UAW wages to blame?

big2bird

Charter Member, Founder Bird-Run, Cruise-In Bird-R
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I bought a dizzy cap for my boy's Caddy today. $48.00. "Hecho en Mexico."
Think that price includes UAW wages? I think not. And with that kind of mark up, why are they in trouble?
 
I bought a dizzy cap for my boy's Caddy today. $48.00. "Hecho en Mexico."
Think that price includes UAW wages? I think not. And with that kind of mark up, why are they in trouble?

Why you pay the dealer markup...??? go to AZ or some source...or our Rock Auto and pay less than 1/2 that price....

:pprrtt::shocking:
 
I bought a dizzy cap for my boy's Caddy today. $48.00. "Hecho en Mexico."
Think that price includes UAW wages? I think not. And with that kind of mark up, why are they in trouble?

Why you pay the dealer markup...??? go to AZ or some source...or our Rock Auto and pay less than 1/2 that price....

:pprrtt::shocking:

We have Autozone, Kragen, and Pep Boys. NONE of the chains carry Delco tune up parts. I learned along time ago aftermarket tune up parts suck.
I mean, look, that OEM cap lasted 150,000 miles, and 15 years.
My point is the mark up. A NAPA cap would have been $30.00, but GM is $48.00.
 
A dizzy cap for $48 ???? Wow, is that thing gold plated or what ??:ill:

In retrospect, it might have been CHEAPER at the GM dealer.

I just needed it ASAP to pass smog for tags. It DID idle like crap.

8 Delco Rapidfire plugs, $40.00. Two Bosch Oxygen sensors. Another $40.00.
I had a new rotor.

Changing out the rear 4 plugs on a transverse V-8, priceless. (Luckily the wires were okay. Another $40)
 
I hate a V anything in a FWD car, stupid engineering....gonna stick a V X in the damn thing, make it RWD Posi.....KISS and the hell with it....
 
My point is the mark up. A NAPA cap would have been $30.00, but GM is $48.00.

You gotta help pay those Exectutive salaries of $7,000,000.00 a year,
and those Private Jets that cost $20,000 a trip to operate just so they
can fly to ask "Uncle" to bail them out. And where is the money going
to go? To cover Pensions!

Maybe this 1 time Obama is right......all they need is $150,000 a year.
Who's gonna take the first pay cut to save the company???????
Maybe their not so "Loyal" after all.

Heck...I'd be tickled to death with a $150,000 a year.
 
My point is the mark up. A NAPA cap would have been $30.00, but GM is $48.00.

You gotta help pay those Exectutive salaries of $7,000,000.00 a year,
and those Private Jets that cost $20,000 a trip to operate just so they
can fly to ask "Uncle" to bail them out. And where is the money going
to go? To cover Pensions!

Maybe this 1 time Obama is right......all they need is $150,000 a year.
Who's gonna take the first pay cut to save the company???????
Maybe their not so "Loyal" after all.

Heck...I'd be tickled to death with a $150,000 a year.

And they want us to bail them out.:smash::smash: How dumb do they think we are. This is the time for them to give up all their perks, and live like the rest of us.
 
My point is the mark up. A NAPA cap would have been $30.00, but GM is $48.00.

You gotta help pay those Exectutive salaries of $7,000,000.00 a year,
and those Private Jets that cost $20,000 a trip to operate just so they
can fly to ask "Uncle" to bail them out. And where is the money going
to go? To cover Pensions!

Maybe this 1 time Obama is right......all they need is $150,000 a year.
Who's gonna take the first pay cut to save the company???????
Maybe their not so "Loyal" after all.

Heck...I'd be tickled to death with a $150,000 a year.

Don't get me wrong, I think that GM is an American icon and that we might all be speaking German or Japanese right now if not for the extraordinary efforts during WWII of one of the longest surviving and largest corporations in the world.

The wages are too high and the fat needs to be trimmed and a bailout is not the answer. The government needs to force GM into bankruptcy and then a judge can reset the inflated wages that the union has driven up and out of reality. Then they would have to take-it-or-leave-it.
 
My point is the mark up. A NAPA cap would have been $30.00, but GM is $48.00.

You gotta help pay those Exectutive salaries of $7,000,000.00 a year,
and those Private Jets that cost $20,000 a trip to operate just so they
can fly to ask "Uncle" to bail them out. And where is the money going
to go? To cover Pensions!

