Do we have to forgive your unwillingness to read the cite too?
Why should I? I have given you a lot of sites you have rejected. If you think the Huffpo was wrong it is incumbent upon you to find a neutral site that refutes it. You do not have the right to simply reject it,especially when you have shown a huge bias against unions.
Especially when they are quoting a press conference anyone who feels informed enough to take part in this thread should have been aware of. It was in the news and all.
But isn’t this just bloody typical of the Right. They have been comprehensively wrong about everything in the last ten years. Their ideological god has no clothes yet still a friggin’ mention of a fact that contradicts the ideology is rejected without checking even though it is a report on a GM Press conference. Information straight from the horse’s mouth.
But I suppose when you’ve spent the decade swallowing shit you forget which organ does the talking.
Actually, as far as I can tell it wasn’t in the news. I’ve tried googling for a transcript of the press conference, but I’ve been unsuccessful. No other site mentions anything like a cut of 55+% in labor costs for GM. I guess it’s possible that every other news outlet in the world missed that significant and incredibly impressive number. However, I’m leaning towards the possibility that this blogger just might have been mistaken.
I’d like to see that cite, too. I’ve been reading through GM’s investor information, and so far I’ve only found reference to a $2 billion saving by reducing the size of their workforce.
I suppose the fact that in 1994 GM made 4.4 million cars and had 265,000 hourly employees. Then in 2005 they made 4,5 million cars and had 111.000 hourly employees would just escape you. The math is pretty simple. It is a simple ratio. It will not arrive at 2 bill.
If that’s the case, please provide the equation.
You’re going to have to show your work on this one. I don’t see how changes from 1994 to 2005 result in over 55% reduction in labor costs from 2007 to 2008
I was only looking at the 2007-onwards information, because your article claimed that the massive reduction in labour costs occurred between 2007 and 2008. Not between 1994 and 2005.
I’ve taken a look too, and the best actual information I found was that, in 2005, GM paid $8 billion in “U.S. hourly payrolls excluding benefits.” (link is to pdf) According to the AP, Hourly labor cost GM about $8 billion [in 2008] (this from CFO Ray Young, in the press conference cited in the Huffington Post article). Now, it’s possible that the $8 billion Young is referring to include benefits, or include non-US workers, so it’s still not certainly an apples-to-apples comparison. But the similarity between the two numbers is suggestive.
Speaking as someone who a) would really like to see the auto companies succeed, b) is irritated that the Republicans are apparently using this bailout as a chance to smash labor, and c) is really sick-and-tired of bogus numbers being thrown around “proving” that auto workers are overpaid:
Can you please switch sides? Your inability to follow an argument–even you own argument-- is just painful and embarassing. You’re not helping.
First, tell me how they define “hourly labor”. Not how YOU define it, but how the company defines it. Don’t assume you know.
Second, the “bank execs” that were paid 1.6B were done so in 2007. Before the bailout. Though it is obviously bullshit and really bad business, it’s immaterial to this discussion.
Third, what do you think the UAW is fighting so hard for?
Do you really believe that the best interests of the workers are at heart? The UAW is a company, just like any one of the automakers. In fact, the union’s total fund balance at the end of 2006 was $1,216,655,332.32. One point two billion dollars. That’s a tidy sum, no?
They have an education center and Golf Course (the union runs a golf course, why?) that is losing money hand over fist and even the for profit company that operates the golf course got hit with a big pension payment. The course and grounds including the 400 hotel rooms are worth a reported $27 million. How do you think that was paid for? The money fairy? The workers are the ones getting the shiv between the union and the company, the problem is that the company has something tangible to offer to the buying public, the union has nothing tangible to provide anyone but the people who work for the companies and by extension the union.
The financial sector was bullshit and the SECTREAS has a LOT to answer for and damn the Gov’t for not demanding oversight and damn us for allowing it to happen. This bullshit bailout too, requires oversight. Including efficient management of labor costs, which is the largest portion of any people-based business.
The point is of course that hourly wage earners have suffered a drastic cut back in numbers and wages. The horrible horrible unions are getting creamed. The blue collar bigotry is alive and well.
It should be clear to you by now that unions do not play a part in the problems of the big 3.
I do not know how bad it is going to get. The evil geniuses who looted the system have made it very difficult to get auto loans, even though they were handed billions of dollars to do exactly that. But of course it is Xmas time and they are busy giving themselves huge bonuses of tax money . ps They don’t have to pay it back.
Of course the banks do not have to pay them back - they weren’t loans. The government took equity stakes in exchange for the funds. Believe me, the US government is far more likely to turn a profit on the financial sector intervention than they will in getting all of their loan money back from Chrysler and GM.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/12/21/102445/57/589/675734 This article explains how the uAW tried to keep the companies from the foolish practices that they insisted on. They warned them that not backing nationalized health care would hurt them.
The unions helped create the middle class. Their destruction is leading the end of the middle class . It is a stupid policy .
So are you dropping the 55+% reduction in labor cost argument?
OK, that does it you nattering fuckwit. My entire life I’ve worked blue collar jobs, as my father (who was saddled with the UAW) and his before him. Unions, when these men were working (between 1918 and 1989), were necessary to protect workers from dangerous and sometimes deadly working conditions as well as forcing employers to provide a living wage. That was then.
Today, the unions, by and large have morphed into their own corrupt companies worth billions of dollars, all of their worth tied up in the contributions of members of approximately 2 hours per month (generally speaking). At $15 an hour, that’s 180 dollars a year that should be going into hungry bellies, putting shoes on feet and buying clothes for school. Companies aren’t going to be able to chain workers to their stations, lock exits or refuse bathroom or lunch breaks. This isn’t 1935. Now of course, companies still do these things, by extension, in China, Vietnam, South America because the labor and human rights laws are almost non-existant and the fact is the labor is cheaper, at least in part, because of it. The biggest reason that the labor jobs have been flooding overseas in such drastic numbers over the past three decades is the demand of unions not only to maintain outrageous legacy costs but to create an entirely new generation of these legacy costs that, in part, bring us to where we are today.
Unions have done their good deeds, but the most they end up doing today is protecting the scoundrels and layabouts from the axe and hurting the folks that want to do their jobs. I’ve been in two large national unions, each one more wothless than the last. They take money for doing nothing and expect more and more of it every year. The unions are frightened that their stranglehold on labor will be broken and their cash cows will run dry. I’m not saying that workers don’t need protecting, there are still some very bad people out there, but if we’re all honest with one another, the unions have hurt the American economy as much as they’ve helped it.
Again, why doesn’t the UAW buy out GM and FORD (market capitalization < $2 billion). Then they could run the business as they see fit…and then they would have nobody but themselves to blame.
Although, how would a UAW president explain a move to shut a plant and lay workers off?
Sure would be one hell of a social experiment.
Well, why not? (Though I really doubt that they have the cash, but lets just pretend they do, for the sake of the experiment…)
What makes this impossible? Or even unlikely? That the workers aren’t smart enough to run a company? Well, can’t they hire someone smart enough? Someone who reports to them first, and such investors as may be, second?
Is there some reason that cannot work?
Well I’d imagine the current stock holders of the big 3 wouldn’t be too thrilled about it.