more crap and less quality, this will continue to be a problem--for whatever industry you name.
I live in the Carolinas and I have watched the foreign automakers bring numerous jobs into this areas as well as AL and MS by utilizing a flexible work force. This allows them to transition plants, trim work forces and survive for a better day. The majority, if not all, of these jobs are non-union. I don't understand why my tax dollars should be used to bailout automakers who haven't run their business well and pay similar workers more money for doing the same job. I don't think the workers on the UAW rolls are any lazier than I am or the workers in the BMW plant in Spartanburg. Finally, two wrongs don't make a right. The banking industry shouldn't have been bailed out from a "fairness" standpoint. Unfortunately, without them functioning, every city in the country would look like the worse part of desolate Detroit.
Look Here.... http://freakonomics.blogs.nytime...-gms-best-hope/
Oh where's a "Mr. T Saves the Big Three" coloring book when you need one.
Thanks for shedding light on this important issue and for bringing up some points that hadn't occurred to me. You really have me reconsidering my prejudice against domestic cars - I grew up hearing that Japanese cars were great and that American cars sucked, blah blah blah. It's funny (but not really) how you never stop to think about all of these ideas you absorb but never really question. Recently I have considered the Ford Focus, it gets so many great reviews, and then I find myself saying "But it's a FORD!" Why is that? Kudos on your entries, and I for one will re-evaluate my bias after reading them.
I would rather have seen the Big 3 get some help than the Wall St. crew. Does it go back to blue collar bias, union bashing, lower-to-middle class prejudices? Your post today was brilliant, Jim.
By the way, I have a Prius that I drive 75 miles roundtrip to my teaching job, I have a carpool clan, and I am far from the 'yuppie, elitist' tag that is getting hurled around (although I am happily left-leaning). The Volt would have been great for me and I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish in a few years. By the time my husband's 120,000 mi car is on its last tires...
About your post-script, point no. 1: AMEN. I've said it before; (even if I haven't always agreed with you), keep writing because Detroit needs you.
I worked for Ford for about 10 years, I quit in May to move back to the East Coast for family reasons. I know that people have been focusing on the blue collar workers, but the white collar workers are just as important. I didn't get to play on the Internet when I worked there. I worked insane hours (at one point, I literally worked 2 months straight, 7 days a week, 14+ hours a day, and I was just an engineer). At my last job there, I was routinely working from 7am until 11:30 pm for days at a time. And no, I didn't get overtime, if I was lucky, I got comp time. We hadn't gotten a raise for the last 3 or 4 years that I worked there.
The timing worked out for me, I now have a job somewhere else (don't ask me about my house in Michigan that's been on the market for forever), but all my friends are extremely worried. I think most of the dead weight at Ford got cut about a year ago.
From what I know, Ford is such a huge company, they're trying their best to get more cars out on the road. But unfortunately, it takes time. You have to line up suppliers and make fixtures and set up plants and design parts. It's not as easy as to just make a decision to make smaller cars and then 2 months later they're in the dealership. The European stuff isn't rated for the emissions requirements or the safety requirements that it needs in order to sell them here right now. But I know that they're moving as fast as they can, as I'm sure the other American car companies are.
I just didn't realize that people hated the American car industry and its workers so much. It makes me sad. You're talking about people's lives here, not just in the abstract. I don't get why compassion and empathy doesn't exist in this particular case.
I too am getting increasingly depressed by the made vs bought problem, and of course being an IP lawyer there's virtually nothing I can do that will be of any use once the revolution comes (except maybe knit, but I can't spin! where will the wool come from?).
On the one hand, there's nothing much we can say about hand vs machine made that wasn't said long ago by John Ruskin and later the Arts and Crafts movement - but on the other it seems we've made our peace with local mass produced materials to replace home-made, only to have the debate shift to overseas mass production vs local mass production. Which still, as you say, is not a clear-cut question. "Buy local" has ethical dilemmae of its own. I can, if I look, buy cheap Australian-made goods produced in outworker sweatshops here, but on balance I would rather buy something made in an ILO-approved workshop, even if that happens to be in (gasp) China, just to have the comfort of knowing a child wasn't tortured to make my freaking t-shirt. Or I could learn to sew for myself, except that the fabric I used would have exactly the same issues.