Maybe this 1 time Obama is right......all they need is $150,000 a year.
Who's gonna take the first pay cut to save the company???????
Maybe their not so "Loyal" after all.

Heck...I'd be tickled to death with a $150,000 a year.

150k is not close to being enough, if your going to restrict the top wages to that why would anyone even work up to being on the top? But I do agree that the salaries are ridiculous but they shouldn't be making that little
 
I gotta say exec salaries are not outta line considering the competitive nature of being same....and even compared to 1/2 the total wages paid out to direct employees of any company, like GM for instance....

it's not the top guys, but the whipsaw tactics the union was allowed by THE DAMN GOVERNMENT to get away with over the past decades....

strike GM, for instance, while F and Ch continued business as usual...billions of bux shot....THAT is what cost us the American auto industry....it was NOT a free open negotiation and was many times commented on in the media as being one company 'held hostage' well now all the pirates are outta the lunchroom and on the streets, as long as various cheeep labor lo income states like ALABAMA are 'right to work' states, and very anti union....
but for some reason, OUR companies could not or chose to NOT locate more plants there over the years....WHY???

I have been a union backer most of my life, but when I hear figgers of some 140 bux/hour for labor to make a fucking CAR....there seems to be a huge disparity there, and the state of MICHIGAN with their high prices, high taxes, and stupid weather is going to find out the rest of the country just will not and can not afford to support their stupid asses.....

plain enough???

:mad:
 
It's not just executive salaries.The average GM worker is averaging $73 per hour compared to a little more than half of that for a Toyota worker.
 
I have been a union backer most of my life, but when I hear figgers of some 140 bux/hour for labor to make a fucking CAR....

Where do you get this crap Gene?

I AM INCLUDING THE RETIREE BENEFITS......LEGACY COSTS, THAT'S WHAT IT IS....SUPPOSEDLY....:quote:

The foreign brands have no such costs, they opened up and only hired kids in their 20's.....so they have some 30 years of no retiree benefits....assuming they get any at any rate.....

overseas, all that 'social' cost is taken up by their governments....HERE it's a cost of doing business and so passed along as no profits, poorer engineering, cheaper designs, looser tolerances, and high production costs...at the bottom line....

PLUS we have some state laws, apparently, that prevent the little 3 from cutting loose of stealerships....GM has something like 7000 while Toy has 1500 or so.....

I going to cut/paste a long article on this in another post here....
 
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Our Hapless Automakers
The choice before Congress is bankruptcy now or bankruptcy later.
by Irwin M. Stelzer




Set out a giant honey pot, and the bears will come. And the more bearish they are about their prospects, the faster they will come and the louder they will grunt. The Bush administration presides over a giant honey pot, containing some $350 billion. And a smaller one, with a mere $25 billion already promised to the once-big, now shriveled three U.S. automakers. Not enough to appease the domestic automakers' desire for a sweetener. "Please sir, can we have more?" say GM, Ford, and Chrysler. If only Congress and the White House would dip into the money originally intended to help financial institutions weather the current credit crisis, they say.

Start with the smaller pot, already authorized by Congress. This $25 billion is available subject to a Democratic-inserted requirement that the companies use the money only for research into battery development and other very green ventures. No green, no greenbacks. President Bush says that if GM is on the verge of bankruptcy all the Democrats in Congress have to do is remove the conditions, and the money will flow to GM and others to meet their immediate cash needs. By the time they burn through that cash pile--at current rates that will take a few months--Barack Obama will be sitting in the Oval Office, from which perch he can decide how much taxpayer money he wants to commit to satisfying the seemingly insatiable appetite of the cash-guzzling trio. Insiders say he has an immediate additional $25 billion in mind, but analysts at Goldman Sachs say that GM alone will need almost half that amount in order to survive the current downturn, never mind finance a major restructuring.

This is really only the tip of a policy iceberg. In days past what America is now involved in was known as "industrial policy," the government picking winners in which it would invest taxpayer money. The relief and stimulus effort didn't start that way. Congress was persuaded to authorize two $350 billion tranches to ease conditions in credit markets by having the government buy shaky IOUs currently on bank balance sheets. That morphed into the later plan to inject capital into the major and some lesser banks. Then came the unintended consequence, the cries of "Why the banks and not us?" To which Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson responds that he does not have the legal authority to transfer money to a purpose not authorized in the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) legislation, a view that Majority Leader Harry Reid considers excessively prissy and legalistic.

