GM = Bankrupt

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: Skoorb
The problem is the unions AND the product AND management. There is no reason to pay somebody to do a menial, brainless task at $28/hour when the free market says they'll do it at $14 (case in point recently Ford bought out a bunch of their employees at $28 and hired replacements at $14--union had kept wages artificially high for a brainless task). Their vehicles have worked ok but they've been top-heavy for a while. With low gas it worked, but even Toyota is getting pinched heavily now because they are also top-heavy with the size of vehicles and sales in the US are plummeting as they are for domestic manufacturers. Few anticipated where gas is now, but it has been creeping up for years. It does take several years to conceive of, and put in showrooms, a new car, but an already top-heavy manufacturer being already bled dry with an oppressive union and you have the continued demise of the domestic manufacturers. I believe also that the "I only buy American" has worked in their favor for many, many years to reward otherwise substandard behavior.

Funny thing about you people who support a high-school grad working a task that can be taught in 15 hours making $30/hour + benefits is that he won't even have this job after his employer closes down yet another factory and he's in it.

Your post about unions makes sense...Until you realize that Toyota pays their workers more in wages and benefits than what Ford and GM UAW workers get.

After a quick google search it appears that Honda pays considerably less than the "big 3". Haven't looked into Toyota yet.

Also looks like they are actively avoiding hiring laid off union workers.

"When Honda Motor Co. announced last year that it was building a new plant amid the farms of southeastern Indiana, Hoosiers cheered. Then Honda announced in August that only people living in 20 of the state's 92 counties could apply for jobs -- a move that excluded most of the state's thousands of unionized laid-off auto workers."

Toyota does.
That's why I specifically mentioned them.

Are you including wages and benefits or just wages? I have found a decent bit about the wages Toyota pays and their rather smart tactics at avoiding unionization but relatively little on the benefits. I don't know the credibility of this site but its the only side by side comparison I have found so far.

http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=606

 

[Cattlegod]

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: Skoorb
The problem is the unions AND the product AND management. There is no reason to pay somebody to do a menial, brainless task at $28/hour when the free market says they'll do it at $14 (case in point recently Ford bought out a bunch of their employees at $28 and hired replacements at $14--union had kept wages artificially high for a brainless task). Their vehicles have worked ok but they've been top-heavy for a while. With low gas it worked, but even Toyota is getting pinched heavily now because they are also top-heavy with the size of vehicles and sales in the US are plummeting as they are for domestic manufacturers. Few anticipated where gas is now, but it has been creeping up for years. It does take several years to conceive of, and put in showrooms, a new car, but an already top-heavy manufacturer being already bled dry with an oppressive union and you have the continued demise of the domestic manufacturers. I believe also that the "I only buy American" has worked in their favor for many, many years to reward otherwise substandard behavior.

Funny thing about you people who support a high-school grad working a task that can be taught in 15 hours making $30/hour + benefits is that he won't even have this job after his employer closes down yet another factory and he's in it.

Your post about unions makes sense...Until you realize that Toyota pays their workers more in wages and benefits than what Ford and GM UAW workers get.

After a quick google search it appears that Honda pays considerably less than the "big 3". Haven't looked into Toyota yet.

Also looks like they are actively avoiding hiring laid off union workers.

"When Honda Motor Co. announced last year that it was building a new plant amid the farms of southeastern Indiana, Hoosiers cheered. Then Honda announced in August that only people living in 20 of the state's 92 counties could apply for jobs -- a move that excluded most of the state's thousands of unionized laid-off auto workers."

Toyota does.
That's why I specifically mentioned them.

Are you including wages and benefits or just wages? I have found a decent bit about the wages Toyota pays and their rather smart tactics at avoiding unionization but relatively little on the benefits. I don't know the credibility of this site but its the only side by side comparison I have found so far.

http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=606

http://www.harbourinc.com/reso...a/2008PressRelease.pdf

slide 27 for the latest data and future projections. 606 dollar labor cost advantage per vehicle is the current number.

that combined with the extra overhead costs of over capacity due to volumen reductions (stolen market share from competitors, slide 26) and that shows you where most all of the extra cost that the detroit three have.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Vic
Yep. The Japanese automakers already proved that US autoworkers, being paid US wages, are the best in the world. The woes at the US automakers have always been management refusing to build to market demands and standards. I was routing for them the past few years, especially the recent turnaround in design quality at GM, but it might end up being too little too late.