My mother has a theory that the cheap bought goods that induced us all to lose our "making" skills are part of a conspiracy to jack up the price once all the skills are lost. This is perhaps a more straightforward explanation of a recent quirk in the Australian economy - what has looked like low inflation for years has been high inflation in the services sector balanced by very low in the "made in China" goods sector, just in time for Chinese imports to start (justifiably) creeping up in price and showing what the real picture really was for all those years of "prosperity". Only of course this is all being blamed on the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in a whole other country.
May I suggest that we all plant a victory garden and hope for the best?
Please correct the comments about the Volt. It will use a lot of fuel that will come from somewhere. The electricity to run them does not come out of thin air. Coal, Oil, Gas, or heaven forbid Atoms. In the summer when it gets hot, electricity is sometimes in very short supply. And if you haven't looked its price is going up. Put a 100,000 of those cars in New York City and you will have a brown out every day.
For Unions I would watch what you ask for you just might get it. I worked for Pratt & Whitney. They make jet engines here in Ct. When I stated to work there were 100 people in my department. When I left (laid off ) 17 years later there were 10! All the extra money and benefits, as compared to what the average Joe, outside Pratt made for the same work did no good. There were 15,000 people employed by Pratt when I started, now there are less then 5,000. Work left, just like cutting your own wrist and watching your own blood run out of you. Does ten years of prosperity mean anything to those now unemployed. I saw it coming but the union convinced its members that, that would never happen
When you add $1500 to the price of a car, all the innovation mean nothing to the public that makes much less then the $100,000 that the avg union worker makes. Backlash is a bitch. Right or wrong, I and MANY others who just like me refuse to feed the PIGS. That is Harsh, but unless I get real lucky real soon I am going to loose my home, that I just moved my 84 and 82 year old parents into, and that is much worse. So let em fail and go Chapter 11 and renegotiate every thing. Then if they have a good product at a good price and I have a job, then and only then will I ever consider a Big 3 car again.
Thank you for your time, and good night!
Robert J Bernier Jr
Finally someone makes the point. The cute small fuel-efficient European cars that everyone thinks they want..? I used to drive them, being a UK-transplant to the Motor City. My fuel-efficient Fiat which could average 45 mpg couldn't go up a freaking hill! The small Fords may be better than their Italian counterparts, but they are nowhere near up to the safety standards of the Fords here, nor do they meet the stringent emissions requirements.
Something else no one else is mentioning is that the average family size in the UK is 1.8 kids. In the USA it's more like 3.2. Try to get 3.2 booster seats in the back of a European Ford Fiesta.
It's not that I don't want to save the planet, just that I think people pay lip service to the idea of 'fuel-efficient' without thinking it through. It reminds me of a survey in which people stated that they were very aware of eating low-fat foods and made a conscious effort to change their diet to eat well. At the same time, statistics on what people -actually buy- entirely disagree that there is any real change in behavior.
I do appreciate your perspective and I always enjoy your writing. But I must say the American auto industry lost my support for bailout when they all flew to DC in their private jets to request tax payer handouts. I didn't think we should have bailed out the white collar financial companies either.
Excellent! I have been feeling much the same these past few weeks but you have said it more eloquently than I ever could. Well done!
I just wanted to thank you for your comments on this--I'm a Michigander who left for college and grad school and recently moved back. I'm living in the Detroit area now, and the "let them die" vehemence has been really depressing me. I'm glad that your words have been getting some wider attention.
Great conversation. And I love that you opened the "class" can of worms. I was told before I came to America that it was a "classless society". I think this is actually part of the accepted catechism, yet nothing in my 12+ years here supports it.
America is all about class. We just have more euphemisms for it.
Also, loving your writings/photos on the wastescape recently. I hope there's a book coming.
k
One more thought -- it's easy to bash the financial sector bailout, but keep in mind that it credit dries up, EVERYTHING ELSE is screwed.
Someone I know explained it better than I could:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/...2%7D&
dist=msr_3
Dutch,
If only an industry bailout would actually 1) save the industry, and 2) preserve jobs.
If people buy less cars, the industry will contract and people will lose jobs. If only the federal government would be there to employ those who will inevitably get laid off. Why doesn't the government leave the companies to their fate and instead try to help the workers directly by giving them something else (sustainable) to do?
You have to forgive the cynicism of the liberals when it comes to these companies. They are reactionary, not innovative.
I'll give you the Volt, but to use the hybrid SUVs as evidence of companies going in the right direction is a bit too much.
Two excellent posts. Thanks for making us think about it.
James.
this is the best of blogging right here.