Which is where we are now, with the auto companies in the lead, but other industries attempting to dip their paws into the honey pot. Even the advertising industry is talking about the devastating effect of a withdrawal of GM sponsorship from such events as the Super Bowl and the layoffs that would occur on Madison Avenue if help--for it as well as its car making clients?--is not forthcoming. Passage of this loan package would "set a terrible precedent," warns Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. "Why not the airline industry? Why not the other industries?"

The politics are clear. The autoworkers' union that dominates U.S. producers but has failed to organize the plants of foreign companies making cars here in America, helped candidate Obama, and the president-elect has never, never done anything to antagonize any union, much less the UAW, which boasts more than one million active and retired members "in virtually every sector of the economy" and of its "3,100 contracts with some 2,000 employers"--a lot more potent politically than merely the 239,000 workers employed by GM, Ford, and Chrysler. So Obama has promised to help the American-brand automobile makers, although he has been vague on whether the check they get will be a blank one, or be conditioned on firing the CEOs and some of the directors, limiting executive pay, and appointing some sort of government czar to supervise investment, marketing, and other decisions, as was done with the airlines after their post-9/11 bailout. Think of it: a government that hasn't been able to figure out how to give away $700 billion in an optimal way imagines it can decide what sort of vehicles will sell well.

No problem--all of the executives who spent most of last week rattling their begging bowls before congressional committees expressed eagerness to welcome a government oversight/advisory board to their boardrooms. A small price to pay for $25 billion at an initial interest rate of 5 percent.

Two things surprised the auto companies. The first is the weight of the baggage carried by their principal spokesman, GM CEO Rick Wagoner. "We don't like being here asking for this," Wagoner testified. And he liked being there even less when the executives were asked for a showing of hands by all those who had flown to the hearings on commercial airliners (cost $300) rather than in private jets (cost $20,000) and neither he nor his colleagues could raise their hands.

Wagoner's company is in worse shape than Chrysler, and in far worse shape than Ford, which says it can survive without aid through 2009. Wagoner, therefore, has to lead the charge for an immediate infusion of taxpayer cash, and the $10 million spent by GM so far this year on lobbying, plus his own testimony, just doesn't seem to be carrying the day. In part that is because he has the mission impossible of arguing that GM's problems stem from a short-term liquidity crisis caused by high oil prices, tight credit and consumer reluctance to spend--all forces beyond the control of management, which has a sound long-term plan for recovery. Our problem "can be traced right to the crisis on Wall Street," Wagoner contends.

Unfortunately for his credibility as a victim of recent circumstances beyond his control, Wagoner has been CEO since 2000 and at GM for 31 years, during which period its market share has shriveled from over 50 percent to 20 percent, its losses have mounted so that it is hemorrhaging more than $2 billion in cash every month, and repeated efforts to assure the survival of this "dinosaur," to use Senator Richard Shelby's descriptive term, have failed. The sad truth is that GM became a candidate for the ash heap of history long before the economy's current woes. It has too many workers making too many cars that too few people want, being sold through too many dealers at prices too low to turn a profit, with too many vehicles going to rental fleets which eventually glut the used car market. And despite all of the Detroit automakers' claims about improved quality, its vehicles still lag far behind those of its European competitors in resale value. No cars produced by GM, Ford, and Chrysler rank in the top ten in the authoritative Kelley Blue Book. After five years a typical Chrysler product retains merely 24 percent of its original sticker price, whereas Honda's brands hold onto 45 percent of their original value. That allows the foreign-owned automakers operating in this country to offer more attractive lease terms, still another competitive advantage that domestic companies have made no progress in overcoming.

A second surprise for GM, Ford, and Chrysler has been the extent and intensity of the opposition to a bailout. Republicans and conservatives who believe with economist Allan Meltzer that capitalism without failure is like religion without sin were expected to oppose any bailout. So were longtime opponents of the industry's management, which has been rightly chastised for its failure to increase productivity, but unjustly criticized for emphasizing the manufacture of vehicles consumers want rather than those environmentalists wish consumers would want. Finally, the anti-bailout crowd was expected to include those who feel the UAW has for years extracted such lush benefits packages from the companies that consumers overpaid for vehicles until foreign competitors gained a foothold here. If you doubt that GM's union contracts are a major source of its inability to compete, consider this: Where it is not burdened with such legacy costs, GM is a highly successful company. It produces more cars outside of North America than in it, and is the market leader in China, where it sells over one million cars annually.

