Obama wants $50B in loans released to carmakers

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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Thank you for making my point. Management's only option was to harm the corporation and incur the wrath of the shareholders (their true bosses)...other than acquiesce to absurd union demands for salary, benefits, and job banks.

You see, sir John et al - Unions forced management's hand...and directly contributed to the demise of these companies. Chapter 11 awaits!

I'm sorry to say that you have not shown me anything more than what Rush Limbaugh has been spouting for weeks now. Give me details, numbers, negotiation dates, Union demands. I can already read your rhetoric on Rush's webpage right now.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[TheAnvil 0]

I have a far better idea. How about YOU go do some research, learn a few things, and get back to us. You can start with the following:

- Compare and contrast over the past decade the average pay for workers in unionized GM plants vs Toyota and Honda plants. You'll find that until a couple of years ago, the disparity was HUGE.
- Once you've done the above, please enlighten us as to how corporations with labor costs far in excess of their competitors will every be competitive?
- Tell me how any company who pays people when they are not adding value to the company (i.e. not working, as in a job bank) will be profitable over the long haul. Eager to hear that one!

Once you've done the above - we'll continue.

Happy learning!


Explain to me how

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[FallingOsh 0]

I went ahead and googled it just cause I was interested.

Clicky

--------------------------------------------------
Stay positive and love your life.

[Gawain 0]

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Not at all, sir John. You really should read a bit more carefully. I blame management for their decisions. I blame unions for driving up labor costs and putting management into a hole with regards to managing its workforce.

Management at all times had the option of not agreeing to the demands from the union and force a strike. They could have kept the workforce locked out until they agreed to lower wages and benefits.

The appetite for that was never present with management, since they wanted to protect market share and never had the foresight to see what would happen in the long run. Plus in the short run it would have seriously impacted their performance bonusses....

However, their appetite produced neither, GM has steadily lost market share.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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I have a far better idea. How about YOU go do some research, learn a few things, and get back to us. You can start with the following:

- Compare and contrast over the past decade the average pay for workers in unionized GM plants vs Toyota and Honda plants. You'll find that until a couple of years ago, the disparity was HUGE.
- Once you've done the above, please enlighten us as to how corporations with labor costs far in excess of their competitors will every be competitive?
- Tell me how any company who pays people when they are not adding value to the company (i.e. not working, as in a job bank) will be profitable over the long haul. Eager to hear that one!

Once you've done the above - we'll continue.

Happy learning!


Explain to me how

It's not my argument. You are trying to prove a point. Without the numbers, links and more I only believe you are doing nothing more than retreading Rush Limbaugh's talking points about unions and Toyota. It's a poor argument when someone asks for proof and you tell them to find it.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[TheAnvil 0]

Scared of facts, eh?

A couple posts above you'll find a NICE starting point.

When you're ready, get back to me.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[kallend 2,027]

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- Compare and contrast over the past decade the average pay for workers in unionized GM plants vs Toyota and Honda plants. You'll find that until a couple of years ago, the disparity was HUGE.

As big as the disparity between the CEO compensation packages of the respective companies?**

Your Rushite view is simplistic in the extreme. Here's a 2006 article from the WSJ:

Why Toyota Won, by James P. Womack, ...

Clearly MoTown needs a new approach and it's natural in the car industry to think that the secret must be a killer model -- a Toyota Prius hybrid or some other concept to replace the big pickups and SUVs that floated the American firms for 15 years. Actually, it's not a new car model that's needed. It's a new business model. Toyota is leading the charge against Detroit -- largely from inside the U.S. -- with a fundamentally different approach to business that my MIT research team in the 1990s labeled "lean" enterprise. Compared with these Toyota practices, GM and Ford's approach has five fatal weaknesses:

• GM and Ford can't design vehicles that Americans want to pay "Toyota money" for. And this is not a matter of bad bets on product concepts or dumb engineers. It's a matter of Toyota's better engineering system, using simple concepts like chief engineers with real responsibility for products, concurrent and simultaneous engineering practices, and sophisticated knowledge capture methods. The Prius is... the likely result of a development system that tries out many approaches to every problem, then gets the winning concept to the customer very quickly with low engineering cost, low manufacturing cost, and near perfect quality. (That's not to say that Toyota can't produce a dud ...but the likelihood of producing winners is higher ...)

• GM and Ford are clueless as to how to work with their suppliers. Sometimes they try to crush their bones -- which only works when the suppliers have any profits to squeeze, and few currently do. Then they embrace contentless cooperation that ... fails to produce lower costs, higher quality, or new and better technology. Toyota, by contrast, is getting brilliant results and lower prices from American suppliers like Delphi while also giving suppliers adequate profit margins. How? By relentlessly analyzing every step in their shared design and production process to take out the waste and put in the quality.

• GM and Ford have miasmic management cultures. These turn competent people into Dilberts. By contrast, Toyota does a brilliant job of making one person responsible for every key business process... A Dilbert-free environment naturally emerges, but not because everyone has received cultural training to spur teamwork. Rather, if ordinary people -- Dilberts even -- are put in a great business process they become great team players.