I'm from Pittsburgh, which is often compared to Detroit, except we were dealt our "death blow" long ago. The steel mills are (mostly) long gone, but there are more industries here still tied to the auto industry than people realize. My family is completely rooted in the steel industry so by extension, the auto industry. My Dad worked for Jones & Laughlin and then still when they became LTV. He then became a Steelworkers Union Official, eventually working for the International Union. And he followed generations before him, just as most Pittsburgh men did.
There are actually still a smattering of "steel" mills (not many of then make actual steel anymore, but only a portion of the process) here as well as a local GM plant.
They've just announced that the GM plant will likely shut down (which is devastating for my local community) and the loss of many US Steel jobs at various mills.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel....683/
detail.html
John DeFazio of the United Steelworkers Union is not in favor of a bailout for the Auto Industry (Maybe because nobody cared when the steel mills went belly up?), but the essence of what he said, "losing steel jobs is like knocking over a row of dominoes," can be just as easily applied to the auto industry.
Seems to me the dominoes are already in motion.
I'm not sure a bail out is in order, at least not until the leaders of the industry make a little more effort themselves to right their wrongs. But I would indeed hate to live in an America where we don't make anything anymore.
Thank you so much for this post and the follow up. Another distressing thing to me is the number of well-paid professional liberals willing to stick it to the unions in the name of lesser-paid non-union workers in the south or in other countries. By this logic, no one has the right to stand up for themselves as long as someone has it worse, and it plays right into the divide and conquer techniques that for so long kept, for example, African-Americans and working class whites from making common cause. Historically, unions led to higher wages across the board & the high wage period of the 50s & 60s allowed many of us to get the educations that led us away to our cushy white collar jobs. It's not just a matter of nostalgia to ask that people be a little freaking grateful.
Having not read the comments, I'm not sure if anyone else has made this point but a couple things come to mind in reading the second post about this.
First, there was an electric car in this country produced by an American company. They recalled them (they were leased, not sold). So I have to admit to deep skepticism about the commitment of the big three to anything except the traditional big SUV. With gas under $2 again, there's little reason to think they'll be motivated to change.
Second, even if we prop up the car companies now, the reality of the situation is that there is only so much oil in the world. So the big three would do well to create a long term plan that involves a vehicle that does not depend so much on such a limited resource. And all the folks that are enmeshed in that industry would do well to diversify. The Japanese car companies seem to have grasped this in a way that American companies have not - perhaps because of the resource issues that Japan has already successfully faced.
Third, there is a way to modify the Pruis so that it operates like a plug-in hybrid similar to the Volt. It costs about 10K. Not much of a leap to opt for a 10k upgrade rather than a whole new (let's face it untested) car. American car companies are hopelessly behind.
I grew up on the border of the east side of Detroit and Grosse Pointe, our backyards were Alter road and we gazed through the holes in the wooden fence to see what they were doing over there. As a kid I thought every person alive worked for the auto industry except for my dad. How come we didn't get a new car every two years? My grandparents ran the Commer Cleaners on East Jefferson across from the Grosse Pointe moving & storage building which today is a Chrysler plant. It was standard practice to let the auto companies buy up the poor struggling businesses or neighborhoods of people, wiping out city blocks and independent stores to build their factories. Now there are no more independent businesses there, just a few strip malls and a plethora of abandoned buildings. Those factories are closing, moving South and more south and it is desolate. I just visited Detroit last week and walked around with my husband who eagerly took pictures of the dust, perhaps it reminded him of the pictures of Germany after WWII that he had to stare at for endless hours in history classes. I spent my junior year of college in Germany and landed an internship at the Porsche research and development center outside of Stuttgart. My marketing thesis was a comparison of the German and US automotive cultures. I should present my findings to the German Engineers so they could understand how they might penetrate the market by working with the Big Three on engineering projects. How might they create value together, infuse German engineering in American cars, share the road. What Germany thrives on is a sense of pride since even workers in the most expensive unions in all of Germany still toil on cars. In Stuttgart, the roads were pristine and everyone had nice cars: the garbage man, gas station worker, executive and engineer. To explain to my boss at Porsche the differences in automotive culture between Germany and Detroit would have required a third language for us all to learn. For all the innovation that seemed to come out of the automotive industry in America, the biggest lie of all is that Detroit has car culture. The Woodward Dreamcruise does not a culture make. That myth is how they have been able to sell the same product and its maintenance and parts and expenses bundled all together to the general public without much innovation since they rolled the first cars off the line. That myth is how they continue to terrorize us with mediocre automobiles. I respect the opinion of this blog and while the loss of jobs will be great, I see no reason to let them continue to hold Detroit hostage, militant terrorists whom we continue to negotiate with. The GM tower of the Renaissance Center says it all, Detroit belongs to them.
