if the situation is so urgent, why don't the big3 and UAW just renegotiate contracts now?

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: rchiu

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ScottyB

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Whats UAW and what's the big 3? is this an economy thing?

UAW = United Auto Workers Union
Big 3= Major American Automotive Manufacturers
UAW Haters = douche bag conservatives who hate uneducated workers making a living wage instead of corporate fat cats and fuckhead investors reaping all the profits.

Living wage??

People work at the plants make $30 an hour they is way beyond a living wage.

Excuse them for wanting to have a decent life. While there might be some gold brickers most aren't and they are Americans and Americans are known for working hard whether it be sitting behind a desk doing the monotonous job of coding or standing on their feet for eight hours in an assembly line they are worth what they can get. $30 an hour isn't rich man wages these days and to belittle them for what they do beneath contempt. You're no better than them and they are no better than you. This is the class warfare you and your ilk are constantly talking about except the ones under assault are the working class not the Rich as it's the working class who are struggling to feed, cloth and educate their children, not the Rich.

Yeah I am sure non-unionized auto workers working for Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and others are treated like slaves and don't earn a wage to have a decent living. Union don't represent working class anymore, they are just another political entity, contribute, lobby heavily in politics to get what they want, while taking money from working American, and force deals that make company unable to operate efficiently using their size and political pull.

Many companies are realizing employees are one of their most important asset. There are programs and strategies to reduce employee turn over and increase job satisfaction. Barriers between management and workers are being reduced. It is dinosaur like the union is still hanging on to the past for their own benefit and try to wage a class warfare that don't exist anymore in this modern society where black can become the POTUS and guys with their garage can become the founder of multi-billion dollar company.

Unions work for those who aren't even members of a Union. Do you actually believe that those who work for Toyota would be getting the wages and benefits they get if it weren't for for Unions?

 

[Stuxnet]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: rchiu

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ScottyB

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Whats UAW and what's the big 3? is this an economy thing?

UAW = United Auto Workers Union
Big 3= Major American Automotive Manufacturers
UAW Haters = douche bag conservatives who hate uneducated workers making a living wage instead of corporate fat cats and fuckhead investors reaping all the profits.

Living wage??

People work at the plants make $30 an hour they is way beyond a living wage.

Excuse them for wanting to have a decent life. While there might be some gold brickers most aren't and they are Americans and Americans are known for working hard whether it be sitting behind a desk doing the monotonous job of coding or standing on their feet for eight hours in an assembly line they are worth what they can get. $30 an hour isn't rich man wages these days and to belittle them for what they do beneath contempt. You're no better than them and they are no better than you. This is the class warfare you and your ilk are constantly talking about except the ones under assault are the working class not the Rich as it's the working class who are struggling to feed, cloth and educate their children, not the Rich.

Yeah I am sure non-unionized auto workers working for Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and others are treated like slaves and don't earn a wage to have a decent living. Union don't represent working class anymore, they are just another political entity, contribute, lobby heavily in politics to get what they want, while taking money from working American, and force deals that make company unable to operate efficiently using their size and political pull.

Many companies are realizing employees are one of their most important asset. There are programs and strategies to reduce employee turn over and increase job satisfaction. Barriers between management and workers are being reduced. It is dinosaur like the union is still hanging on to the past for their own benefit and try to wage a class warfare that don't exist anymore in this modern society where black can become the POTUS and guys with their garage can become the founder of multi-billion dollar company.

Unions work for those who aren't even members of a Union. Do you actually believe that those who work for Toyota would be getting the wages and benefits they get if it weren't for for Unions?

... yet without unions, wages would fall to where they would be naturally and companies can actually afford to hire more workers. Unions = artificially inflated wages, higher unemployment. No unions = equilibrium wages, lower unemployment. If the wages fell below the REAL "fair" level, then workers would migrate to other jobs, which would in turn drive those wages back up. A certain skill set, education level, and level of ambition has a matching wage level, yet when a subset of that group realizes wages above that level, that's when the true "fairness" issues arise. Other workers with the same skills can't find work. Furthermore, those unionized jobs attract workers of higher skill/education levels, which effectively prices the lower skilled workers out of their own jobs and jobs they would otherwise be qualified for. The negative ramifications go on and on. Discrimination, lobbying, conflict of interest, etc.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: Corbett

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ScottyB

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Whats UAW and what's the big 3? is this an economy thing?

UAW = United Auto Workers Union
Big 3= Major American Automotive Manufacturers
UAW Haters = douche bag conservatives who hate uneducated workers making a living wage instead of corporate fat cats and fuckhead investors reaping all the profits.

Living wage??

People work at the plants make $30 an hour they is way beyond a living wage.

