Infect everyone else.
The unions are largely to blame for a crisis that it appears will cost taxpayers between $15 and $25 Billion but not for the reason you think.
Even if a deal for a $15-billion to $17-billion preliminary bailout comes together this weekend to keep carmakers afloat into 2009, they will continue to be dogged by their most significant competitive disadvantage: a high-priced, unionized workforce.
And yet there is nothing inherently unsustainable about employing a high-priced, unionized workforce. The crisis of Detroit’s wage bill is entirely relative. Specifically, their labor costs far exceed the low-cost, nonunion American workforce at the U.S.-based, foreign-owned plants of competitors Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru.
If the UAW really is to blame at all, then, it is because of the union’s utter failure to unionize any of the transplants. What has the UAW been doing all these years? Isn’t it the responsibility of any good union to protect union employers from competitive labor disadvantages by organizing wall to wall, throughout the industry? How could it have left these transplants unorganized? As is now clear, when the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat.
The UAW is to blame for the Big Three Crisis. Not because they sucked the Big Three dry. Because they didn’t suck everyone dry.
Foreign automotive manufacturing transplants here in America produce some of the highest quality cars in the world, subject to the same safety and emissions regulations as the Big Three, and historically with some of the most satisfied workers in the industry. Honda has and Toyota will soon export product from here.
They’ve proven it can be done profitably; in America with Americans, and without the UAW.
What is being posited here is not a foreign concept (no pun intended). Force successful automakers to drag the dead weight of the failed strategies of the Big Three.
Mr. Obama calls it “spreading the wealth.”
I call it Socialism.
And yet there is nothing inherently unsustainable about employing a high-priced, unionized workforce.
Oh yeah, let’s force Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru to pay downsized autoworkers $31/hr to do absolutely nothing, or have them continue to make cars when market demand is already satisfied.
Let’s force Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru to make poor quality cars on days when too few workers show up sober or at all that can’t be replaced with workers who do the jobs they are paid to do.
Let’s force Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru to not make any efficiency upgrades, like having a few workers on the spot do needed simple work instead of expensively bringing in ten different workers with ten different union job classifications to do the job. Like introducing technological advances without lengthy UAW negotiations to create unnecessary jobs when workers could simply be retrained.
Brilliant.
Yes, unionize the transplants. Then we’ll just have to buy Hondas built by the Japanese if we (want-JR) good cars.
The article talks about Japanese unions, but doesn’t mention that they have a fundamentally different relationship with their employers than they do here.
I’m sure you’re right JR, after all, the automanufacturers have been profitless for 40 years. They borrowed Trillions just to pay their union overlords, they didn’t seek to make only trucks, they didn’t seek to get tax breaks to sell more and more trucks… Nope, they NEVER were profitable in the 80’s, 90’s, or even early 2000’s, never.
They made their bed, but it isn’t the unions that killed them, it’s themselves. They tied their wagon to gas guzzler trucks and THEN gas guzzler sedans. Their quality woes corrected by Kaizen (you know, the idea which lazy, dollist union workers could NEVER embrace here), but the inherent lack of well-styled sedans, that was a wilful choice by Detroit, just like your wilfull choice to distort the truth here.
Car makers in the US WERE profitable up until gas started rising and truck sales falling. They bought Volvo, Saab, and Jaguar to try to by names and expertise in sedan building, and then fed those divisions a starvation diet.
Lord, you sure do know how to spin em’.
I confess that I have more sympathy with the union members than does JRoosh. These guys are only after the same benefits we’ve given, year after year, to state, county, & fed employees.
I have the same problem with the socialist left that I have with the capitalist right — both view human beings as primarily economic entities.
What is good in life?
‘To crush the unions, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their moonbat minions’
Maligna,
The Unions are “largely” responsible is what I said.
Explain this Maligna:
…and while (or anyone else for that matter) is at it, I would like you to name one union-dominated non-government industry that is thriving and creating desirable jobs (save 2008 to be fair of course).
Airline industry?
American steel?
Print newspapers?
Let’s see — American made, small, fuel efficient cars that sold for an economical price:
click here
Looks like once again peevish has swallowed the lefty version of the truth hook, line and sinker.
I think they should keep Saturn and dump Hummer, Pontiac, GMC, and Buick; Combine Opel with Saab for the Global brand.
GM says saturn never made any money.
This is a problem that can’t be solved — at least by Obama. He thinks that part of the bailout should include Detroit making smaller, ‘greener’ cars.
They’ve done that. They can’t make money on them. If people wanted these little cars from Detroit they could have bought them. If Washingtom makes detroit build them they won’t sell unless they are heavily subsidized or we consumers are forced to buy them.
If they are willing to go that last route, why not just put a $5000 tariff on foreign made autos?
Vega — pinto — citation — chevette. The future is starting to look a lot like the 1970’s.
Note that they say they can’t market low priced Saturns profitably. If GM is like other big companies I’ve worked for there’s a reason for that that has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with company politics and cronyism.
Peeve’s right: big 3 management missed some chances, but fighting the UAW is tough for them without breaking collusion laws, while it’s easy for the UAW to pick off any one of the big 3 who even think to challenge them. So management is like the guy who puts off having that mole looked at until it’s too late to stop the melanoma. They were just hoping the crisis didn’t come on their watch.
Obama’s saying that new management might be a condition of a bailout. I’d suggest adding new management for the UAW, too. More like the Japanese model where the unions realize that if the company doesn’t succeed the workers don’t have jobs.
Given the state laws involved in dealerships, and given the contracts that are written out there, without Chapter 11 or something similar anything done now is a bandaid when what’s really needed is invasive surgery and long term physical therapy.
You want a good analogy to the UAW/Big 3 relationship? Look at the relationship the USW had with Big Steel in the 70s.
One union, able to break any one of several companies who might defy it. Laws that made it impossible for the companies to collude and fight the union.
A union who only thought of getting all they could for their members, regardless of where it left the company or industry involved.
A union with unabashed antagonism to management.
Look at where the steel industry is now and where USW retirees are. Short termers, all.
Compare and contrast with Japan, where companies have more unions, but those unions are more cognizant of the fact that if the company doesn’t succeed they don’t get jobs. Where much of the management started in the union before going up the ladder. AND where union bosses are willing to stand up to their members if they make unreasonable demands.
What is the model, Nerbert? What unionized heavy industry should Detroit try to emulate? The market for construction equipment is pretty well saturated.
If I was a union worker & I was told that I had to accept “at will” employment as part of my job, I’d wonder what the heck I needed a union for.
What unionized heavy industry should Detroit try to emulate?
None that I can think of here in the States.
If I was a union worker & I was told that I had to accept “at will” employment as part of my job, I’d wonder what the heck I needed a union for.
Yep. In Japan when there are layoffs it’s usually accompanied by management consultation and usually by management consequences, including resignations. They’ve got this quaint concept that management should be responsible for their bad decisions.
Far more common are wage cuts imposed at all levels to spread the pain while things are reorganized. But most Japanese companies don’t have most of their management compensation in stock options tied to ow the company does next quarter, either, nor do they have the same short term focus on Wall Street most companies do in the States.
So in Japan, the workers have a feedback mechanism to make sure management has a stake in bad decisions. Here, not so much. Yes, it’s a weaker employee-employer antagonism than US unionism, but we’ve seen what US unionism can do to industries they manage to dominate.
Unions aren’t necessarily bad. But they’re diabolically evil the way they’re run in this country, with no thought of consequences to the company.