I am in general agreement that union workers are not to blame for GM's failure. The point I wish to make is that approximately $20 of that purported $70 figure is for pension and health care costs of retirees. While current health care costs, and current pension or retirement contributions can fairly be added to the hourly wage figure, monies spent on retirees cannot.
Instead, it is the fault of prior management and shareholders. We have known for decades that GM was underfunding pensions and retirement funds. Instead, they posted that money as a profit, and distributed it to shareholders. This portion should already have been set aside, and was not.
This CANNOT be the workers fault. And once the market crashed, these obligations become even more onerous than usual.
If GM were to go Chapter 11, then these obligations might be cut off by the bankruptcy judge. Those who would have received them would be harmed as a result. Therefore pension holders see it in their interests to avoid Chapter 11. But in order to reorganize the firm to make it competitive, these have to be cut. I see no alternative to saving the company.
BUT, I cannot blame the workers; rather I blame the prior management.
And may I please point out that the myth of the union worker making $100,000 or more per year sitting around drinking coffee, is exactly that - a MYTH. Do some union employees make that much? I'm sure they do. But the vast majority are part of the shrinking middle class that is quickly sliding to the bottom.
My husband is a Union Roofer. Does he make more than non-union roofers? No, not here in the Northeast. Does he make $100,000 a year? HA! Not even close my friend. We're lucky to gross $40,000 a year.
My mother is a member of the Federation of Teachers. She grosses $25,000 a year.
I couldn't afford a Prius in my wildest dreams.
As for the unions no longer being necessary? Well you just ask the workers at Wal-Mart how good their pay and benefits are. Because that's exactly the types of jobs that will be left.
To blame the troubles of the auto industry on JUST the unions, or JUST the workers is ridiculous. It's all connected people. No one person or group created this mess.
well i'm too lazy to read the whole post and all the im' sure very intelligent comments, I just scanned it and it just never occured to me to buy American, until now. I'm in the market for a minivan, so I asked my friend to research the best American made Minivan so I can compare it to the Honda and Toyota. So, with minimum mental effort on my part, (see, Im lazy) I have lots of choices now. Thanks!
I'm late to the discussion, so I haven't read every comment, but I'm pleased to see such well-informed, civilized and articulate responses.
I am one of those bleeding-hearts in the Pacific Northwest. My husband and I don't drive a Prius, but we drive a Japanese-made car, and yes, we buy organic cheese made from local cows. But we don't do it because we think we're better than others—we do it because we really believe it will help make the world a better place. We're trying to reduce our reliance on petroleum, and choose products and services that, first and foremost, benefit *people* through fair trade/labor practices and support of local economies. And since my husband makes his clothing, much of our furniture, and nearly everything we eat, with his own hands; and since I'm a visual artist who makes a living solely from her artwork, we totally agree with you that America desperately needs to *make* things again.
We buy American whenever we can, because of the above reasons, but I won't buy an American car unless they're well-made—and right now they ain't. The Chevy Volt? I love it! Viva la electric car! I'm all for it—except that I'm worried it'll be a piece of shit. And the problem I have with the argument that the American auto industry produced SUVs and gigantic trucks because they had to, because the demand drove them to, is that the auto industry *created* that demand. They spent years pumping the airwaves with advertisements and the movies with product placements (ever see many Ford Explorers on the street before "Jurassic Park" came out?), until everyone was screaming for a gas-guzzler of their own. They could just as easily have taken a cue from Apple's big "dick," and advertised the allure of sleek, cutting-edge, "smart" technology.
