This is the biggest pile of horse shit I have ever read.

[fbrdphreak]

Link

Buying American-made cars makes a difference
Kansas City Business Journal - by Bob King Contributing Writer

Thank you for covering the signing of the Missouri Automotive Manufacturing Jobs Act. It’s an important measure for the overall health of American automotive manufacturing and for workers who depend on good jobs at auto plants, their suppliers and other businesses dependent on these plants and the revenue and tax dollars they generate.

We are sorry you were inconvenienced and had to worry about where your car was parked while you covered the signing (“Driving a Toyota complicates coverage of Missouri incentives for Ford,” KCBizBeat blog item, July 16). The UAW member you encountered in the UAW Local 249 parking lot meant no personal disrespect to you. Accomodating vehicles not made by UAW brothers and sisters is a passionate subject for our members.

He and UAW members across the country know that foreign automakers that allow workers to freely join unions in their home countries while denying that same right to U.S. workers are denying the First Amendment right of American workers to freely organize. Yet foreign automakers accept U.S. taxpayers’ dollars in incentives to build assembly plants, jeopardizing the future of middle-class workers in the domestic auto industry.

Here are some facts you may want to consider about the domestic auto industry:

• The Big Three directly employ nearly 300,000 employees — about two-thirds of all American autoworkers.

• Nearly 3 million U.S. workers are directly or indirectly dependent on the Big Three, in jobs in the automotive parts industry, automotive research, design and engineering, and in jobs created by money spent on goods and services from the automotive industry and its workers.

• Ford, GM and Chrysler sell less than half the cars bought in the U.S. but buy about two-thirds of the parts made in the U.S.

• Automakers buy much of the steel, rubber and semiconductors made in the U.S.; conduct more R&D than any other industry; and have invested more than $230 billion in new plants and infrastructure over the past 25 years.

• Investment in R&D has a big impact on whether tomorrow’s best jobs remain in the U.S. In 2009, the Big Three spent $17.5 billion on R&D, and 80 cents of every dollar was spent in the U.S. The Big Three do the bulk of their research, design and engineering in the U.S., unlike foreign automakers.

• From 2001 to 2005, the Big Three invested more in U.S. plants and infrastructure than all the foreign automakers together invested over the past 25 years. Eighty-six cents of every dollar automakers invest in America came from Ford, GM or Chrysler.

• Unionization of the Big Three by the UAW was a major factor in the creation of the post-war middle class in the U.S. Unionization gave workers the right to bargain for fair wages and benefits, giving them the means to buy a house, send their children to college and have a secure retirement. Workers need a voice on the job and a place at the table with employers. Union representation provides that and gives workers a ladder to economic stability. The foreign-owned automakers in the U.S. are mostly nonunion and resist attempts by workers to organize.

• Quite honestly, all workers’ (union and nonunion, manufacturing and service, professional and nonprofessional) wages and benefits rose when union manufacturing workers raised their wages and benefits through collective bargaining. Health care benefits, pensions, vacations, holidays, and many other benefits and improvements in working conditions were first won in union contracts that later became standard benefits for all workers. And you may have noticed as union workers have been losing some or a portion of these benefits, so have all workers. It is no coincidence.

• According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Camry has 75 percent domestic content. In contrast, Ford produces seven vehicles with 90 percent domestic content. The highest domestic content for any of Toyota’s vehicles is the Sienna, with 85 percent.

• Chrysler, Ford and GM manufacture vehicles with more domestic content across their fleets than the foreign brands. As an example, averaged across fleets, Chrysler’s domestic content is 76 percent; Ford, 64 percent; GM, 64 percent; Honda, 63 percent; Toyota, 46 percent; and Nissan, 31 percent. If the Big Three’s domestic content shrank to the same level as the foreign automakers, it would mean $49 billion less spent in the U.S., costing more than 1 million U.S. jobs.

• For the past several years, vehicles made by the Big Three have consistently been ranked high, if not the highest, in several quality categories in the esteemed annual J.D. Power and Associates vehicle quality studies. In fact, in the 2010 study results, Big Three cars ranked in the top three of 12 categories and ranked first over foreign-company brands in six of the 12 categories.

• In the July 2010 J.D. Power and Associated Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout Study, which measures customer satisfaction, domestic brands ranked higher than foreign brands. Domestic manufacturers won eight of the top 20 ranked vehicles, with Ford winning the highest award in five segments — more than any other manufacturer. Domestic brands had an average score of 787 points on a 1,000-point scale, 13 points higher than the overall score of foreign brands.

Buying a U.S./UAW vehicle does make a difference.

Thank you for your attention to this and for covering issues important to American workers. We look forward to hearing from you in the future.