But no one guessed that politicians in states in which nonunion foreign automakers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and BMW are providing good jobs for more than 113,000 workers would be quite so vigorous in protecting those companies from unfair, taxpayer-subsidized competition. Alabama, home to Senator Shelby, leader of what might be called the "Drop Dead Detroit" crowd, is one of seven states that is home to a Toyota plant (it has R&D facilities in three other states); Toyota also operates manufacturing facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi, and an even more far-flung network of suppliers. Nissan operates production facilities in Mississippi and Tennessee, as does BMW in South Carolina. Honda has plants, and therefore political supporters, in five states, according to Matthew Slaughter, dean of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business.

For whatever reason, the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate cannot even count on vigorous support from its own ranks. Senate Banking chairman Christopher Dodd, a reluctant supporter of aid, says, "They're seeking treatment for wounds that, I believe, are largely self-inflicted." And Democrat Jon Tester says that people in his home state of Montana "are experiencing bailout fatigue." The lack of enthusiasm from many Democrats has combined with the active opposition of most Republicans to force the Democratic leadership to throw in the sponge. At midweek Reid gave up efforts to push through a bill that would have allocated $25 billion from the TARP program to the Detroit three. At this writing it seems likely that the administration will prevail, and that Congress, perhaps returning after Thanksgiving to get the necessary legislation done, will override Nancy Pelosi's vociferous objections and remove most of the restrictions that have kept the Treasury from transferring the already agreed-upon $25 billion from taxpayers to auto company coffers. Whether or not that happens, the auto companies will have to await the coming of President Obama before receiving the taxpayer-funded loans they seek--which he will make available, he says, only if he can be shown that "we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere." And then only if Reid satisfies him that he can get the votes he will need in the Senate, just one example of why the final outcomes of the Senate races in Georgia and Minnesota are so important.

The opposition to the bailout will not go away. And the case for refusing to drop more money into Detroit's bottomless pit is compelling. Michael Levine, research scholar and senior lecturer at NYU law school, pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that a bailout will do nothing to lighten the burden of the legacy costs under which GM and others labor. GM and Toyota have almost identical market shares, but GM pushes eight brands through almost 7,000 dealers while Toyota has fewer than 1,500 dealerships. Toyota's larger dealers are better able to advertise, stock, and service the cars they sell. GM knows it needs fewer brands and dealers, but the dealers are protected from termination by state laws. Only a bankruptcy court judge can spare GM the billions of dollars and years of time it would take to pare its dealer numbers to some efficient total.

The automakers know, too, that the relief they have so far been granted by the UAW--and Wagoner has succeeded in wringing a bit of mercy from the bosses of the UAW--will take years to have sufficient impact on costs to make them able to compete with made-in-America foreign brands. New hires will come in at lower wages, but with the age of GM employees averaging around 50 years, it will take a long process of attrition-through-retirement for labor costs to come down.

Worse still, the UAW boasts that its "unique strength . . . is the solidarity between its active and retired workers." So it is not prepared to budge on its program that has tens of thousands of laid-off workers assigned to a "Jobs Bank," with pay and benefits nearly equal to those paid to active workers. Only a bankruptcy court can cut through this barrier to the long-term viability of the three auto companies.

Bankruptcy is not an option, says Wagoner. Car companies are not airlines. Consumers will buy tickets on bankrupt airlines because their relationship with the carrier lasts only for the duration of the flight. But car purchasers are entering a long-term relationship with the manufacturer on whose warranty they must rely. Unfortunately for Wagoner, there is an easy fix to that problem: a government guarantee of warranties backing vehicles sold while GM (or Chrysler) is in bankruptcy. Throw in government guarantees of pension obligations, some retraining and other protection for older workers who might be adversely affected by rulings of the bankruptcy courts, and you have a compassionately conservative solution to the auto industry's problems.

But that is not to be, as some problems can't be fixed. Obama has promised the unions he will make an additional $25 billion available and has announced that in his view viable companies will not emerge from the bankruptcy process. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus want assurance that $1 billion will be allocated to support minority and ethnic auto dealers. Barney Frank wants an end to the "discrimination" that has the government bailing out white-collar workers at AIG but refusing help to blue-collar workers at GM. And no one wants to take note of the fact that foreigners make cars, including trucks and SUVs, and money here in the United States; that Ford's chances of survival would be increased if GM's excess capacity were removed from the industry; that our British friends poured billions into a failed attempt to rescue British Leyland; that replacing poor Rick Wagoner with a politicized, government-run advisory board is unlikely to produce the hard-headed change needed in the company's labor contract; and that studies by NYU professor David Yermack conclude that the capital wasted by our auto companies in the past decade would have been sufficient to acquire "all of the shares of Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Volkswagen."