Excuse them for wanting to have a decent life. While there might be some gold brickers most aren't and they are Americans and Americans are known for working hard whether it be sitting behind a desk doing the monotonous job of coding or standing on their feet for eight hours in an assembly line they are worth what they can get. $30 an hour isn't rich man wages these days and to belittle them for what they do beneath contempt. You're no better than them and they are no better than you. This is the class warfare you and your ilk are constantly talking about except the ones under assault are the working class not the Rich as it's the working class who are struggling to feed, cloth and educate their children, not the Rich.

Sounds like socialism to me. Equal wages for all! No matter how difficult the job is!

$30 is hardly equal wages. A person worth his salt with a College Degree should be making a lot more than $30 an hour 5 years into his/her career .

yes, and a person without a high school diploma should be making a lot less than what they're currently compensated at for unskilled labor.

evidence? the current situation UAW employers are facing.

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: rchiu

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ScottyB

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Whats UAW and what's the big 3? is this an economy thing?

UAW = United Auto Workers Union
Big 3= Major American Automotive Manufacturers
UAW Haters = douche bag conservatives who hate uneducated workers making a living wage instead of corporate fat cats and fuckhead investors reaping all the profits.

Living wage??

People work at the plants make $30 an hour they is way beyond a living wage.

Excuse them for wanting to have a decent life. While there might be some gold brickers most aren't and they are Americans and Americans are known for working hard whether it be sitting behind a desk doing the monotonous job of coding or standing on their feet for eight hours in an assembly line they are worth what they can get. $30 an hour isn't rich man wages these days and to belittle them for what they do beneath contempt. You're no better than them and they are no better than you. This is the class warfare you and your ilk are constantly talking about except the ones under assault are the working class not the Rich as it's the working class who are struggling to feed, cloth and educate their children, not the Rich.

Yeah I am sure non-unionized auto workers working for Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and others are treated like slaves and don't earn a wage to have a decent living. Union don't represent working class anymore, they are just another political entity, contribute, lobby heavily in politics to get what they want, while taking money from working American, and force deals that make company unable to operate efficiently using their size and political pull.

Many companies are realizing employees are one of their most important asset. There are programs and strategies to reduce employee turn over and increase job satisfaction. Barriers between management and workers are being reduced. It is dinosaur like the union is still hanging on to the past for their own benefit and try to wage a class warfare that don't exist anymore in this modern society where black can become the POTUS and guys with their garage can become the founder of multi-billion dollar company.

Unions work for those who aren't even members of a Union. Do you actually believe that those who work for Toyota would be getting the wages and benefits they get if it weren't for for Unions?

Yes, i do believe that. alot of places where foreign car maker opened their plants at don't have any kind of union, and they don't have to compete with companies with unions to hire the people and don't have to offer the salary they offer. Toyota as a company values their employee. I read in Wall st. that even they are shutting down plants now, they don't fire their line people, they have their line people in process improvement meetings to discuss things they can do to improve efficiency and productivity as well as train their employee.

In addition, Union and the animosity they created play a big part why workers and management don't trust each other, a big reason why big 3 is in the mess they are in right now. Yes there is a history why union has that kinda mentality, but that doesn't mean it is right or it's productive in today's environment.

Right now union serve absolutely no purpose and should just be left behind.

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: rchiu
Right now union serve absolutely no purpose and should just be left behind.

And how do you propose they do that?

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

rchiu, so minimum wage drops further behind the entire developed world.

Perhaps corruption and legislation should be dealt with first? Just a suggestion.

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: rchiu
Right now union serve absolutely no purpose and should just be left behind.

And how do you propose they do that?

Let big 3 go bankrupt and reorganize.

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
rchiu, so minimum wage drops further behind the entire developed world.

Perhaps corruption and legislation should be dealt with first? Just a suggestion.

Alot of the places in the US don't have as high a cost of living as the other developed world too. Go to Europe and Japan and see how much it cost to live there. Even in place like Chicago, the cost of living is relatively low compare to other big cities in the developed world.

Letting capitalism work without the legislation and corruption that forces company to deal with union is exactly what I am asking for.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Originally posted by: rchiu

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
rchiu, so minimum wage drops further behind the entire developed world.

Perhaps corruption and legislation should be dealt with first? Just a suggestion.

Alot of the places in the US don't have as high a cost of living as the other developed world too. Go to Europe and Japan and see how much it cost to live there. Even in place like Chicago, the cost of living is relatively low compare to other big cities in the developed world.

Letting capitalism work without the legislation and corruption that forces company to deal with union is exactly what I am asking for.

