This seems strange. In a thread about how much UAW is to blame for the GM meltdown, you point to the Japanese building plants in the US and ignore the fact that these plants were all non-union. 
I’m not sure how entirely true that is. American manufacturers were quite sucessful overseas in a variety of markets (the Buick is huge in China). Ultimately though, they just kept losing market share year after year.
I think it is telling that the UAW has never been able to organize the workers at a single Japanese transplant factory-this tells me that the workers there do not trust the UAW.
In a way, this makes sense, because if your plant is unionized, you really work for the union-you have to pay dues, and you see the union bosses walking in wearing $5000 suits. The union wants to keep their members under tight control-can’t have productivity improvements…that threatens the union boss’s control.
As mentioned, the UAW hated the Saturn division, because at saturn, the workers were cross-trained (as in the Japanese plants). Ultimately, car companiys will succedd or fail based upon their customer’s acceptance of their products…and I see an awful lot of Hondas and Toyotas out there…there has to a be a reason for this.
As far as I know no companies in the United States pays anybody to worry about the company is going to doing in ten or twenty years. We live in an environment where almost no CEO can survive 8 bad quarters, much less 8 lean years.
Meanwhile the UAW never struck more than one auto company at a time, so while one company was losing money hand over fist, the other companies were taking their customers and even if a CEO knew that giving in was not in the best interests of the auto industries, he would only last until the board fired him. My father used to brag how smart the UAW was to do it that way instead of a general strike.
Can’t add much except some observations.
On one hand, we have Unions which don’t really work for the workers and who will fight tooth and nail to hold onto the silver platter as the ship sinks around them. I still remember the Steel Industry in the 70’s, striking for higher wages as their entire industry was literally shutting down and being moved wholesale to Asia. Where are those jobs now? I remember (and knew a few, after the fact) the Airline Controller’s strike, broken by Reagan. The guys I knew freely admitted, years afterwards, that they and their fellows deserved to be fired, because they were demanding obscene wages for very little work. I remember plans to build a chopstick factory in depressed northern Minnesota back in the early 80’s. Would have paid $11 an hour, which was a decent wage back then, but was completely shot down and never happened. Why? For one reason. It would have been non-union, and the shit heads who pretty much ran labor in northern Minnesota wouldn’t allow it. Who were they? Laid off Iron miners and their ever so helpful Unions. Where are their jobs now? Same place the Steel and Auto industry jobs are. THE PAST.
On the other hand, we had some of the most spectacularly clueless industry bosses of all times. Huge marketting staffs that told them, while the Japanese were coming in and eating their lunch right off their plates, that “Americans want big cars”. Sure Hoss, that’s why your market share drops every year, right? Must be Mexicans nipping in at night to buy those Japanese cars, eh? Over-built, over-staffed, over-managed corporate marketting departments that served NO FUCKING PURPOSE except to tell the big shots what they wanted to hear and suck down billions in revenue while pretending to produce something of value. Personally, I feel about those people the same way Douglas Adams did*.
- *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”*
I spent a lot of time with GM and Shanghai GM China as my client going back for more than a few years in my previous job. I won’t go into that or what I did. But Mao on a pogo stick, GM had an incredibly screwed up management matrix structure. A ton of stuff would wait for a monthly global meeting for a decision, only to be tabled for another month for “more information.” Given the matrix structure, punting decisions out was an artform.
Operational global standards was another issue. Some douche in the Rennaisance Center (aka rencen or HQ) would dream up something and push it out globally. And that management douche would just “assume” the world was like Detroit or the rest of the world would just have to suck it up. I saw this happen countless times.
There’s more but GM was not an efficiently run company (at least in China). And I compared them directly with just about every other automotive OEM, all of which I had personal experience with their management and saw their production facilities.
There have been some major improvements among the big 3 over the last decade. It’s tough to get customers back after previous decades of crap.