And as for the Big 3 corporations and the bailout, I want to save the auto *workers.* I am totally in support of unions, and I think that any abuses they may have committed don't even come close to obscuring all the good they've done. Look at Walmart: they do everything in their power to eviscerate and eliminate unions, and their employees have some of the worst pay, benefits, and labor conditions in the country. We need unions, for the same reason we need three branches of government: checks and balances. Corporations on their own cannot be trusted to keep the interests of their people in mind. But there's the rub: the Big 3 *themselves* want to eliminate the unions. They themselves are the origins of the "$70 an hour auto worker" myth. It's disgusting! So here's what I'd really love to see (and why I'm so furious about the financial bail-out): a boon for the unions, the workers, and the smaller businesses and satellite industries that depend on the Big 3; and a big, fat punishment for the CEOs and the other greedy bastards who created this mess in the first place. What they've done is nothing short of criminal, and I have no faith that they won't get away with it. Just as we have no recourse for punishing the financial CEOs for taking their bailout and using it to pad their coffers, we'll have to watch the Big 3 fat cats get their platinum parachutes while our friends, family and neighbors lose their jobs or worse.
So I understand your visceral reaction—my own has been similar. I agree with you that for better or worse, we're dependent on the auto industry. I want it to succeed. I just also want to see the CEOs get ousted. It reminds me of Eddie Murphy's line in "Trading Places:" "The best way to punish rich people is to turn them into poor people."
I don't care that you or anyone drives a foreign car.
What I care about right now is the generation and repetition of false memes about the quality of cars produced by the Big Three as well as false memes about those companies' failure to innovate.
You can choose to drive whatever car you want. But don't repeat falsehoods to make you feel better about that choice.
The reason that Detroit built and sold so many SUV's and trucks in the 90's/00's is in part because of the high wages that the big 3 had to pay to their line workers. The cost of that labor added on average 2-3k to every car in their line up. In the compact car market, consumers look for small cheap cars that get good gas mpg. The big three knew that they couldn't sell their equal quality compacts at 3k more per car and expect anyone to buy them, so they stopped investing in them and instead chose to build profitable trucks and SUVs. This problem however doesn't exist anymore. A couple years ago GM burnt a couple billion in cash to change the very labor laws that made producing competitive small cars impossible. Now GM has profitable compact cars like the Chevy Cobalt, that get in some cases better mpg than their Japanese counter parts.
To say that the ones who should be punished are the CEOs doesn't begin to get at the root of the big 3 current problems. In the last 5 years all three companies have seen major shake ups in their executive level. The CEOs of both Chrysler and Ford are brand new. GM hasn't fired its CEO because under Wagoner, the company has finally realized its potential of having a very strong product line and lowered costs. GM now sells the most cars worldwide and has the fifth largest workforce of any automaker. That was Wagoner's accomplishment.
The reason the big 3 are in their current predicament is because they made large investments in their own product lines and an international credit crisis and financial failure like we've never seen before struck at while they had no cash on hand. The root of their problems is not corporate incompetence but very bad luck. Over the last three years the people that work at GM and Ford (less Chrysler) have shown that they have what it takes to competitive in a free market. Don't punish them for that.
I just have to add to (and I'm sure repeat some of) the sentiments of those who are politely disagreeing.
I don't think that any one of us evil fuel-efficient foreign car driving hippie-yuppies want to see the entire economy of Detroit (and other auto-industry activity supported towns) die a painful death. And I don't think that requiring auto companies to come up with a REAL plan to fix their brokenness is tantamount to crushing the industry (and all tertiary parties).
The fact is that the big 3 have been broken for a long, long time. The economy has conveniently forced the cyst to come to a head, and now, the CEOs are looking at an ugly scenario, but the economy is merely a contributing factor, not a cause. And frankly, I agree with your tit-for-tat argument comparing the banking industry bailout, but frankly, I disagreed completely with the decision to throw money at the banks. It is, unfortunately, the state of things that America's financial industry affects the world's financial industry. Bailing out the car companies will have an affect on the global economy, but it will be tiny compared to that of the banking industry.
And, you know, I get the nostalgia, and I know that you said previously that you did not think that the issue was nostalgia (except that the inclusion of a story about the downfall of the high school vocational classroom really did make it seem that you did intend for us to feel some sort of nostalgia about industry in general). But nevertheless, I completely understand- my father is an industrial arts teacher, and has been for 30+ years (he was the sleeping shop teacher at the beginning of Dazed and Confused, and those scenes were filmed in his classroom). When he eventually retires, the entire program across the school district will die. Gone, completely. And yeah, that makes me sad. But the fact is that the educational market has borne out the utility of such programs. Believe me, I am still thrilled that I know how to use a compound miter saw, and I love being able to repair many, many things, but I'm really glad that I didn't choose that as my profession because those professions have been disappearing for decades as well, and thus education in those areas has become irrelevant.