US automakers were too late to the fuel-efficiency game. I bought my car in 2005 (Honda Civic EX SE), and there were zero US cars in my price range that got anywhere close to the efficiency of the Honda. IIRC, only Toyota's Corolla got the same. Now that $4/gallon gas is here, I keep being told, "I bet you're glad you bought that thing."

 

[Ktulu]

Why in the hell is everybody acting like GM is not selling any cars? 😕 They're constantly fighting Toyota for #1 spot in sales. The problem is that because of the unions they are not able to make any profits on many if not all of their cars. Why is this so hard for people here to understand?

And as far as small fuel efficient cars are concerned GM is very competitive in this area. In fact the only thing they don't have is a ultra efficient hybrid but that'll be here in over a year.

 

[Cattlegod]

Originally posted by: Ktulu
Why in the hell is everybody acting like GM is not selling any cars? 😕 They're constantly fighting Toyota for #1 spot in sales. The problem is that because of the unions they are not able to make any profits on many if not all of their cars. Why is this so hard for people here to understand?

exactly.

not to mention that it doesn't matter if you sell fuel efficient vehicles or not. you can sell any vehicle at a profit if you are operating efficiently. GMs problems are a labor cost disadvantage and they projected the market incorrectly. They thought the market was going to demand a higher number of trucks. Now that the market isn't demanding what they thought, they spent a ton of money tooling for a high volume. Now they are sitting with a bunch of extra capacity - which costs a lot of money.

 

[desy]

What an awsome PDF Cattle
Really show how comptative the market is, amazing how today they are all so close on hrs of build time where 5 yrs ago they weren't

 

[Ktulu]

Originally posted by: Cattlegod

Originally posted by: Ktulu
Why in the hell is everybody acting like GM is not selling any cars? 😕 They're constantly fighting Toyota for #1 spot in sales. The problem is that because of the unions they are not able to make any profits on many if not all of their cars. Why is this so hard for people here to understand?

exactly.

not to mention that it doesn't matter if you sell fuel efficient vehicles or not. you can sell any vehicle at a profit if you are operating efficiently. GMs problems are a labor cost disadvantage and they projected the market incorrectly. They thought the market was going to demand a higher number of trucks. Now that the market isn't demanding what they thought, they spent a ton of money tooling for a high volume. Now they are sitting with a bunch of extra capacity - which costs a lot of money.

Heck in case any body here is wondering Toyota thought the same exact thing GM did about trucks. They even ramped up production of the Tundra and Sequoia and just last month mentioned that it would cut production of it's trucks. But Toyota can take the hit GM can't.

 

[gorobei]

quality and design differences aside; the reason domestic car makers seem to do poorly compared to the japanese brands is the unions and the contracts with the parts sub-contractors. The union healthcare plans eat the bulk of the profit from each car sale. The contracts with the parts makers(backed by the parts maker employee unions) lock the big 3 into ~10 year parts deals. This means they'll have to keep making the same gas guzzlers for years even if the management wants to shift to newer better designs now. They are defacto always going to be slower to switch to new designs and technology. The decision to build, market, and depend on SUV and trucks was a short term "fast money now" band-aid that is biting them in the ass now.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
The problem is the unions AND the product AND management. There is no reason to pay somebody to do a menial, brainless task at $28/hour when the free market says they'll do it at $14 (case in point recently Ford bought out a bunch of their employees at $28 and hired replacements at $14--union had kept wages artificially high for a brainless task). Their vehicles have worked ok but they've been top-heavy for a while. With low gas it worked, but even Toyota is getting pinched heavily now because they are also top-heavy with the size of vehicles and sales in the US are plummeting as they are for domestic manufacturers. Few anticipated where gas is now, but it has been creeping up for years. It does take several years to conceive of, and put in showrooms, a new car, but an already top-heavy manufacturer being already bled dry with an oppressive union and you have the continued demise of the domestic manufacturers. I believe also that the "I only buy American" has worked in their favor for many, many years to reward otherwise substandard behavior.

Funny thing about you people who support a high-school grad working a task that can be taught in 15 hours making $30/hour + benefits is that he won't even have this job after his employer closes down yet another factory and he's in it.

