Let GM go Bankrupt

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

most of these guys are making $16k to $32k per DAY...

And let's look at that too. They surely don't deserve this much money. Who in the hell does? It's excess to the highest degree. Let's revisit these salaries and roll them back. Just how many jobs would be saved if the CEO's alone would accept a sixth, an eighth even of what they're making now?

I guess I'm just crazy.

1 Reply

@eoe,

I agree that salaries are out of control....but the GM CEO makes 40 million, GM is asking for 25 Billion (with a b). If you paid the CEO zero dollars, GM would still need 24.96 Billion.

The CEO pay isn't the problem in this case, it's horrible business plans.

The government should not be in the business of fixing horrible business plans.

2 Replies

@maporsche,

Maporshe the big 3 was doing fine until the price of gas reach 4.3 a gal and then the credit market lockup almost completely. Any one problem they could had handle but not the combination of problems in a short time frame.

Yes they did make errors but that was only a part of the probems that got them to this point.

Thier businsee model was not all that bad in my opinion or at least not the main reason they are at death door now.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

But in the top-to-bottom restructuring, I suggest that we focus on developing an efficient product and eliminating the fat. These outrageous salaries are very much a part of the fat. Honestly. Ya think they might manage on 1 million, maybe? How about half-a mil?

Like everything else that's wrong with the world, it all boils down to sheer greed.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Really, their business plan wasn't that bad?

Why isn't Toyota having this problem then. I assume they have to deal with $4.30/gallon gas and the US credit freeze too right?

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@maporsche,

You are correct, sir. Bill is incorrect. And to prove that statement, I pose a general question:

What innovation have the big 3 shown in the last 20 years? What exciting new products have they come out with? What technology has revolutionized the car?

Therein lies their problem; they have rested on their laurels and spit out the same crap autos year after year. They don't include new features which are really worth the high prices they charge for them.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@eoe,

I simply don't think this is the government's responsibility.

The government shouldn't be involved in determining what GM produces or what they pay people. I have no problem with the government making monies available for innovation or research and development grants, but you're talking about something much more extreme and intrusive, and frankly, against everything our country is built upon.

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@OCCOM BILL,

Quote:

If the United States is to bail out these incredibly incompetent manufacturers; then everyone responsible for the collapse should go. That includes the union and management because it is their collective failures that have bankrupted the companies.

Do you seriously think these companies just happened to selectively recruit incompetent people. What a silly idea. The numbers involved and the long years of general acceptance, admiration often, of their procedures are such that the incompetence must reside in a far wider pool of labour than those they chose. And are you suggesting that those earning $10 an hour are more competent. Put any few thousand of those in Detroit and you would get the same result.

You are suggesting that the whole educational system "should go".

That general incompetence has now further manifested itself in the bail-outs.

We have lurched towards a command economy. And we know they don't work. The dead hand of nepotism and other favouritisms are their tender spot.

The mass production of motor cars is a very complex process. The people who engage in it do not grow on trees and however incompetent you think them Bill they have produced millions of reliable and classy cars. In 2007 about 20 million cars were sold in the US and about 80 million worldwide. With all the back-up provided. That's hardly incompetence. Quite a feat I would have said. What has the plonker who asked the snide question about their private jets produced. No wonder they stared at the wall.

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@spendius,

I don't think OBill was talking about the employees, but more the Union management and GM's management.

Managers do thankfully grow on trees.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

Not managers who are much different than the ones they have now.

The failures, as you are all agreed upon, not me, are institutionalised and you are scapegoating these managers to repress that fact. To accept it doesn't bear thinking about. Free collective bargaining allied to massive engineering investment in fixed plant located in one place and to the American Dream can only have the outcome you have got.

What would you have changed to get an outcome you desire?

Get real.