Son, i'm from the UK and Chicago isn't cheaper than Sheffield any more than New York is cheaper than the worlds fincancial headquarter, London.

I think you're trying to compare Chicago to London, Madrid, Rome or Paris, that's like comparing New York or Washington to Suffolk and Sheffield.

What the market does NOT need is further legislation since there are NO consequenses ignoring the current, perhaps reacting a tad sooner would be a better answer? (this goes for the UK too).

 

[outriding]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: ScottyB

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Whats UAW and what's the big 3? is this an economy thing?

UAW = United Auto Workers Union
Big 3= Major American Automotive Manufacturers
UAW Haters = douche bag conservatives who hate uneducated workers making a living wage instead of corporate fat cats and fuckhead investors reaping all the profits.

Living wage??

People work at the plants make $30 an hour they is way beyond a living wage.

That is a 100% fucking incorrect.

My dad retired from GM (in the union) with 38 years in and made $29 an hour. He had one of the top 5 highest paying job codes (building and troubleshooting prototypes).

I was also worked on the HR system for all of GM and I only saw a few people over that pay (The union demands equal pay across all of it's members eg Job code + senority = pay). To be honest I would have to say the average pay is closer to $24 an hour and the lowests I saw was $17 an hour.

And when you hear about people in the Union making $100k a year it is because of the plant foremans get paid a % above the highest paid union worker. So it was common for a plant foreman to give a few people more overtime so their wage would increase so his would also.

 

[ProfJohn]

Oh... I am SOOOO sorry, not $30, but $24...

That still amounts to almost $50k a year for job that does not require a college degree.

BTW what kind of pension is your dad collecting? If he lives to be 80 or 90 how much additional money is he going to collect from the company??

Rush had a caller on his show the other day who was given an early retirement at 55 after 24 years with one of the companies. He is now in his 80s and has been collecting a pension longer than he worked for the company.

 

[bamx2]

The government (taxpayers) should not bailout private industry period . It was wrond to do it with Wall Street and its is wrong to do it with the Automakers . The UAW does not deserve any special treatment .

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: Lamont Burns
The UAW is a pile of shit.

If that is true, then the management of "the Big 3" are the flies that feed off of that pile of shit.

 

[Gothgar]

all the hate

 

[jamesall]

Originally posted by: AlienCraft

Originally posted by: Lamont Burns
The UAW is a pile of shit.

If that is true, then the management of "the Big 3" are the flies that feed off of that pile of shit.

this sum it up.

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Oh... I am SOOOO sorry, not $30, but $24...

That still amounts to almost $50k a year for job that does not require a college degree.

BTW what kind of pension is your dad collecting? If he lives to be 80 or 90 how much additional money is he going to collect from the company??

Rush had a caller on his show the other day who was given an early retirement at 55 after 24 years with one of the companies. He is now in his 80s and has been collecting a pension longer than he worked for the company.

The pension fund is overfunded at this time.

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: Gothgar
all the hate

Fueled by jealousy.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Oh... I am SOOOO sorry, not $30, but $24...

That still amounts to almost $50k a year for job that does not require a college degree.

BTW what kind of pension is your dad collecting? If he lives to be 80 or 90 how much additional money is he going to collect from the company??

Rush had a caller on his show the other day who was given an early retirement at 55 after 24 years with one of the companies. He is now in his 80s and has been collecting a pension longer than he worked for the company.

So the distinction being made is had this person been management, such an arrangement would be labeled a "golden parachute" or "Executive Exit Compensation" and would be ok?
Because the way it looks to me, is the geniuses that offered such a packager were betting on historically short life spans as opposed to the longer ones we now enjoy. So these are the same Management people who are rewarded for their stupid , ill advised, poorly thought out business plans with these same golden parachutes. :disgust:
I must be in bizarro world.
That is the most insane thing I've ever heard.

That's not "conservative" , that's just stupid.

 

[outriding]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Oh... I am SOOOO sorry, not $30, but $24...

That still amounts to almost $50k a year for job that does not require a college degree.

BTW what kind of pension is your dad collecting? If he lives to be 80 or 90 how much additional money is he going to collect from the company??

Rush had a caller on his show the other day who was given an early retirement at 55 after 24 years with one of the companies. He is now in his 80s and has been collecting a pension longer than he worked for the company.

My dad will have probably put in more time than Rick Wagner. He has also been awarded 20K for two suggestings one was for increasing line efficiencyand the other was for a redesign of the cooling fan to be more efficient and his last few years his job was going around and fix cars that the dealerships could not fix.

On the other hand you have a CEO who has stated he has made huge mistakes:

Wagoner stated that the worst decision of his tenure at GM was "axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids

If my dad collects his pension until he is 100 he still would have not collected 0.25% as much as the current average CEOs "golden parachute".