It's not brainless work. Have you seen an assembly line with all sorts of complicated machines and robots these people have to run. Furthermore it's more dangerous than flipping burgers with many crushed, loose arms and such. I personally think they are underpaid compared to Longbeach dock workers who unload foreign cars at $65 an hour. In general I think unions are a good thing here because too many think like you whereby there should be wage slaves and capital lords with a tiny middle class snapping the whip as a intermediary between the two. We would become like Mexico in a short amount of time without laws and organizing those laws allow to form unions. Even the threat of unions or that unions are out there makes wages rise for non-union shops.

 

[BeauJangles]

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: BlinderBomber

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: redly1
Ford will be the first one to go (my bet)

Their bread and butter is the F150, which is tanking hard in sales
The lost the competitive edge/crown in cars a decade or so ago
They have no decent economy car

All trucks are tanking in sales hard, but ford still sold almost 40,000 f-150s last month. So they will only sell 500k this year instead of 900,000. People still need trucks, however more people will getting a truck because they need one and not because they want one. The 09 f-150 will be out in a couple months and it will offer better fuel economy. Its improved 4.6 v8 and 6 speed transmission should perform almost as well at most tasks as the current years 5.4 v8.

Nissan sold only 1200 titans, not doubt this full size truck will soon be gone.

the 09 escape will have class leading fuel economy and hybrid escape will do even better.
The focus and fusion are selling well and ford probably needs to ramp production of their smaller vehicles.
I believe ford 09 lineup will have a couple more hybrid models joining the escape.

In short ford is reasonably well positioned to surved, but they do have to change their vehicle mix and will take a bit of time. Same goes for GM as they have decent small car linup a well(malibu and cobalt are selling well).

I agree. Ford also has the Focus, which is a really reliable, fuel-saving, economy car. For the price, it's one of the best cars on the market. Ford will be hurt in the short-term by declining truck sales, but they have all the resources they need to remain competitive in the future.

Ford only has one Focus factory and they don't have money to build another one.
They can't keep up with demand leaving Honda to gobble everything up.
What good is it if they can't make enough of it?

Read the article I posted earlier.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080702/honda_s_hot_month.html

Sorry, I missed the article. That's too bad, the focus is really a great little car and could be Ford's way back to the mainstream, particularly if they'd bring over the euro models (which I think they're planning to do in '10).

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I don't believe that Toyota/Honda, et al. IN THE US pay factory-line workers the same amount (including benefits) as the Big3 for similar duties. Onus is on somebody to prove me wrong, I just don't buy it. The unions hardly seem to have worked if it's the case.

Text

 

[Ktulu]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I don't believe that Toyota/Honda, et al. IN THE US pay factory-line workers the same amount (including benefits) as the Big3 for similar duties. Onus is on somebody to prove me wrong, I just don't buy it. The unions hardly seem to have worked if it's the case.

Text

What about benefits, pensions and job banks?

 

[Cattlegod]

Originally posted by: Ktulu

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I don't believe that Toyota/Honda, et al. IN THE US pay factory-line workers the same amount (including benefits) as the Big3 for similar duties. Onus is on somebody to prove me wrong, I just don't buy it. The unions hardly seem to have worked if it's the case.

Text

What about benefits, pensions and job banks?

I'm interested in hearing Vic's response to this question.

 

[Ktulu]

http://ap.google.com/article/A...LPwuxU1-bIqXAD914CQ780

Still, the Detroit Three are lagging in profits per vehicle because of higher costs for health care, pensions, sales incentives and the higher number of dealerships they support. Ford lost $1,467 per vehicle in 2007, while GM lost $729 and Chrysler lost $412, the report said. Toyota made $922 per vehicle, while Honda and Nissan both made $1,641. That gap is expected to narrow significantly in 2010, when the Detroit automakers hand over their retiree health care liabilities to new independent trusts overseen by the United Auto Workers union.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: Ktulu

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I don't believe that Toyota/Honda, et al. IN THE US pay factory-line workers the same amount (including benefits) as the Big3 for similar duties. Onus is on somebody to prove me wrong, I just don't buy it. The unions hardly seem to have worked if it's the case.

Text

What about benefits, pensions and job banks?

What is the benefit of the job bank?
It is just a way of paying people to sit around and do nothing.

Jobs are gone, the unions are forcing the companies to pay for something that is not needed. It also removes the incentive for the workers to cross train into new fields.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Cattlegod

Originally posted by: Ktulu

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I don't believe that Toyota/Honda, et al. IN THE US pay factory-line workers the same amount (including benefits) as the Big3 for similar duties. Onus is on somebody to prove me wrong, I just don't buy it. The unions hardly seem to have worked if it's the case.