• GM and Ford cling to their wide range of brands: Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac, Saab, GMC, and Hummer at GM; Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Mazda, Jaguar, Volvo, Aston Martin, and Range Rover at Ford. And they still talk about brand revitalization as the way ahead. Yet the most successful car companies in the world -- Toyota and BMW -- have only two or three brands. And this is not an accident. Indeed, it's hard to see how any modern-day car maker can support more than three truly distinctive brands... A plethora of brands that can't pull their weight drains management energy and company coffers.

• GM and Ford still treat customers as strangers engaged in one-time transactions. Toyota's Lexus, by contrast, has created a new and better customer experience. Customers cheerfully pay more for the car and the service and then come back for more cars because they love the treatment. ...

But note: I haven't mentioned the creaky factories, vast pension obligations, and cranky unions that commentators ... seem obsessed with. In fact, Ford and GM's factories are now good enough to compete in terms of labor productivity and quality. They just can't support ... pension and healthcare benefits for retirees as the companies continue to shrink. Union and management both know this, yet ... their conversation has broken down. With zero confidence that management knows what it is doing, a union will try to get what it can now rather than look at the long term. In consequence, unless GM and Ford soon present a plausible path to a brighter future ... there may be no long term.

There is no mystery about the lean business model. All of the elements are operating in this country every day at Toyota and at many other American companies in a range of industries. What is mysterious is why GM and Ford can't embrace it. And what is dismaying is how many of their employees are likely to suffer if they don't. But finally, what is reassuring for the country is that if GM and Ford can't fix their problems, they will simply be replaced by new players in America, led by Toyota, who can.

** The average hourly salary of the "Big 3" CEOs is $1750 MORE than the average hourly salary of the Nissan, Toyota and Hondas CEOs.

Stop blaming unions for management failures.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[normiss 806]

He has a few inaccuracies in his information.
Toyota and BMW both have numerous other corporate interests much like multi-name American auto manufacturers, so that shouldn't be such an issue. Most auto manufacturers on the planet have a base model, and a trimmed-up optioned-out model with an entirely different name for assloads more money.
The foreign manufacturers in the US have repeatedly been given "bidding" options to build plants in the US - tax incentives, salary bidding, etc to get them started. Not having the history in the states the American manufacturers have, of course they started much lower with salaries, those same salaries that are approaching UAW rates.
Those American cars that Americans don't want to pay "Toyota money" for are equally as expensive as the actual Toyotas are. We have what seems to be a dual market here - people either want a super cheap disposable car or a gas guzzler that hauls half the neighborhood - like the ones the imports are making now.

Pensions, health care, suppliers THOSE areas need a complete overhaul.

[mnealtx 0]

Perhaps you should drop your obsession with CEO compensation and re-read the last two paragraphs in your proof (which, incidently, has NOTHING to say about CEO compensation - another of your red herrings?).

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But note: I haven't mentioned the creaky factories, vast pension obligations, and cranky unions that commentators ... seem obsessed with. In fact, Ford and GM's factories are now good enough to compete in terms of labor productivity and quality. They just can't support ... pension and healthcare benefits for retirees as the companies continue to shrink. Union and management both know this, yet ... their conversation has broken down. With zero confidence that management knows what it is doing, a union will try to get what it can now rather than look at the long term. In consequence, unless GM and Ford soon present a plausible path to a brighter future ... there may be no long term.

There is no mystery about the lean business model. All of the elements are operating in this country every day at Toyota and at many other American companies in a range of industries. What is mysterious is why GM and Ford can't embrace it. And what is dismaying is how many of their employees are likely to suffer if they don't. But finally, what is reassuring for the country is that if GM and Ford can't fix their problems, they will simply be replaced by new players in America, led by Toyota, who can.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[kallend 2,027]

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Perhaps you should drop your obsession with CEO compensation and re-read the last two paragraphs in your proof (which, incidently, has NOTHING to say about CEO compensation - another of your red herrings?).

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But note: I haven't mentioned the creaky factories, vast pension obligations, and cranky unions that commentators ... seem obsessed with. In fact, Ford and GM's factories are now good enough to compete in terms of labor productivity and quality. They just can't support ... pension and healthcare benefits for retirees as the companies continue to shrink. Union and management both know this, yet ... their conversation has broken down. With zero confidence that management knows what it is doing, a union will try to get what it can now rather than look at the long term. In consequence, unless GM and Ford soon present a plausible path to a brighter future ... there may be no long term.

There is no mystery about the lean business model. All of the elements are operating in this country every day at Toyota and at many other American companies in a range of industries. What is mysterious is why GM and Ford can't embrace it. And what is dismaying is how many of their employees are likely to suffer if they don't. But finally, what is reassuring for the country is that if GM and Ford can't fix their problems, they will simply be replaced by new players in America, led by Toyota, who can.

Apparently the message there about bad management whooshed right over your head.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[mnealtx 0]

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Apparently the message there about bad management whooshed right over your head.

Apparently the message there that the union shares responsibility whooshed right over YOUR head.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[kallend 2,027]

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Apparently the message there about bad management whooshed right over your head.