If

 

[Squisher]

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: Squisher
From another of my posts in P&N:

I started working as a sweeper janitor in March 1978 at Fisher Body Fort Street in Detroit. I became an apprentice Die Maker in '79.

Things have changed a little since then, in fact I'd say the biggest changes have happened in the last 10-15 years. The line moves a lot faster and the expectations are a lot higher. I remember talking about parts per hundred that were scrap. Now the numbers being batted around were parts per million. Every facet of your work-life has some parameter that tracks it. You get away with nothing.

The place I retired from was a forge making axles. We heated steel to 2150F and squished them into the shape of an axle. The average temperature in the plant in the summer was 115F. My job as a die repairman was to crawl down 10 feet into the upsetter and repair the tooling. I probably averaged 15 minutes in the upsetter, but I might be down there for an hour. The temperature down there usually was 135F and steam was coming up all around me. All the tooling was still at about 250F when I went "in the hole."

See that little area, the size very small closet, between the three things labeled "Multiple Operation Dies"? That's where Squisher made his money.

A difficult job, yes, but not one I'd call "admirable". My grandfather performed similar work for all his life, and I respect him more than any other man I've ever met because of his commitment to his job and quality. He never made apologies for being satisfied by hard labor.

On the other hand, he wasn't making wages that were severely inflated, either, nor did he expect to. I admire him for that more than anything else. He wasn't looking for a handout. He recognized that he had no college degree. He knew his worth and blamed no one else for not being able to artificially surge beyond it. From him I learned that anything worth doing was worth doing right, and he lived that every day at his job.

Jobs like yours are dangerous and uncomfortable, but the labor market does not place you alongside college graduates with degrees in the physical sciences, etc. We can argue the merits and morals of it all day long, but it's irrelevant. The fact is, there are plenty of people who are willing and capable of doing your job, and this drives your wage down. Workers who find this unsettling or unsatisfactory are invited to fill out a FASFA and continue their education.

You don't know what a Die Maker is or does do you? The labor market does determine the wage for that job. If you knew what the job entailed, if you knew the skill level required to get the job and if you knew the education level necessary to get the job you'd realize that the analogy you're trying to make here has no basis.

You've made a gross rationalization on a group of people working for automakers based upon your bias.

Find out something about Die Making and come on back - please.

You want to hone in on die makers. Sorry, but fail. I'd say it's pretty indisputable that the UAW workers wages are not competitive in the automotive labor market, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. In fact, if they were competitive, the unions would be obsolete and necessary. But their entire purpose is to inflate wages above the equillibrium. That's (part of) their job. So like I said earlier, you can debate the utopic ideals of this all you want, but in the end, competitive wages are what matter here, and the UAW workers' wages are far from competitive. This is a huge contributing factor as to why their company's products are not competitive. Result? More fail.

I'm a software architect making just under six figures. I want 50% more. Screw that, how about allsoftware engineers collude and demand $150k per year. When every software-dependent industry falls on its ass because it can't support such an inflated wage, can we all come knocking on your door for a bailout? Perhaps you'd like to front my check?

Case in point, US software developers have had to take a pay cut in the last ten years - myself included - to remain competitive with overseas firms. Never once did I demand regulation, unionization, etc. That's nonsense. You know what I did? I made myself the best damn set of skills money could buy in my area. I updated my skill set, retooled, and continued doing business. Soon, my wages bounced back. But even if they didn't, so what. I don't expect these wages to stay where they're at, so I'm currently back in school, yet again, retooling. When I make my career change, I'll actually take a huge pay cut. But you know what? I anticipate being better off financially in the long run because developers have long since been a dime-a-dozen, and it won't be long before our salaries catch up with our quantity. Who do I blame for this? NO ONE.

If your life isn't giving you what you want, do what you can to change your life.

I was working in a non-union job shop when I got called back to GM from a 3 year layoff in 1988. I took a pay cut to come back to GM because I already had 10 years invested toward my retirement and I didn't want to throw that away. The fact of the matter is that my union (IAM) negotiated two concessionary contracts with American Axle in the last 6 years (one was a renegotiation). Our overall monetary impact was in the neighborhood of a 15-20% reduction of our wages along with many other refinements to make the operation more efficient (we got rid of the job bank in 2002). When I left the plant we were producing as many parts with higher quality with 300 people as we had 10 years ago with 700 people. It seemed at times that the process was refined daily to incorporate improvements.

BTW - to become certified by US Department of Labor as a die maker I attended a trade school for 4 years and had to have 8000 hours of on-the-job training.