ScooterTrash
Posts: 1407
Joined: 1/24/2005 From: Indiana Status: offline
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Granted the UAW should have their ass handed to them and not let the door hit them on their butt on the way out, but you can't do that at the expensive of the domestic automotive manufacturing companies. The $28.00 comment is almost funny when someone says that's not that much for skilled labor...I agree that that is fine for skilled labor, tool-makers, millwrights, machine repairmen, etc., but lets make it perfectly clear, assembly line workers are not skilled labor, they are good at a particular task, not anything that requires years of training, so $28 an hour for these folks is just ridiculous. Labor costs should be put in line with the job, not because a union negotiated it to a certain level. The entire automotive manufacturing community is taking a big hit right now, normal sales would be around 17 million vehicles a year and right now it looks like it is running around a low of 9.5 million and if you have a rosy outlook maybe a high of around 12 million. This includes transplants as well, so they are all feeling the pain, the catch is, most of the transplants are not in the same cash crunch since they don't have the long-term obligations of paying pensions and health benefits for retirees. US automakers have been here for 100+ years, most of the foreign interests have only been here for 12 years or less (Honda a hair more). Honda originally had pension plans but saw the writing on the wall and switched to 401Ks early on. This whole problem is all about cash flow...they all are down, but the big three are the only ones that are living close to the edge because they may run out of cash to pay out. That all being said, you (we) cannot let the big three collapse, it would be detrimental to the entire economic system in North America. Say Chrysler fails and goes under, they buy their seat latches from Joe Blow. Joe Blow makes seat latches for everyone, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Etc. Joe blow loses that entire segment of his business and since all the other volumes are down, he can no longer make ends meet. So now Joe Blow goes out of business....now no one else can get seat latches so they are in a crunch and they can't make cars, so they also go out of business. It really will trickle like that because there are a lot of Joe Blows making a lot of the parts for all of the automotive folks out there. If one Automaker falls, they may all fall. It would be cheaper to loan them the money and take a chance right now, than it would be to try and pick up the pieces later...if that would even be possible. So those who say let them fail and start over...you better really think that over because everyone will be affected, absolutely everyone.
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Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound. -Albert Einstein
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