GM as a whole was a badly run company, but I think that they(Rick Wagoner) managed to get at least a few things right in China, acquiring Daewoo was a fairly smart move as it gave them access to small, cheap volume cars suitable for a developing Asian market. They were lucky in many respects - their last generation Buicks happened to be just the kind of cars that moderately wealthy Chinese people wanted - relatively long wheelbase front wheel drive sedans with lazy engines and lots of velour, while their newer, much improved European midsize Buicks were coming online just in time as the Chinese market was really taking off and the Japanese JVs were really getting going.
On the other hand, the Japanese are really catching up with a vengeance - I’m seeing a LOT of locally produced Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords on the streets than I did 5 years ago, I guess the stigma of being Japanese has mostly disappeared. Lots of Hyundais too. If they were here in 2002 while Buick was still flogging their circa 1986 Regals and Centurys Shanghai GM would be in trouble.
GM simply amazes me…they are very successful in Brazil (where they market nice roomy cars, with smooth revving 4 cylinder engines). I’d be happy to buy the cars they sell in SA…only when they get here, GM fucks them up (makes the suspensions into marshmallow, ruins the crisp steering, and adds tons of weight to them). They did the same thing to their Opel (Germany) cars-they took a nice car (Opel Senator), and made it into a POS (Cadillac Catera). As a global integrated car mfg. GM has access to the best technology in the world-why don’t they use it? It is sad, because GM USED to be one of the best-they were the first to have power steering (Oldsmobile, 1954), automatic transmissions (Chevrolet), integated A/C (Cadillac), full synchromesh transmissions (Cadillac).
I always wondered this too. I remember years ago being in Europe and India where American cars were small and nimble. They had “flex fuel” in that the cars could use either petrol or natural gas. I pointed at one and said to my wife, “that’s the car we want/need, why isn’t it available in the US?”
And at the end of the day, I think the ultimate killer were the trade restrictions. American manufacturers only had to compete with American manufactures. So when American consumers wanted bigger/heavier/louder the Big 3 were happy to comply.
The best example of all this is the Mini Cooper. Why is it so big? (yes I know it’s BMW) But I got excited when I heard it was coming out in North America, I wanted a European Mini. Instead they made a Mini Shaped SUV.
And yet GM seems to be kicking ass in China. They are the China largest vehicle manufacturer, and they have the most market share. They sold more vehicles in China so far this year than in the US.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/global/22auto.html
Lots of factors led to decline of the American car companies. One of those factors was certainly the UAW.
Say you’re on the showroom floor. You’ve got $30,000 to spend on a new car. A substantial portion of your money will go toward paying for overhead, such as labor and workers benefits. For a Japanese car, that portion will be smaller than for the American cars. That means the difference can be spent on higher quality materials and components and/or better features.
The Catera was a rebadged Opel/Vauxhall Omega, not a Senator. The Senator was a bloody awful car.
The UAW loves trade restrictions.
They’re not really. The vast majority of GM’s sales in China are from the Wuling. Wuling makes very cheap licensed copies of older Suzuki Kei-vans and kei-trucks for small commercial operators, they really aren’t “GM” products in any real sense. GM’s association with Wuling is essentially financial. Even if you count up all their sales including Wuling, VAG still commands a much greater market share. Except GM in China only has 1 JV, with SAIC, while VAG has 2 JVs, one with SAIC and one with FAW. Individually they sell a little less than SAIC-GM but together they are about 2x as big. I think Hyundai/Kia also sells more than GM, again split into 2 JVs.
I was going to come in and say the same thing. Much more than 50% of GM’s volume comes from SGMW. And none of those vehicles would be street safe in any first world country. Little more than tin can ultra mini-trucks.
Heck, GM doesn’t even own 50% of SGM any more. Although there may be an option to buy back the percent or so they sold off.
VW is interesting. There are 2 JV’s. SVW, which is 50% owned by VW and 50% by SAIC. SAIC by the way is the GM JV partner and owns slightly more than 50% of the SGM. The other JV is FAW-VW, which is 40% VW and 60% SAIC. The two VW JV’s compete against each other fiercely.
So, which automaker has the biggest share is a little bit murky depending on how you slice it. Raw numbers is not the way to look at it though.
The VW JV’s have worse management issues than the GM JV’s in China IMHO. Although as I said, the GM pre bankruptcy matrix management was appalling.