Text

What about benefits, pensions and job banks?

I'm interested in hearing Vic's response to this question.

I'm not sure what response is expected of me here. Skoorb asked for evidence, so I provided the first google hit.

I'm neither pro- nor anti-unionist, and I've already said that IMO the unions have nothing to do with the automakers' current woes.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Cattlegod

Originally posted by: Ktulu

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I don't believe that Toyota/Honda, et al. IN THE US pay factory-line workers the same amount (including benefits) as the Big3 for similar duties. Onus is on somebody to prove me wrong, I just don't buy it. The unions hardly seem to have worked if it's the case.

Text

What about benefits, pensions and job banks?

I'm interested in hearing Vic's response to this question.

I don't know about job banks, but Toyota has some of the best benefits of anywhere in Kentucky (not sure about surrounding states). As for pensions, they have a great 401k plan but I am not sure of a separate pension. I have no information on job banks.

Toyota sales (or did) almost anything they could produce in the Kentucky plant. When times are good and people buy your product, wages and bonuses go up. I've heard that bonuses are down or have been eliminated this year as sales have fallen hard. A product of the times....

 

[Ktulu]

Originally posted by: Ktulu
http://ap.google.com/article/A...LPwuxU1-bIqXAD914CQ780

Still, the Detroit Three are lagging in profits per vehicle because of higher costs for health care, pensions, sales incentives and the higher number of dealerships they support. Ford lost $1,467 per vehicle in 2007, while GM lost $729 and Chrysler lost $412, the report said. Toyota made $922 per vehicle, while Honda and Nissan both made $1,641. That gap is expected to narrow significantly in 2010, when the Detroit automakers hand over their retiree health care liabilities to new independent trusts overseen by the United Auto Workers union.

Anybody care to guess as to why these numbers are so far apart between the domestics and Japanese?

Edit: Whoops, didn't mean to quote myself.

 

[manowar821]

Originally posted by: babylon5
America will always be #1, top of the world, forever!!

Just sit on the couch, and relax!! Nothing to see here!

Hehehe, yep! Because that's exactly how the world works guys, one country made up of superior people is always on top. Nothing changes. 😛

 

[Arkaign]

On the Focus, they're selling all they can make, and that's a GREAT thing for Ford. The production capacity isn't as weak as they make it sound, as Ford reports sales of the refreshed 2008 model are up 88%, so that really just shows an amazing boost that was outside of what almost anyone would have predicted. In this industry, sales going up 20-30% on a model is pretty extreme, but nearly 100% increase in a single year is basically unheard of.

Next steps in the Ford plan are very sound. They are bringing the excellent subcompact Fiesta over from Europe, and are globalizing Focus production with the all-new MK3 revision in late 2010 as a 2011 model.

Quickie Focus history : The car debuted in MK1 / 1st gen form in 1998 in Europe, then was released in the US in 2000 model. They kept that same model until 2004, at which time the Europeans got a C1/MK2 platform generation (same chassis as the Mazda3, Volvo C30), and the US got a mild refresh on the original MK1 platform, with the move towards the better Mazda Duratec motors replacing the more problematic and lower-output Ford Zetec and SPI motors. For 2008, the US Focus got a very significant facelift inside and out, and reached 35mpg with ease, really nice for the balance of performance and features that you get from the deal.

 

[SP33Demon]

Doesn't GM have some cool new hybrids in the works? I saw a bunch of "green" commercials recently for GM, they could really fill a niche if they converted to all hybrids.

 

[imported_Lothar]

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: Darwin333

Originally posted by: Lothar

Originally posted by: Skoorb
The problem is the unions AND the product AND management. There is no reason to pay somebody to do a menial, brainless task at $28/hour when the free market says they'll do it at $14 (case in point recently Ford bought out a bunch of their employees at $28 and hired replacements at $14--union had kept wages artificially high for a brainless task). Their vehicles have worked ok but they've been top-heavy for a while. With low gas it worked, but even Toyota is getting pinched heavily now because they are also top-heavy with the size of vehicles and sales in the US are plummeting as they are for domestic manufacturers. Few anticipated where gas is now, but it has been creeping up for years. It does take several years to conceive of, and put in showrooms, a new car, but an already top-heavy manufacturer being already bled dry with an oppressive union and you have the continued demise of the domestic manufacturers. I believe also that the "I only buy American" has worked in their favor for many, many years to reward otherwise substandard behavior.