Apparently the message there that the union shares responsibility whooshed right over YOUR head.

Unions don't manage corporations, CEOs do. The message that you missed is that the union behaved quite rationally given the state of the company and its mismanagement,

With zero confidence that management knows what it is doing, a union will try to get what it can now rather than look at the long term

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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Apparently the message there about bad management whooshed right over your head.

Apparently the message there that the union shares responsibility whooshed right over YOUR head.

You didn't highlight anything about the unions there. The only thing close to it would be the promise of benefits to the retired Detroit workers. Remember, these are people that put in 30 years of work for the company and had money coming out of each check that went towards that pension plan.

I can think of another company that had issues with retirement pensions, nearly collapsed under economic strain and even asked for a $1.1B loan that had an exact payback date and plan. That company is/was United Airlines. Guess what, they have Unions as well and the Government, under Bush's decision, refused to lend (re: not bailout) the money in 2002. The attacks on 9/11 only made worse the situation that existed in the company. They were mismanaged and the ESOP was a failure. Care to guess what happened next?

Chapter 11.

And here they are today surviving just like everyone else and concerned about the same issues like fuel costs.

Now, why is UAL refused the help they had requested? Remember they did that after they worked with Unions and reduced staff and flights and still stayed competitive against American Airlines. So UAL had made the effort and still came up short and were turned away. They may employ less people than any of the Big 3 but the impact on our economy would be just as drastic especially when there would be no one else there to pick up the slack.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Thank you for making my point. Management's only option was to harm the corporation and incur the wrath of the shareholders (their true bosses)...other than acquiesce to absurd union demands for salary, benefits, and job banks.

Except that a competent leader would have looked at the long term viability of his or her company. In this case, I think they actually believed they were too big and too good to really get into too much trouble.

Even the mighty fall.

[normiss 806]

Yep UAL and a number of other companies have simply terminated their pension plans.
Guess who picks them up???

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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Yep UAL and a number of other companies have simply terminated their pension plans.
Guess who picks them up???

So, what both sides are saying is that there is no middle ground here, no clear victory for the left or the right. There is no one point that caused all this either interesting enough.

So, once that argument is done, now what? While everyone is running around pointing fingers so their side can win, I'm more interested in what happens next and how do we prevent it from happening again. What scares me is that shows like Rush Limbaugh is more about the finger pointing and trying to leverage a massive financial disaster just to score a point in the win column for the conservatives. Sadly the largely ignorant crowd that listens to him jumps onto this bandwagon as well.

What's the fix, how long does it take, how much money, what type of payment plan, what's the long term solution and what sort of impact will that have.

Does either side want Toyota owning and running Detroit? I know I don't.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[normiss 806]

I would appear the only way out is chapter 11.
It HAS worked for companies in the past, plus if may give them the opportunity to shed the pension plan and let us tax payers pick up that piece.
During the chapter 11 process *hopefully* they will work out those supplier issues they should have worked out years ago.
I would expect them to shut down plants, unload a ton of employees, sell off a number of other interests, and negotiate their debt down somewhat...beyond that it's wait and see.

[billvon 3,008]

>Management's only option was to harm the corporation and incur the
>wrath of the shareholders (their true bosses)...other than acquiesce to
>absurd union demands for salary, benefits, and job banks.

If they really felt that way, then they deserve to be replaced with a management who does not see themselves as victims.

As the above poster pointed out, everyone is spending a lot of effort trying to blame someone else. It was the unions! It was the management! It was the customers! It was the government! It was, of course, all of the above (although the government probably participated the least in both their successes and failures.)

[normiss 806]

I would have to say the government has at least $1.5 Billion dollars worth of responsiblility though.

[billvon 3,008]

>I would have to say the government has at least $1.5 Billion dollars worth
>of responsiblility though.


Yep. Which in the scale of their overall revenue is next to zero.

[normiss 806]

Few billion here, few billion there...


It's gonna hurt all involved. Start now.
Fix it or lose it.
It IS a business.

[kelpdiver 2]

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With zero confidence that management knows what it is doing, a union will try to get what it can now rather than look at the long term

seems to me like they're simply following the example set by their company's leadership: Get as much money as possible now.

A CEO that took a 'pay cut' might have better success talking to the unions.

[TheAnvil 0]

Oh I blame management for their poor decisions. I also blame the unions for driving up labor costs exorbitantly.

Isn't that nice, placing blame where it's appropriate?

But leftists can't do that, can they? Oh no. If they blame their precious unions in ANY WAY then they risk not getting those nice union $$ to fund their campaigns.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[TheAnvil 0]

Hey, union-lovers! How about explaining how paying people who don't contribute to your bottom line is good for companies.

Clicky

How about having some left leaning folks supporting a big 3 bailout tell us that ZERO taxpayer $$ will go towards paying workers who aren't turning wrenches/contributing to the company's bottom line? I won't hold my breath.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[billvon 3,008]

>Oh I blame management for their poor decisions.

Ah, good. It sounded like you were saying the mean unions were forcing the poor, helpless management to make decisions they didn't want to make when, in fact, management was just plain screwing up.