I live in an area of North Carolina where textile manufacturing, furniture making and tobacco were a way of life for many. And as sad as it is for the workers, the market has borne that these industries are not viable in our economy. I see it every day, driving past the multitude of streets, parks, museums, school buildings, etc. that are named either Reynolds or Hanes, that the loss of these industries devastated my area. Only no one gave a shit because it was only a local issue. No one cares that the furniture industry is in the crapper because we'd all rather get our sleek Swedish Modern furniture at a giant warehouse store (me, included).
But here's the thing- as much as it sucks for our area, I'm okay with it. I'm glad the tobacco industry has gone from here because in it's place, North Carolinians have taken care of themselves and built a massive wine making industry in it's place (did you know that NC is 5th in wine producing states in the US? CA, WA, OR, NY and then little NC...). Tobacco farmers can now get subsidies to grow wine, and I can drive 30 minutes and be at 20 different vineyards with amazing wines. The farming industry in this area has worked hard and come up with a solution for the fact that the market did not go their way. So why can't Detroit do the same? Making SUVs obviously isn't working, and until I actually see a feasible electric car hit the road from GM, I honestly won't believe it.
Unfortunately, I do not see that the big 3 will fix themselves. And unfortunately, I see our entire country paying for it. I know- I get how much it sucks to live in an economically depressed area, I really do- but I still don't agree that we should bail out a broken industry. And if we decide to do so, then I expect Congress to pony up the cash to go ahead and fix every single other broken industry that has caused a town to fold. I want to see that Hanes plant down the road pumping out bras and undershirts and panties by the millions, I want to see the textile mills weaving the fabric to make all of those underthings, I want to see the furniture business explode. I, personally, will feel that capitalism has failed if we suddenly start bailing out industries left and right(not that what we practice in this country is true pure capitalism, and not that what we're calling capitalism shouldn't fail).
Until I see some sort of actual plan (and don't see anymore CEOs showing up to hearings in private jets), I will remain staunchly against the bailout.
A few years back author Larry McMurtry wrote a non-fiction book called ROAD where he drives up & down various stretches of Interstate & writes about how he feels about what he sees.
He started off in MI & commented about the Henry Ford Museum & how he was gonna steer clear of that tourist trap that was obviously set-up by the egomaniac industrialist that brought us the Model T as a monument to himself & was a worthless waste of time.
Anyone that's ever been there knows it is a national treasure & if you know its origin you know that Ford never wanted his name on it in the first place & if it is a homage to any one person that person is Edison.
Anyway, at the time I thought Larry was just a rogue asshole. Now I see he was part of a larger element that finds it unthinkable that anything good could come out of the Detroit Auto industry.
Kate, it's true a lot of those points have been made in other comments I shouldn't expect you to read, and I've tried to answer them by saying: two wrongs don't make a right. ten or twenty wrongs don't either.
government policies for decades have not only failed to save american industries throughout the country but actively encouraged them to go overseas or south of the border. do I wish I could go back in time and advocate for saving those industries? yes. but I can't. I can only speak out against the wholesale repudiation of one fine american industry by a misinformed and ungrateful public now, while it still has a chance to be saved.
I'm glad north carolinians are enjoying the aromas of their domestically-produced syrahs after driving their domestically-manufactured hondas. but I'd still rather buy underwear made in north carolina than bangladesh.
Thanks to the inability of the South Carolina DOT to clear a wreck on I-85, I took a detour on highway 29. If you ever run out of abandoned builings in Detriot, come on down south and photograph the places where workers spun, wove, and finished those Carolina jockeys.
Just: thank you.
Jim, I love what you're doing. Great post, great blog (parenting and otherwise) and I love the photography.
I gave your postscript post mad props, added you to my blogroll, and will now be a regular here.
I only wished I still lived in MI, I'd pile my two kids in the car and come hang out.
Cheers,
Matt
I agree with most of what you said. I don't want to see the industry die because of all the suffering that would follow. And I think that the job loss estimate is probably too low. It's not just auto industry and supplier jobs -- it's the stores and restaurants and municipal jobs and on and on and on. And it's not a bailout -- it's a loan.
That said, I need to be honest. I drove American for a long time. I understand that all cars can have problems. (My Honda has two pending recalls now, and that ticks me off. It also likes to wear out brakes in front 50% faster on the left side.) For me, it was the service that was a turn off. Not only did every darned car come with problems, no one seemed to care much about it. I'm certain that's not the case now, but it's hard to forget, especially when you are young and trying to balance the car payment with the groceries.
