white collar does not = management class
Their functions would include engineering, advertising, safety, quality, finance, legal, service operations, etc…
For the non UAW workers, in order to keep competent talent they need to pay equivalent salary to what other companies are paying. The good design and engineering talent pool is especially competitive.
This also includes corporate leadership positions, where for some reason, in North America, compensation payments can reach obscene levels.
Laws that have been as pro-union as the Democrats could make them given their various degrees of power over the last many years.
Maybe some Democrat culpability?
Unions have very little blame in the crisis. Labor is 10 % of the cost of a vehicle. If they cut their wages in half the impact would be small. Everybody piles on unions. It is dishonest.
The trouble with American cars is due to our version of capitalism. We do not plan for the future. We think in yearly increments and reward the execs with yearly bonuses and salary increases. Spending money on future programs would be logical if you were going to be with the company for a long time. Execs are hired guns. In and out and then down the street to the next overpaid position. Last week I read the CFOs of corporations are usually there for 3 1/2 years. Wheres the long term incentive?
If you use the simple math of the number supplied to us on this issue, $78.00 per hour x 32 hours per vehicle to assemble a unit, I can see where you are coming from. But that ignores all the contributions of UAW workers who manufacture the parts that go into the assembly as well as the support workers to supply tooling and maintenance.
I used to be a production manager of a kayak manufacturing shop with a focus on labour hours per kayak which just happened to be 32 hours per kayak when I started. We didn’t include the labour to manufacture the parts that we purchased like rudders and footrests.
There’s some really expensive parts that go into an automobile like motors and transmissions etc etc.and you can be assured they were union built as well.
Once again, you have no idea how businesses actually operate. It’s pretty obviious you rely totally on other, equally ignorant indidivudals for your views. Large-scale businesses usually have some long-term compensation packages to incentivise that same long-term thinking you claim is absent. Which it might be in the auto industry, but definitely not in others.
Secondly, saying that labor is 10% of the cost of a vehicle is untrue and irrelevant. It ain’t the whole number which matters, but the comparison between manufacturers. And no matter how you try to spin the numbers, you’ll see that foreign companies operating here have hugely better (but still very, very good) salaries.
They also have a less antogonistic relationship with labor anyhow. A Honda plant not too far away from meself is a good example: any employee can stop the line at any time, for any reason. Relatively low-ranking employees are tasked with solving problems or making improvements. Advancement is certainly possible.
The difference is about respect. I have a lot of criticism of Japanese business, but one factor they introduced into America, or at least caused us to remember, was the concept of mutual respect. Management and labor have to respect each other for the businesses to function. Management needs to remember that blue-collar stiffs are frequently very, very sharp. They may, or may not, be less ambitious, or just have very different priorities or interests. Labor needs to not
Of course, that requires both sides not be idiots, and unfortunately both the Big 3 and the UAW fail that particular test. Whatever the UAW is doing now, it’s much too little, years and years too late, and GM will likely fail absent a grossly expensive and counter-productive bailout. GM should die, the management almost completely purged, and the UAW kneecapped. Frankly, the whole mess should be broken up and sold off piecemeal, or more likely in several multi-brand chunks.
I’d like to see a source more independent than the president of UAW before I give the “10%” figure any kind of credence.
Deal with the huge difference in American execs salary first. Then deal with the cost of companies that supply health insurance competing with companies that don’t have to . Then we can talk. Picking out a couple bucks of labor is just blue collar bigotry.
CEO salaries are a total red herring. The clear majority of CEO’s are damn good at what they do and, frankly, that’s the market rate that gets them to work. Some companies, like GM, are extremely inbred and scratch each other’s back all day.
However, in your eagerness to be loved by the far-left, it’s obvious you failed to actually read what I wrote, which you might have noted involved firing the entire GM upper management segment and braking up the company.
The smack, she izza laid down.
Are you suggesting that all the executives be unionized to level the playing field between union and non-union companies?