Bob King | King is president of United Auto Workers.

Scientologists nor Satan himself could put such a ludicrous spin on such a close-minded piece of self-serving bullshit.

News flash: business is competitive, unions are not. Unions served their place in a time when workers needed it. Now the automotive unions fatten the wrong pockets.

And excuse me while I shed a tear over Toyota oppressing workers 1st Amendment rights to organize because they allow unions in other countries, but not in their U.S. factories. Any one of Toyota's horribly oppressed non-union works is damn well free to go join a union - and give up their job as well. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK

If the "Big 3" are so in favor of American unions, which btw they AREN'T, then why do they have huge manufacturing presences in Mexico and Canada? If you don't allow a Toyota in your UAW property parking lot, then maybe you should take the engine out of all those pick up trucks in the parking lot too. If we're going to be fair here, (since equality is all you're after, right?) then you should kick the Mexican engines out along with the Japanese car (which was built in Kentucky).

If you take the spin out of the BS spewing out of this dbag's mouth, all he is telling us is that the automotive industry is very important to the U.S. economy. No. fucking. shit. What he neglects to mention is that unions are NOT a crucial part of automotive industry success. What was one of the major contributing factor's to GM's bloat and downfall? Oh, the huge fucking payouts and retirement costs of the union (along with decades of incompetence in the market place, of course).

Forgive me when I feel no sympathy for the shift worker who makes more money than public school teachers, and even some police, fire, nursing and EMS workers. All of whom are FAR more important in our society than these nut-swingers.

[/soapbox]

 

[LTC8K6]

Buying a U.S./UAW vehicle does make a difference.

Not buying one also makes a difference.

 

[TehMac]

Consumers should buy crap they like, not shit they don't.

In a free market/society, both the consumer, product, and producer benefit from choices. The producer is able to win via innovation and compete with his rivals in ways that merchants competing with rival guilds in 14th century Italy could not. The product benefits because not only is it innovative, or inexpensive, or any combination of the two, but because it was fashioned with the consumer directly in mind.

And of course, the consumer benefits because he gets a quality product.

In Socialist/Communist nations, products are made because the government says "we need more jobs." In fact, in the U.S.S.R. the government dictated that cars needed to be much heavier and hired a whole bunch more people to add weight to them.

So these brilliant minds put rocks in the trunks of the cars!

It's time to realize that socialism/communism are dinosaurs of the 19th century, and the people who advocate such policies today like Paul Krugman, President Obama and 40-60 percent of the Democrat Party, the Labour Party, are all just political archaeologists, trying to relive an era of maximum government with minimum accountability to the very fools who voted them into office.

 

[desy]

Well in Canada they are heavily unionized, however the historically low dollar 'now gone' and socialized medicare 'lowers manufacturers burden' educated workforce and the auto pact kept plants up here.

I'd argue unions were necessary at a point in time, but really waitresses need union protection more than a lot of industries nowadays

 

[CraigRT]

Link



Scientologists nor Satan himself could put such a ludicrous spin on such a close-minded piece of self-serving bullshit.

News flash: business is competitive, unions are not. Unions served their place in a time when workers needed it. Now the automotive unions fatten the wrong pockets.

And excuse me while I shed a tear over Toyota oppressing workers 1st Amendment rights to organize because they allow unions in other countries, but not in their U.S. factories. Any one of Toyota's horribly oppressed non-union works is damn well free to go join a union - and give up their job as well. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK

If the "Big 3" are so in favor of American unions, which btw they AREN'T, then why do they have huge manufacturing presences in Mexico and Canada? If you don't allow a Toyota in your UAW property parking lot, then maybe you should take the engine out of all those pick up trucks in the parking lot too. If we're going to be fair here, (since equality is all you're after, right?) then you should kick the Mexican engines out along with the Japanese car (which was built in Kentucky).

If you take the spin out of the BS spewing out of this dbag's mouth, all he is telling us is that the automotive industry is very important to the U.S. economy. No. fucking. shit. What he neglects to mention is that unions are NOT a crucial part of automotive industry success. What was one of the major contributing factor's to GM's bloat and downfall? Oh, the huge fucking payouts and retirement costs of the union (along with decades of incompetence in the market place, of course).

Forgive me when I feel no sympathy for the shift worker who makes more money than public school teachers, and even some police, fire, nursing and EMS workers. All of whom are FAR more important in our society than these nut-swingers.

[/soapbox]

As a plant staff in a non-unionized automotive feeder plant in Ontario, Canada, I agree unions are just retarded and no good for the corporation.

 

[MotF Bane]

But don't worry, they'll get your money anyways.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Whether or not I agree with the OP, that is a quality rant. I'd give it a 7/10.