He was good, but let’s be honest. He’s not talking about Wall Street. When you lose $2,000 on every car you sell, how do you expect to sustain yourselves? Lifetime health care? It’s either cut the pay, or they cut the jobs, and they eventually go under. Yes, Wall Street consists of a bunch of people that have raped the country. But the Union’s have to be realistic. You can’t keep pay the way it is when a company is going under like this. It’s just not possible.
And why are officials in Michigan so defensive of all this?? I wonder… Do people in Michigan just not know how to run a business?
The mayor still does not get that Toyota and Honda are making cars in the US with workers getting paid $25 per hour. He can rant and rave like a mad man all he wants but the fact that GM has to pay $75 an hour will make it a loser. That doesn’t even take into account the horrible management, engineering and marketing that the GM has.
When GM completely goes under, he will wish that they still had $25 per hour jobs. Drastic measures have to be taken by the Unions in Michigan and I know it is a tough pill to swallow but getting paid less than what the Union promised is better than joining a lot of the U.S. workers who are without a job trying to pay the mortgage.
The mayor still does not get that Toyota and Honda are making cars in the US with workers getting paid $25 per hour. He can rant and rave like a mad man all he wants but the fact that GM has to pay $75 an hour will make it a loser.
This is not true… that 75$ figure is bloated up to include medical, retirees and retiree’s medical… In actual fact GM workers make about 27$ an hour if we are talking straight wage… and very comparable to the toyota wage… knock down ceo wages to 25 bucks an hour! that ought to free up some money! It’s not the workers driving these companies into the ground why should they suffer?
Late,
grmpysmrf
We already discussed this issue in another thread.
Nobody can get a loan to buy a car because the credit/banking market is screwed.
I hear that GM is trying to sell the Saturn brand or it will be shut down. GM shut down the Oldsmobile brand several years ago.
I will reiterate that GM is rotten from the top down.
Ex. A former co-worker’s brother-in-law worked for Cadillac. He stated that every year Cadillac would throw a huge party at a five star hotel for select members of their elite staff. My former co-worker attended at least one of these events with his brother-in-law and told of extravagant, excess expenditures that were funded by GM for this elite portion of their staff.
Depending on the GM workers’ mortgage payments and if they have dual income or not, $27/hour or less isn’t going to allow them to keep making their house payment when gas is $4.00 or more per gallon and the oil companies are posting record profits.
I’ve also observed prices fluctuate with the increase and decrease of gas prices on items that I buy regularly.
Saab is going, saturn and chrystler are going down to line 1 or 2 lines. sad really. My dad is not a car dealer but does work for dealerships, as well as regular customers, and to see people thinking just to let these companies go and i won’t cause widespread consequences just makes me sad. I mean first off. For the garages that fiix up these cars, if ford were to go completely out of business, where are you going to get parts to fix damages to older models? sure at first you’ll still havea supply, but unless somebody opens up a plant to make new materials and replacement parts, you’ll be fucked when you’re explorer needs a new gasket or whatever.