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@gapman59,

gapman59 wrote:

Being an employee of GM 23 years an a skilled trades Electrician I have seen personally the mismanagement that has been done. Example parts for a machine that are in inventory waiting for breakdown , but come inventory time with that much sitting on the books they are thrown away. Now I am talking 100's of thousand dollars here. Thats just a small example of managements idea to make the books look good. Wage wise at 32.00 an hour we are below the IBEW in our area and $6 above the non-union factories. My BCBS policy amounts to about 10,000 per year plan bought on the outside. Retirement now for a 30 year employee is right at $3000.00 a month. I wish when people talk of the $77 an hour wage GM would give that to me and let me take care of it(lol). Letting the Big 3 fail would please alot of people wanting to see the UAW crippled but you never here of them wanting to destroy the union teachers belong(AFT) to or NFL players union. Now with our wages making up approx. 10% of the vehicle cost I dont think its the problem. When GM can cut the price of a new full size truck from 19K to 9.5K and still make money I really wonder where the profits go when sold at regular price. There are around 400 suppliers to the Big 3 which the would fail also. The word is its around 3 million people to be affected by this but when you really look at it its many more. The local dinner,bar,bowling allies the list just goes on. The word changes from Recession to Depression something this country cant afford.

Thank you for your post - clearly you're the only person here actually familiar wiwith mundane things like electrical connections. I've worked in factories as well, though at the computerized level, SAP, logistics, finance and the like, and I, unlike the ignoramuses posting on factories elsewhere on this thread, know to appreciate and respect folks like you, without whom nothing would ever work.

Thanks from all here, please post again at your convenience, we can all learn from your experience.

1 Reply

@High Seas,

People do talk about destroying the teachers union all the time.

And nobody outside of the car companies cares about YOUR union either, until you're asking every tax payer for a handout.

And the NFL players union has nothing to do with anything, and any analogy to players making tens of millions of dollars is false. If the NFL teams come to congress asking for more money, then I'm sure you'll hear problems.

And again, the big 3 will not fail. They will restructure their contracts, debts, etc and come out leaner and meaner.

3 million jobs lost is a GROSS exaggeration.

Oh, and maybe the poster hadn't heard, but GM LOSES $2,000 every car it sells. It's not making money.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

What's the choice. Is it not bailout and keep your companies or no bailout and, if nobody's bluffing, having no car companies?

That seems to have been the case with some banks. The importance of the companies to the economy is highly relevant. But all bailouts subtract from every other company thought less important.

It is therefore a political question and not an economic one unless the whole US is thought of as one economic unit. Which is socialism.

It's a bind. And it's easy to talk about when you're not between the millstones.

1 Reply

@spendius,

And again, the big 3 will not fail. They will restructure their contracts, debts, etc and come out leaner and meaner.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

Toyota happen not be dragging around billions of health care costs just to start with. In Japan like all the develop world except us health care is taken care of by the society as a whole.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

So the Toyota workers in Tennessee don't have health care? Are the cars that Toyota makes in the US unprofitable?

Are the contracts that the Big 3 negiotiate with the Union part of the business plan? Don't businesses have to worry about how much they are paying their workers? My business sure does.

2 Replies

@maporsche,

Bill does have a good point: if the big three had supported universal health care in the 90's instead of fighting against it, they likely would not be in the pickle they currently find themselves in.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

I agree with the general thesis here . . . but i have a few problems with it. One is that the auto makers have been allowed to run unfunded pension plans. If they go under, the retirees are screwed. Another is that it's a bit much to see Wall Street bailed out because they got too greedy with unsecured investments, and yet people are howling about Detroit being bailed out.

Finally, it just can't be ignored. We have a Congress controlled by the Democrats, and will soon have a Democrat moving in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Organized labor is and always has been a constituency of the Democrats. They simply will not ignore the problem in the hope that it will go away. This is a huge embarrassment for the Democrats.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Toyota happen not be dragging around billions of health care costs just to start with. In Japan like all the develop world except us health care is taken care of by the society as a whole.

Society as a whole? Actually, in Europe and other developed countries
50 % of healthcare costs are paid by the employer and 50 % is paid by the
employee.

In the United States, neither employer nor employee are willing to contribute much to healthcare and are looking for the government to bail them out in every aspect of their wrongdoing, starting at mismanagement over exorbitant amounts of salary for CEO's to ending with inferior quality
and old technology for automobiles.

After they have let the train pass numerous times, they now cry for someone to bail them out while the very same people still collect salaries that are in
no justification to their success.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Or if they supported higher mandatory CAFE standards then the fuel cost increases wouldn't have hurt them as bad either.

1 Reply

Let GM go Bankrupt

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