Plus the fact that american made cars in the 70's and 80's were badly designed, engineered and poorly built crap, and blame falls on management and labor (pot meet kettle, kettle meet pot). A pox on both their houses, they drove consumers to buy better made "foreign" cars. Meanwhile, Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes were taking quality and production efficiency to a world class level, while some (e.g. Honda) were building cars in U.S. locations, with US workers. But I am sad to see anyone lose their jobs, especially at the dealers.

 

They sold out to the oil companies. An inventor had a battery that would double the range of the EV1. So GM bought the rights to them then sold them to Texaco I think. Who then promptly stopped production on the batteries.
The Acura TL I picked up for the wife is assembled in OH and I got it at a dealer in NY. Don't know the content break down but it is probably not that far off from the Vette that is assembled in KY but parts come from all over the globe. So what do you define as buying American then? You can say that the headquarters is located here but lots of US companies hide money offshore and outsource the manufacturing overseas. I say buy what you want, it is the American way

 

The folks who point the finger at the "unions" and ignore the corporate mismanagement, arrogance, incompetence, and the global push to redistribute the US's wealth by means of "free trade agreements" are laughable. GM agreed to everything in those contracts. They did have a higher legacy cost that caused them problems but who let the GM share of the auto market fall so precipitously that it could no longer afford the obligations they agreed to?

GM brass stood around with their fingers in their butts while this happened:



Hopefully they can clean up the union mess now via bankruptcy and kick the entire management team out on their azz, they screwed this pooch.

 

Unions were needed to protect the working class when children and women were working for 50 cents/day seven days a week. They are not needed now and are driving major corporations out of business or off shore. It's time to wake up take and look at what's already happened.

The whole "I deserve it", arrogant, self serving attitude of EVERY union I've been involved with (not every member) is the same. Seniority rules, and the guys with time have told me more than once "I'll be here when they turn the lights off". Well wakeup - they're turning the lights off and you too are on the unemployment line. Your rediculous benifits, and outragous payscales for the complexity of work you do has killed an industry. Face it, auto workers are on lines with some of the best engineered tooling in the world. You don't need 30-50 $/hr people to do those jobs, they're designed for the least common denominator on the intellegence scale, those are $15/hr jobs.

I'm a manufacturing engineer in the aerospace business and we're suffering too. They're moving work off shore to cheaper, more efficent plants regularly.

I'm afraid it may be too late.

mk

 

Its the US government that built, backs, and fortifies the unions. Wake up and smell the coffee. Its also your government that encourages and rewards US companies to send jobs overseas.

Do some research on the Davis Bacon act, it will set you off for sure.

Try this on for size:

http://www.gpo.gov/davisbacon/allstates.html

 

Its pretty simple from my armchair quarterback position.

All are to blame:


cars aren't selling yet management to continues producing, once production slows operating cost remain high due to workers continuing to receive pay while not working.

Now you have a fully staffed workforce capable of building X amount of cars, but your demand is Y plus you have inventory stacked at leased parking lots across the US of A.


Little poem I wrote:
When one dealership closes - the locals shed a tear
Yet the dealership 5 miles away....smiles from ear to ear.

 

stop outsourcing?
I agree but when big companys like KPMG are moving more that way for a quick buck and letting go of there top people..well it shows you people dont learn.

lets hope for the best .

 

The irony is the low paid US worker thrives on the fruit of outsourcing by buying cheap products from Wal-Mart yet they are the first ones to complain about outsourcing. I'm sure they lose jobs, but where would they shop if Wally World starting making things back here in the US w/ the help of labor unions...

 

[QUOTE=Chevy Guy;1570108045]Its the US government that built, backs, and fortifies the unions. Wake up and smell the coffee. Its also your government that encourages and rewards US companies to send jobs overseas.

[QUOTE]

I agree with you in part.

It's not the whole US government, it's the liberal "everybody's equal", "everybody deserves" part of the government. While the union members enjoy their health care benefits (as long as they don't drive the companies out of busines), and the children of illegal aliens enjoy their free health care, the people that are working are paying more and more taxes to pay for it.

It's already worse because of the current administration. He's projecting more debt through the year 2012 than has been amassed since the beginning of this country.

 

Hold on Nuky. Don't jump all over my statement. I think you misunderstood my point. I am a member of a union, and I am VERY grateful for the benefits I have, especially the health care.

My point was that the package that GM and the UAW negotiated is SO FAR OFF that it is ridiculous.UAW members essentially get about the same rate per hour (within 2 to $4/hr) of the foreign companies manufacturing in the US. However, unless I'm wrong,UAW workers get FULL pay even when they are laid off. Their medical coverage extends way too long after they stop working. They have other benefits that are too costly.

