UAW: GM 'cannot shrink itself to prosperity'

[Analog]

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President Richard Shoemaker, who directs the UAW General Motors Department, issued this statement on today's announcement by General Motors:

"Today's action by General Motors is not only extremely disappointing, unfair and unfortunate, it is devastating to many thousands of workers, their families and their communities. While GM's continuing decline in market share is not the fault of workers or our communities, it is these groups that will suffer because of the actions announced today. For the workers, their families and the thousands of other people who work in the small businesses that supply these facilities, hope is diminished, the future is unclear and communities are less stable.

"The UAW-represented workers impacted by today's action are protected by our job security program as well as the other provisions and protections of the UAW-GM National Agreement. The UAW will do everything in its power to enforce those programs and protect the interests of the workers impacted by today's action.

"We have said consistently that General Motors cannot shrink itself to prosperity. In fact, shrinking General Motors only exacerbates its problems.

"Workers and their unions have worked hard to improve product quality and productivity at GM facilities in the United States and Canada, and these efforts have produced strong gains in both these critical areas, as reported in recent studies by J.D. Power & Associates and the Harbour Report.

"The actions covered by today's announcement will be the subject of ongoing discussions and the 2007 negotiations between the UAW and General Motors. Today's announcement clearly makes those negotiations much more difficult.

"GM's return to prosperity depends on it offering products that consumers find attractive, exciting and want to buy. Only then will GM's market share stabilize and grow, only then will revenues increase and only then will General Motors return to prosperity. Being successful in this regard is the exclusive responsibility of management: Workers have no control over GM's capital investment, product development, design, marketing and advertising decisions. But, unfortunately, it is workers, their families and our communities that are being forced to suffer because of the failures of others."
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0511/21/0auto-389400.htm

 

[MrDudeMan]

at least highlight the key points for us...im not really in the mood right now to read all of that since it doesnt seem to be interesting.

 

[alien42]

"it is devastating to many thousands of workers, their families and their communities."

funny, that is how i would describe the UAW

 

[PingSpike]

Excellent job absolving themselves of any responsibility whatsoever.

 

[squirrel dog]

Providing health care for the army of retirees GM supports drives this type of corp. behavior .

 

[leftyman]

Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
at least highlight the key points for us...im not really in the mood right now to read all of that since it doesnt seem to be interesting.

Bigsm00th..your heat should read 86-0-1..pos-neg-neutral

 

[meltdown75]

"GM's return to prosperity depends on it offering products that consumers find attractive, exciting and want to buy. Only then will GM's market share stabilize and grow, only then will revenues increase and only then will General Motors return to prosperity. Being successful in this regard is the exclusive responsibility of management: Workers have no control over GM's capital investment, product development, design, marketing and advertising decisions."

completely agree.

perhaps we are seeing what happens when a company becomes a little too complacent and feels that it will never lose its foothold in the market.

i feel bad for the workers though. at least they have time to look into other employment options i suppose.

 

[nakedfrog]

They can't very well bring themselves to prosperity by paying people to do nothing, can they? (job bank)

 

[Accipiter22]

Originally posted by: alien42
"it is devastating to many thousands of workers, their families and their communities."

funny, that is how i would describe the UAW

hahaha so someone else was thinkin that too.....glad I'm not the only one

 

[dartworth]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They can't very well bring themselves to prosperity by paying people to do nothing, can they? (job bank)

The job bank is about .5% of GM's total revenues...they have bigger problems than that

 

[SeaMonki]

It's GM's fault for paying top executives much more money than what they deserve, coming out with cars that are not appealing to customers, wasting money on retro designs for short term profit, etc.

It's also UAW's fault for thinking its members are still going to get paid $30+ per hour with kick ass healthcare benefits for doing not much education required work. It's time for UAW to negotiate with GM at the rate foreign automakers pay for its workers before the whole union breakes apart.

 

[ElFenix]

yes, but if they don't have to make as many cars because they can't sell them, the company doesn't demand as much labor and should axe workers.

gm has to constantly cut corners on cars because its labor force is so expensive. the only way to not do this is to have cars that are expensive enough to overcome that, such as on cadillacs. but you can only sell so many luxury cars. so, even if gm could switch their whole line over to cars that have so much room built in after the materials and engineering costs are factored in to pay what the UAW workers are getting hourly, they'd still lose market share and have to close plants/fire workers.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
perhaps we are seeing what happens when a company becomes a little too complacent and feels that it will never lose its foothold in the market.

that is exactly how gm felt in the 1970s when they agreed to the healtcare benefits and outrageous union work rules that they're still trying to get rid of today.