And, when I was looking for a car this time (2006), I would have bought American. I was interested in safety and really good gas mileage (better than 30 MPG on the highway, since I have a 80 mile round trip every day that is mostly spent stop and go, so the city driving number is closest to what I actually get). There wasn't an American car in the top 5 -- those slots were filled by Honda, Toyota, and VW. So, I bought a Honda.
And, my car was made in America, by American workers. It does bother me that we encourage companies to build and employ here, but then we treat them with disdain sometimes.
I think this is an outstanding, and ballsy, post. I haven't bought an American-made car since 1993, and it started having problems at 80k miles. Subsequently, I've taken German and Japanese cars well over 100k miles with no trouble. However, I certainly don't want to see the Big 3 die this year. Where's Lee Iacocca these days, anyway?
jdg,
I agree wholeheartedly with both your Big Three posts, and have finally put together the Detroit critique that's been floating around in my head since the last NAIAS (Detroit Auto Show), and combined it with my suggestions for the companies to get the gov't assistance and move forward.
Here it is.
Sadly, I think much of this will be passed over by the CEOs and Congress today, but we'll see...
Incredible post. And have you read Atlas Shrugged? I think you would really enjoy it...
Reading your 2 posts actually changed my mind about the idea of a "bailout." Thanks for taking the time.
I am surprised that this conversation has not yet brought up Representative John Dingell. As a native Michigander I am ashamed of this guy.
For sixteen years Dingell was the head of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, and he used his position to block every single increase in fuel economy standards ever proposed, at the bidding of the Big Three, of course. Not the unions but the CEOs. They didn't want to have to figure out how to compete in the small car arena, so they pushed for a special legal loophole for SUVs. Dingell backed them at every step. U.S. auto engineers are every bit as capable of meeting the technical challenges of fuel economy as Japanese engineers, but that was the hard path. So instead they kept the campaign contributions flowing in exchange for "protection" from harsh reality.
But it was false protection that only allowed them to delay facing the realities of climate constraints and variable oil prices. It was the "protection" of a mother still cutting her ten-year-old son's food for him, keeping him from learning to stand on his own two feet.
The irony is that higher MPG standards in 1998 would have pushed American car companies to build and develop the cars that people wanted in 2008, and that American companies were incapable of supplying. Yeah, the Volt is a neat project, but too little too late. Surely you've seen "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Higher fuel economy standards in the 1990s could have meant hundreds of thousands of GM-made electric cars driving around the country right now, not an experimental handful a year from now. Dingell is a big reason this didn't happen.
As one of the producers of the urban craft fair, I'd like to add another layer to this discussion. We rely quite heavily on sponsorships to make the event happen -- mostly from local businesses -- stores, a brewery, in past we've gotten printing, etc. This year we did find it harder to secure these sponsorships as they struggle through this year. Less people spending in local stores means they are less able to support local ventures such as ours.
To me, the restuarants that feed auto workers are the tip of iceberg as far as trickle down ...
To use myself as example: My newspaper job is affected (we rely heavily on ads for 1. cars and 2. classified ads for employment, as both dwindle, so do my co-workers). If I lose my job, so does my ability to produce local goods out of my bedroom as my side job, as does my ability to buy supplies from local craft stores like Munro's. It affects my ability to continue living in Detroit and producing things like the urban craft fair.
Thanks for the post -- I was actually directed here via another vendor who I met at a similiar craft show I was doing in Minneapolis today. All day long, my "I'm from Detroit"s were met with real concern for the state of our city.
I hope that others understand that we are thinking, caring, just-trying-to-do-right, just-trying-to-be-good people in this city -- that we not just abandoned buildings or a neat metaphor for dying industrialism or corporate mistakes.
You talk about "liberals who are so eager to see the Big Three "lie down in the graves they've made for themselves" by catering to the tastes of the majority of Americans who desired those big, gas-guzzling SUVs "
The problem is that Detroit stopped catering to the tastes of the majortiy of Americans. You don't see Honda and Toyota going out of business now, becuase they make cars that people want. If Detroit was making cars that people want they wouldn't be in this mess.
The big 3 need to fail in order to get the car business out of Detroit. Let's face it. Detroit is not exactly known for being stylish or cool. Why would cars from a company based there be any different?
