That is the most bull I've read in 3 days. How about telling us how you really feel about meanial assembly line workers.
Sorry that you find my post as less than credible, but....I challenge you to take the same tour through the Corvette plant and find it different than I described.
hershey - albuquerque, nm Someday Finally Got Here
My wife does all the driving - I just get to hold the steering wheel.
Expedition - Suzuki Grand Viagra
The UAW killed the goose that laid the golden egg. That can not be debated. Proof is all the foreign auto makers that set up non-union manufacturing operations in the US and have had great success both for the company and the line workers.
The United Steelworkers did the same to the US basic steel industry. Remember the 13-week vacation fiasco.
When a union becomes more powerful than company management the balance is gone.
I should mention the work ethic of the Michigan autoworkers. Huge numbers would report off Fridays and Mondays.
-Tom
"The people that don't believe in evolution are the ones who need it most!"
Sarver, PA/Crystal River, FL/Indiana, PA
2005 Itasca Suncruiser 38R 38' 11"
W24, Allison 2100MH, full body paint
2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L, Roadmaster Sterling bar
FMCA 335149
rushin roulette wrote: Toyota has a completely different view of it's employees: they're not the enemy. Toyota (and many others) have a total team concept that is utterly lacking at the former "Big Three". In the US plants, the line worker is to be distrusted and despised.
A friend of mine found that out first hand. While he was in college working towards his automotive engineering degree, he worked nights at the local GM plant. When he got his degree, he thought he would have an easy time getting a job at GM designing cars and making the line efficient (since he had worked so many years on the line at GM). It was actually the opposite. As soon as the company interviewer found out he worked at the local GM plant, the interview was over. GM will not hire people for management/engineering who have worked on the assembly line because they might feel sympathy for those folks. Yes, that is what the interviewer told him. To get a job in the automotive field, my friend had to hide the fact he worked for years on the line at GM. No wonder GM is in trouble.
Another reason they are in trouble is that I read their forecasters predicted that gas would be back down to $2 a gallon by now and that folks would be buying big SUVs again at a rapid rate. Knowing GM, I bet those forecasters got promoted.
In the years immediately after World War 2, the US was essentially the only industrial nation that had a fully functioning industial base. Being the only game on the planet quickly led to huge monopolies. GM, US Steel, etc, got lazy because no matter what they turned out, they were pretty much the dominant player, and what they said, went. The union could demand whatever it wanted, and without serious competition, the costs were just passed along.
I don't blame a union for squeezing a great deal. I've worked too many years in a field that is mostly non-union and exempt from labor laws.
I lay the blame squarely on the management that utterly failed its responsibility to exercise the necessary leadership at those companies. That's why they get the big checks and bonuses.
It is NOT 1947. Them days is done, and if the labor and managment of the troubled companies doen't wake up to that soon, then they deserve to die off.
Iacocca pulled that off at Chrysler a few decades ago: yet how quickly they forget.
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