And this is your evidence?
It is complete and total bullshit and one has to be a complete idiot to believe it.
I’ve already pointed out how the labour component of parts manufacture is absent from the 10% figure. Even your cite says
You think the hubcaps and fenders just materialize out of nowhere? Might not you concede they are UAW built as well? Every god damn part from nuts and bolts to complete engines have a labour component. A union labour component for the most part.
Don’t go telling me that labour cost is only 10% of a car. I know you think I might be stupid, but I don’t think you are.
The Harbour Report cited in the editorial sounds like the definitive source. I may do a little googling later.
The big problem with the UAW-they want to have job classifications-which makes it impossible for one job class to fill another. That is why (in a NON-UAW plant) everybody pitches in and does what needs to be done to keep the line going-employees are cross-trained, to if Joe the piston machine operator is out, Ed the stamping guy can fill in. In a UAW plant, if one guy is out, the line shuts down while the shop stewrds argue about who can fill in.
Sorry, but I have seena lot of this…it sounds suicidal, but the UAW insists on it.
Add to this: the union rewards longevity not competance-that is why hard working young men dislike unions-you are held back in favor of somebody who has hung around for 30 years.
Looks like their culpability is increasing…
Funny. The lesson I draw from that cite is a bunch of Repugs blocked it for ideological reasons.
Average compensation for UAW auto workers is about $73/hr. But that includes the health care of both the workers and the retired workers. Cite. So US auto workers aren’t paid anything like that. (They are paid $40 / hr in cash (including vacation time) and $15 in benefits = $55/hr total compensation. Honda and Toyota US employees make about $45/hr.)
How much would be saved if GM, Ford and Chrystler employees were paid the same as US auto workers at domestic Nissan, Toyota and Honda plants?
About $800 per car. That’s it. (Same citation: h/t Kevin Drum). So making this the sticking point in negotiations seems inappropriate. I agree that there must be restructuring. But I understand that the deal fell through because the UAW wanted to postpone wage cuts to 2011, while Congressional Republicans insisted on a 2009 date.
Hm. It seems to me that we could use the stimulus in the meantime. And there is a number that is between 2009 and 2011.
Separately, Whack-a-mole’s quote of Balthisar regarding union rules is worth keeping in mind. Then again, GM made a strategic decision not to emulate the Saturn model in the early 1990s.
And let’s not forget the billions of dollars that could be saved by consolidating GM brands to 3, instead of the 6-8 that are based upon 1950s demographics. Sticking it to the workers will only get you so far.
If there is such a side, it would be requiring that all of the automaker’s creditors – pensioners, investors, banks, whatever – take an equally hard hit. I haven’t seen that anywhere in the debate.
First off, doing the math, you’re talking about $114,500/year per employee. It’s not a small problem even when you compare the difference of
$10/hr which is $20,800 per year PER employee. That’s a huge cost, not a little cost.
UAW workers have been grossly overpaid for years and there is no temporary solution to it. And it’s not just the factory wage that is on the table, we’re talking about complete restructuring of the companies so that they can compete on a global scale. We’re talking about something like this, and I don’t see the UAW ever agreeing to it.
What people fail to understand is that this is 2008, not 1946. After WW-II the United States had half the manufacturing facilities of the entire market and half the wealth to match. None of our factories had ever been bombed so our infrastructure was already geared up for the most efficient production of products possible. Those days are gone and they will NEVER EVER return. All we can do now is move forward. China is expanding with the newest technology and the cheapest labor. That is the playing field we are on.
Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying GM had an opportunity to undo some of those perverse and counterproductive union rules and chose to keep working under them anyway?
That’s it? Are you kidding me? For some reason I can’t find NA production numbers for GM, but it’s easily over 1 million cars. At $800 a car, you are talking a billion dollars or so a year. That’s a fantastic sum of money, and is a major factor working against the Big 3.