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: meltdown75
perhaps we are seeing what happens when a company becomes a little too complacent and feels that it will never lose its foothold in the market.

that is exactly how gm felt in the 1970s when they agreed to the healtcare benefits and outrageous union work rules that they're still trying to get rid of today.

it really makes you wonder how the system will eventually be fixed. the whole damn thing is pretty much going to have to implode and unions be drastically changed on a fundamental level in order for the good old Big 3 to compete. it's been a long time coming...

having said that - living around here you can't help but be a little more sympathetic to the plight of some of the workers. people that have 15-20 years in and were kinda counting on the gravy train in terms of retirement benefits / buyout packages have a huge wakeup call coming. oh well. you hit the ground running i guess.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
it really makes you wonder how the system will eventually be fixed. the whole damn thing is pretty much going to have to implode and unions be drastically changed on a fundamental level in order for the good old Big 3 to compete. it's been a long time coming...

having said that - living around here you can't help but be a little more sympathetic to the plight of some of the workers. people that have 15-20 years in and were kinda counting on the gravy train in terms of retirement benefits / buyout packages have a huge wakeup call coming. oh well. you hit the ground running i guess.

you think this is bad... social security is set up almost the same way.

 

[JS80]

Outsource labor to Japan.

 

[Leper Messiah]

I simply cannot believe the arrogance of the unions. WTF is wrong with them? Are they so stupid and/or blind that they can't see that if they don't bend, THEY WON"T HAVE A FVCKING JOB?! Period. End of story.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Leper Messiah
I simply cannot believe the arrogance of the unions. WTF is wrong with them? Are they so stupid and/or blind that they can't see that if they don't bend, THEY WON"T HAVE A FVCKING JOB?! Period. End of story.

we call this 'puffing'

 

[alphatarget1]

the workers should've known better to get new job skills and get the hell out.

with that said, GM wasn't doing so bad in the SUV craze and now they're pretty fvcked. They build some nice cars but no sympathy in that department from me. why are japanese manufacturers able to build nice cars with american labor whereas american cars are generally of lower quality?

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Excellent job absolving themselves of any responsibility whatsoever.

The UAW's job is to look out for its workers, which they have done. Its GM's management, you know those well-paid CEOs and execs, who approved the Union contracts, decided to stick their heads in the sand about the price of gasoline, and are running the company into the ground.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: alphatarget1
the workers should've known better to get new job skills and get the hell out.

with that said, GM wasn't doing so bad in the SUV craze and now they're pretty fvcked. They build some nice cars but no sympathy in that department from me. why are japanese manufacturers able to build nice cars with american labor whereas american cars are generally of lower quality?

GM cars are actually of fine quality, if you maintain them.

 

[Kelemvor]

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Excellent job absolving themselves of any responsibility whatsoever.

The UAW's job is to look out for its workers, which they have done. Its GM's management, you know those well-paid CEOs and execs, who approved the Union contracts, decided to stick their heads in the sand about the price of gasoline, and are running the company into the ground.

Actually they haven't. Looking out for your workers doesn't mean getting them as much pay as possible. It means getting them decent pay while also ensuring that they have stable jobs that won't get outsourced. But since all UAW seems to care about is getting insanely high wages and benefits for it's members without regard to what that does to the company, I'd say it's pretty much all UAWs fault.

And I think this will continue to happen into the next few years. First Delphi, now GM... pretty soon we won't be making cars any more in this country because of the jackasses that are UAW.

 

[Patt]

I love how the UAW guy admits GM's marketshare is declining and it isn't the fault of the workers or the UAW. Maybe not, but you're still working for a sinking ship ... it isn't always someone else's fault. :roll:

for any who are laid off ... but :thumbsdown: to the union.

 

[marvdmartian]

GM's return to prosperity depends on it offering products that consumers find attractive, exciting and want to buy.

Yeah, the problem with that is that it normally takes a car company something like 3-5 years to come out with a new model. That's what's hurting the "big 3" right now, is that they depended on the truck/suv market to prop them up, and were so convinced that it would do so indefinitely, that they didn't bother designing much of anything in the small to medium car range, where higher gas mileage numbers usually exist.

Just look at recent advertising by any of the dealers in your area that carry the big 3 products. I get a kick out of their advertising suv's that get "26mpg!!!". Yeah....on the highway.....going downhill.....with a tailwind......only a driver......and no a/c running..... shoot, we might even cut off the engine for a minute to get that number up!! :roll:

Take a look at the huge incentives that the big 3 have given in the past 6 months to keep their numbers up, and continue to give to keep those numbers somewhat healthy. Shoot, I just heard the other day the Dodge is going to offer 2 years maintenance, 2 years additional warranty, and 2 years gasoline :shocked: , if you buy one of their models that's not been selling so good. From what I heard, the gasoline is capped at a certain dollar amount per year (the numbers I heard were $2500 per year, but I haven't had a chance to verify that, so treat it as rumor until confirmed), but that's a helluva incentive to buy a truck or suv!!

The bottom line is that the big 3 have suffered under the sorryass UAW for too long, they've suffered under their own sorryass management for even longer, and it's time someone come in and shake things up. Unfortunately, since the UAW (typically) refuses to budge on much of anything, and we can't ever expect management to suffer, the employees jobs get cut. As usual, the little guy takes it in the shorts, while the union shakes it's head, tells them how terribly they're being treated, and then reminds them to make certain to keep paying their union dues while they're on unemployment! :roll:

 

[PingSpike]

The management certainly have a signifigant portion of the blame, I'd even say the lions share. But don't give me that "its all their fault" business. The UAW isn't exactly the model of efficiency either.