Funny thing about you people who support a high-school grad working a task that can be taught in 15 hours making $30/hour + benefits is that he won't even have this job after his employer closes down yet another factory and he's in it.

Your post about unions makes sense...Until you realize that Toyota pays their workers more in wages and benefits than what Ford and GM UAW workers get.

After a quick google search it appears that Honda pays considerably less than the "big 3". Haven't looked into Toyota yet.

Also looks like they are actively avoiding hiring laid off union workers.

"When Honda Motor Co. announced last year that it was building a new plant amid the farms of southeastern Indiana, Hoosiers cheered. Then Honda announced in August that only people living in 20 of the state's 92 counties could apply for jobs -- a move that excluded most of the state's thousands of unionized laid-off auto workers."

Toyota does.
That's why I specifically mentioned them.

Are you including wages and benefits or just wages? I have found a decent bit about the wages Toyota pays and their rather smart tactics at avoiding unionization but relatively little on the benefits. I don't know the credibility of this site but its the only side by side comparison I have found so far.

http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=606

Wages+Benefits.
That is what I typed in my post.

The statistics listed from your link is from 2005...Old.
Toyota pays more now.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: charrison
perknose,

Ford still has volvo, but they are up for sale. Ford did alot for jag, but it was a terrible investment.

Yeah, I know they still have Volvo, plus their 1/3 investment in Mazda. I have not heard anywhere from a truly informed source that Volvo is really up for sale, do you have a link? Their involvement in Volvo (and Mazda) has been, more or less. a symbiotic success story all around.

Almost all, if not ALL of their small cars use either a Volvo or a Mazda derived platform. Volvo, in turn, has gotten access to engines they would never have had the capital to develop themselves, and Ford's infusion of cash (through a huge stock purchase) into Mazda literally saved that company in the '90's.

Additionaly, it might be noted, Ford's involvement with Land Rover (which it sold to Tata along with Jaguar), can reasonably be called a success. But, short-term, Ford desperately need the money from it's sale.

And this is why I wouldn't be all that surprised to learn that Ford is now shopping Volvo -- short term cash concerns -- but I still have not heard that rumor from anyone reliable, just the usual uninformed specualtion! I sincerely hope they are able to retain Volvo, it has been a win-win for both, with Ford itself benefitting hugely.

Indeed, Ford got high marks for the way it went about it's partnership with Volvo. They didn't act in the standard cliche mode of heavy handed big brother. They were extremely culturally sensitive and left Volvo management and engineering a huge amount of autonomy, and it has paid off handsomely. It would be a big loss if cash concerns caused them to sell Volvo.

Jaguar, as a company, was more broken than Ford initially thought when it bought them. Much of their manufacturing technology - plants and procedures -- were mired in the 1940's. Ford had to invest a huge amount just to bring them up to par, and it never recouped that amount.

Where Ford is criticized most by people who love cars re: Jaguar is that they excessively diluted the brand, making smaller Jaguar sedans based basically on Ford of Europe platforms that lacked the cachet and panache of a true Jaguar. The public didn't buy into this brand dilution much at all, Ford didn't see the expected and needed sales growth, and Jaguar's image -- a lot of what it had left going for it -- suffered mightily.

It must also be said that Jaguar, with or without Ford, was simply not positioned or provsioned to deal with the dynamism and all around excellence of BMW, not to mention the Teutonic big dog Mercedes.

That's a shame, really. Many of us who love cars retain a distinct fondness for the Jaguar of old -- Lucas electrics, stubborn over-heating, sketchy reliability and all.

Cliffs: It would a huge loss for Ford iof t is forced to sell Volvo to garner needed liquidity.

Yes, the Jaguar/Ford relationship never panned out as both firms would have liked.

 

[imported_Lothar]

Jaguars have been lemons for the past 25 years.

I wouldn't really call Land Rover a success either. Just "barely" maybe.
They've had had it for more than 10 years and 2007 was the 1st time they ever made a profit from it.

 

[OokiiNeko]

LOL at the folks scrambling to villify those horrible unions bleeding the poor car companies dry. Why, the executives will only get an average comp of 2 million this year instead of three. That`s damn near poverty!

because of higher costs for health care, pensions, sales incentives and the higher number of dealerships they support.

There`s a good way to mislead. Mix apples and oranges.

When I'm paid for P&N I'll raise the bar on quality of my posts 😀

Psst. I`ve known for quite some time your posts are crap. I won`t tell anyone. 😉

🙂