Chevy Malibu, are you kidding? You'd have to pay me to drive that thing. They screwed up the Volt too. It looks nothing like the concept.
It's too late to save these brands. There is an entire generation of people who will never buy from GM, Ford, or Chrylser no matter what.
It just goes to show that perception plays a huge role in our choice of cars.
Tell people: "But the Detroit 3 actually does make fuel efficient cars," and folks will counter, "But they're just such shitty cars." Tell them that customer satisfaction surveys and reliability ratings actually have GMs and Fords at or near the top of the list, and they will say, "But they're just not as stylish as their Japanese counterparts." I say, do a Google image search of both the 2009 Toyota Camry and 2009 Chevy Malibu, and tell me if you could even distinguish between the two models without the attached nameplate...
The reality is that the US automakers are beginning to make some very nice looking, very well-built, and fuel-efficient cars these days. (Although all the car makers could do better on this last point.)
The other reality is that millions of people were burned by badly designed, badly built US cars over the course of the last 30 years. People don't want to take that chance again. We here in Detroit know that US cars (and the companies that produce them) have changed a great deal these last five years. These companies now need to let the rest of the country know the same - especially those living faraway on the east and west coasts. And who knows, now that all of our tax dollars are about to be invested in the future of these car companies, maybe some people will have a bit of incentive to give them all another chance.
I realize I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd like to make a couple of points.
Since so many have compared an auto bailout to the financial bailout, I think it's worth asking if the financial bailout has been effective. It seems like it hasn't been effective--the credit markets are still largely frozen, banks are still failing or being bought by others (this could be good or bad, and would occur regardless of the bailout), there's still a bear market.
It's also worth noting that the nine largest financial institutions in the country were forced -- yes, forced -- by the Treasury secretary to accept capital infusions that they didn't want.
As for the proper implementation of an auto bailout, I think that the more "oversight" and regulation that the government seeks to impose on any loan or bailout package will make it less likely to be successful, not more likely. What do members of congress know about running a major manufacturing operation? Nothing. They're politicians. They know how to speak in public, glad-hand, and bloviate. Not much else, with rare exception.
In fact, their regulations and oversight are a large part of the current problem. We're talking about people who consistently vote to impose major costs on auto manufacturers, but have no problem ranting and raving about GM's supposedly failed business model just a short time later when GM runs out of cash.
And if a huge bank can be forced to take money that it didn't ask for, what kind of boneheaded things could the Big 3 be forced to do in exchange for a bailout?
If you read this, you will see WHY the bailout hasn't happend yet.
http://www.myembarq.com/news/
rea...LARSDCCL1_UNEWS
Sounds to me like the UAW needs to back off or they won't have any workers to support.
Great post and great conversation.
To throw in my hat, the reasoning that aggravates me the most in the arguments against the bailouts is this idea that the D3 have been wearing blinders in regards to the technological developments in recent years. I have a relative that has been involved at a high level with the development of the Chevy Volt, and he is dying inside with what is going on with his company. Ten or so years working on a gas alternative vehicle in some incarnation – it wasn’t always the Volt concept, and they are so close to a viable, sustainable product and to have this opportunity yanked away will set the whole industry back – not just the D3.
It feels like people have this concept that engineering is like Star Trek or something – oh you need me to reprogram the warp drive to increase output by 40%...in 3 hours? No problem! Oh of course we can power this engine with these magic crystals! An electric car (not an electric gas hybrid!) an actual electric car is completely new technology. And the worst thing you can do with a new technology is through something crap out there, because it will be the death nail in further development. Yeah, they canned an electric version years ago – one that would have been prohibitively expensive to buy the car, as well as the extra expense of creating charging stations all over the place…It was a car with a leash.
True innovation takes time, and GM has been throwing lots of resources at this technology, even during the height of the SUV craze. They have been guarded about publicizing their efforts until they had a practical design on their hands, because they are not actually a company staffed by a bunch of idiots, they know the damage of heralding a new technology before it is viable can tarnish a companies image when the innovation falls flat.
So they don’t have the electric car quite yet, but does the precious Toyota? Volkswagen? They have plug in hybrids, mules.
Good insightful article. Why do we hate?
Because, since the 60's we have been trained to give way to our emotions and not repress them in favor of thought. The American "get it done" philosophy is rooted in "think it through, contain emotions through self discipline and persist". Objectively, unions have lived fat and shared fully when the profits were high, but in leaner times, as recently, they feel entitled, and it just isn't there.
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