In my union, if I don't work, I don't get paid ( no guaranteed 40 hrs). I have no sick days or personal days. If I get laid off, I have to collect unemployment which I paid in for from my salary, and which the employers paid into like any other job in the US.My medical coverage is based on time I've worked. If I made more than was needed to provide for my coverage for one year, that amount can be carried over to the next year. After that,if I don't work, I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. When I retire, I have to get Medicare when I am eligible.

The UAW contracts GO WAY BEYOND THIS. That is why there is so much cost built into every car to account for this.The foreign companies making cars in the US do not have this kind of crazy excesses.

It is true also, that the management is way overpaid, and the decisions made had led to the demise of the US Auto Industry too. What they have chosen to design, and to offer were not the best options.
Both sides were at fault .
BTW, I've owned 15 different cars or trucks over the years. 9 were American made, and 6 were foreign (BMW ,Toyota truck, several Volvos). ALL MY VEHICLES NOW ARE AMERICAN MADE. When I had the other vehicles, I thought they were the best option for me because the US companies were NOT making what I wanted.Also, at the time, the US industry was not in trouble, it was just being stupid.

 

Steve, as I said, my brother-in-law was an electrical engineer working on this car. His area of expertise was designing charging systems. The problem as he explained it ,was that the system could not be designed so that the amount of power needed to charge the batteries would not exceed the requirements set by the government. In other words, it took too much power, and too much environmental impact ( too much fossil fuel to produce electricity)to charge the system. He did not mention anything about the battery capacity. However, as with the system in the VOLT by GM, the cost of the batteries has always been an issue because of the excessive costs to make them.

 

Hell yeah! I'd clean them for 65,000!

 

Not to mention the life expectancy of the battery.

I'm sure a move to mass produce batteries would reduce the overall cost (as long as they are outsourced ) Then you'll get into the tree hugging argument of what to do with the old batteries..

I think we should switch to Flintstone powered vehicles. Two birds w/ one stone dependency on fossil fuels and fight obesity

 

Let's see now..... If Chrysler and GM kill many of their dealerships and Toyota and Honda and Nissan don't, that means the percentage of foreign dealers has increased. Pretty soon an American made car will be an exotic!

 

No, even w/ the cuts GM/Chrysler dealerships will still out number the foreign ones. Keep in mind companies like Toyota and Honda kept a close hold on the placement and level of dealerships. GM and Chrysler let anyone w/ enough dough purchase a franchise even if they were going to cannibalize sales from a dealer 5 miles away (resulting in competition in prices - which means less profit).

You should do a bit more research into the matter.

 

Not that you probably give a crap about us, but it is happening up here also.

"Why is this happening when we build the best trucks in the world?"

-- GM retiree Pat Creighton

OSHAWA -- Charles Bottomley, Harry Bottomley, Pat Creighton and Bill Kress.

There's more than 100 years of service -- and four generations -- who have worked proudly and continuously at General Motors here in Oshawa.

A father, a son, a daughter and a son. Or in the case of Bill Kress, he, his mom, his grandfather and his great-grandfather. But later today the streak will end with him.

After today Oshawa no longer will have its famous truck plant, which set quality standards and produced more than 10 million of the vehicles since 1965.

And his family's century-long chain will end when that last truck rolls off the line. His 2,600 co-workers face the same fate -- leaving General Motors in Oshawa with just 3,800 workers, down from the high of 18,000 in the 1980s.

For Bill's mom, Pat Creighton, it's going to be difficult no longer having those bragging rights, since her family has worked without intermission or interruption at General Motors since 1908.

The fact that a truck plant is remaining in Mexico, is disgraceful. "We can't compete with offshore -- especially when they have no environmental laws," she said. "And now all the jobs are off to Mexico, India, Russia, Korea and China. The truth is they sold the Canadian people down the river."

CAW Local 222 president Chris Buckley agrees: "We need to remind our workers that this has come about through no fault of their own but because of bad decisions by General Motors and years of government neglect to deal with the realities of trade imbalances."

GM should be "hanging their heads in shame because they are closing the best truck plant in the industry."

 

Your 100% on the money unions are not the entire blame without them gm would be paying those people 17.00 an hour

 

I can tell you this Ralph - my father did not get full pay when he was laid off and he was laid off a lot!! Back in the 70's GM in Tarrytown closed for 2 years. He did not get paid. And my father had to go on medicare once he was eligible. My father was one of those guys that was there until the lights went out in Tarrytown back in 1996 - 36 years he put into that plant. He died because of that plant. Am I saying that a toilet cleaner should be paid $65K a year? No I am not saying that but like I said before - if your there 30+ years should you still be making what you made back when you first started? Union is there to protect - protect the cops the firemen the teachers the autoworkers and then some. Are some unions bad? I am sure, but all in all, as I have said before EVERYONE is at fault.