The choice is bankruptcy now or bankruptcy later, and now beats later by at least $50 billion. Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming says that because the bill fails to address "the industry's crippling legacy costs . . . I would not be surprised if we find ourselves and the domestic auto industry in the same situation six months, or a year from now." He has it right.

Irwin M. Stelzer, a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is director of -economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London). Employment figures in this article come from the Center for Automotive Research.

:fishing::eek::sos:
 
Gene,
If the big 3 were to go non-union, and no longer have that EXCUSE about the UAW being their downfall, they would still be doomed due to their way of doing business as usual. Their is no doubt in my mind.
Zenith pulled the same shit, closed their plants and moved to Mexico. When is the last time you saw a Zenith TV?
GM moved alot of plants to Mexico, and did not lower the price of a part or a car 10 cents. Now they are still in trouble.
The housing builders out here claimed the price of houses were high due to union labor. About 1985 they went non-union. The price of houses are now higher than ever, quality is down, only the foreman speak english, they have no medical or pension, and they cannot claim it's the labor. Now, it's the price of land, and they are hurting again because it is a growth industry.
All televisions are now made in China, and they cost what I used to buy a car for. Do you think with $2,000 for a fuggin TV, the high cost is Chinese labor?
Wal Mart uses only part time labor, so they do not have to pay benefits. Anyone who works there uses the ER for a cold/flu. They treat them for free, and pass the cost onto people with insurance visa vie $10 Tylenol. Everyone else subsidizs these costs.
We are seeing a complete sell out of this country over greed. All our corporations are being bought by other countries, our property, our money is going overseas, our tax base is moving to the Caymen Islands, and in the interest of Wall Street short term pfofits, the future is doomed.
I understand I am rambling on about this, but to blame the woes of everything on a decet wage just tears me up inside. If everyone only makes $10 an hour, who the hell is going to be able to afford all this crap?
 
A little bit more realistic stats.

quarter 2007

How much are current UAW auto industry wages?

In 2006 a typical UAW-represented assembler at GM earned $27.81 per hour of straight-time labor. A typical UAW-represented skilled-trades worker at GM earned $32.32 per hour of straight-time labor. Between 2003 and 2006, the wages of a typical UAW assembler have grown at about the same rate as wages in the private sector as a whole – roughly 9 percent. Part of that growth is due to cost-of-living adjustments that have helped prevent inflation from eroding the purchasing power of workers' wages.

What is the compensation for auto industry executives?

The CEOs of Chrysler Group, Ford and GM earned a combined total of $24.5 million in salaries, bonuses and other compensation in 2006.

The next four highest paid executives received average salary and other compensation of $1.3 million at Ford and $1.4 million at GM. These substantial sums do not include the value of stocks and stock options that were also part of executive compensation.

Why is the figure cited as hourly labor costs by the companies so much higher than the wage rates?

In addition to regular hourly pay, the labor cost figures cited by the companies include other expenses associated with having a person on payroll. This includes overtime, shift premiums and the costs of negotiated benefits such as holidays, vacations, health care, pensions and education and training. It also includes statutory costs, which employers are required to pay by law, such as federal contributions for Social Security and Medicare, and state payments to workers' compensation and unemployment insurance funds. The highest figures sometimes cited also include the benefit costs of retirees who are no longer on the payroll.

How much value do UAW members contribute to their employers?

American autoworkers are among the most productive workers in the world. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical autoworker produces value added worth $206 per worker per hour.1 This is far more than he or she earns in wages, even when benefits, statutory contributions and other costs are included.

How much are labor costs in relation to the total price of a new vehicle?

The total labor cost of a new vehicle produced in the United States is about $2,400,2 which includes direct, indirect and salaried labor for engines, stamping and assembly at the automakers' plants.

This represents 8.4 percent of the typical $28,4513 price of a new vehicle in 2006. The vast majority of the costs of producing a vehicle and transporting it to a dealership and preparing it for sale – including design, engineering, marketing, raw materials, executive compensation and other costs – are not related to direct or indirect manufacturing labor.
 
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