Who will be the biggest loser?
UAW strikes GM...your prognosis?
Comments ... #
Its amazing that they lasted this long. Having such a rigidly fixed market and such a large party insulated from so much risk. It seems to me the only way a system like that can work is if the revenue is taken by force (ie, if it were funded by taxes).
Why not try that? A national automobile plan.
It seems to me the only way a system like that can work is if the revenue is taken by force (ie, if it were funded by taxes). Why not try that? A national automobile plan.
I... agh... yyyeeeeaaaaGHHHH SPLAT
*TheTalentedMrC has quit (Reason: Head Exploded).
posted by TheTalentedMrC on Sep 24, 2007 at 07:47:03 pm #
They strike will last a week or less.
I think they will reach an agreeable settlement.
Job Security:
Today I walked into my boss's office. I said to him:
"Boss, I know your doing very well for yourself, but, I also know that overall the firm has been loosing money, and although we put out a great service and product to our clients, the PERCEPTION is that the other firms are doing it better."
"That being said, I would like your guarantee that regardless of overall firm profits I won't lose my job, my health care will remain the best in the country, and my wage - which greatly surpasses the national average and my individual skill set - will steadily increase on a known scale." He smirked.
"Oh and one more thing, I also need you to ensure that my dad (who retired from the firm 25 years ago and is the main reason I got this job) will still get his very lucrative retirement package till death. If you can't promise me these simple, all American things I worked so hard for, I'm gonna have to strike!"
He smirked again, showed me a pile of applications from young, hard-working, new A-hole lawyers, and told me I had till 10:am to clean out my office.
If anyone knows someone, GM and the UAW included, looking for an A-Hole Lawyer willing to work for less than scale, please direct them to my blog.
theassholelawyer.blogspot.com
The A-Hole.
posted by TheAssHoleLawyer on Sep 25, 2007 at 08:08:36 am #
>>He smirked again, showed me a pile of applications from young, hard-working, new A-hole lawyers, and told me I had till 10:am to clean out my office.>>
Yea, it seems so weird. I mean, why are they even negotiating?
It is such an obviously dysfunctional structure. Maybe fixing the market worked a half a century ago when the unions were able to control the entire thing. Of course, that didn't make it free or fair, but at least it worked. Now, not only is it not free or fair, but it is also not sustainable.
So, in the face of clear reason, what is that keeps the company from saying go to hell - we are no longer making contracts with our employees?
I really think the Big 3 execs feel they need those huge salaries and bonuses.
trouble is, the reason they need them.
It's because at the rate they are moving jobs overseas in the long term there won't be enough people making a good enough wage in this country to afford their products.
Of course they don't care about long term, by then they'll have more money than God.
I mean, obviously, how does an American worker compete financially with, for example, a Mexican willing to work for a few dollars a day? Health care?, what health care?
Of course they'd like to move more production overseas.
>>I really think the Big 3 execs feel they need those huge salaries and bonuses.>>
Ok, so now we have class envy - one of the primary justifications for opression and tyranny (right after religion and control of scarce essential resources).
Here is the difference JeepMaker, those execs can leave the company and find work elsewhere for the same amount. That is because what they get paid is the going rate in the market for the service they perform.
You, on the other hand, cannot do the same. That's because the service you perform is not worth what you are being paid. Don't take it personally - that is not meant to be an insult. It is, however, an economic fact.
You seem to feel that the cost of the car stays static and the extra money that you make (above the market rate) will come out of the execs pay. So it is like a battle for the size of slices in a finite pie. That may or may not be the case - but whatever the case, the outcome means the end of the organization that is paying you.
When you make more money than what your competition makes for providing the same service, one of two things will happen. The execs will get paid less (as you seem to prefer) or the cost of the car will go up.
If the cost of the car goes up (without an equal increase in value), then you will sell less cars. If the cost of the car stays the same and the execs get paid less, they will leave for other companies that will pay them the going rate.
In either case, the organization that is signing your checks starts sinking.
Now, you can yell and scream all you want that people who provide different services than you make more money. You can also yell and scream that people providing the same service as you make less money. But they are both the realities of a free world.
So, you now have two choices:
1) Fight the free world to handcuff it into not being free so that you can get what you want.
2) Work with the free world and find services that you can perform that will draw the pay that you desire.
If American companies costs are drastically reduced with overseas production, then why are the prices of their products still increasing? Oh yeah, more money in the pockets of the executives. It's simple, the rich and educated want to keep their "club" exclusive....shame on anyone else for wanting a decent enough wage that they can support their family without neglecting it by working three $9hr jobs at 75 hours a week. After all...making American workers be away from home 75 hours a week to just get by...hasn't had a negative impact on the American family has it? You bet it has!
Kooz, it appears that you are under the impression that people who make more than you are somehow responsible for you not making more or, conversely, for the things you buy costing more.
I would love to help you work through the logic of that idea. However, before we do that, have you considered the cost of government on both your earnings and your consumption?
Did you know that taxes from all levels of government, plus the cost of tax compliance embedded in products, plus the cost of corporate taxes embedded in the cost of prodects is nearly 60% of the average American's income?
So before you can blame anyone for taking your money, can we at least agree that the only portion they have available to take is the last 40% because the government is already taking the first 60%?
Look at it this way, what is the executives job? Stated basically, they are responsible for running the business.
Now, if the business is supposedly not doing well, who is at fault?
Yet these people continue to get huge bonuses.
All the workers do is build the vehicles using the equipment and process's given us.
We are doing our jobs.
I believe the part of the total price of the vehicles represented by labor has actually continued to dcecline.Legacy costs are huge compared to our Japanese rivals.
Gee, I guess we can blame the retiree's for not dying soon enough.
I just get tired of hearing people using terms like market rate wages and saying these workers are paid to much? Says who? It seems everyone is willing to say everyone else is making to much money, even if they've never worked in that persons shoes?
I worked in factories while I was in college for $10 hr in 1991-96. After college, I went into business and made triple if not more than that working less. I think manual labor positions deserve whatever amount they can get.
I actually sold cars for a year and made $106,000 (still the most I've ever made and I wasn't even one of the top salesmen) and all I did was sit on my ass and convince every fourth person walking into the showroom to buy a car they knew they wanted before they came in. You talk about being overpaid...I think this would qualify.
Why are non-union...non-auto industry people so concerned with what these guys in the factory make? Don't say you want the price of your cars to be lower...because if you really did...you would be complaining that a salesmen (uneccessary middle man) is making over 100k annually just to sell them. You want to cut the cost of your cars? Cut out the middle man and buy factory direct!
why not complain about the guy with the college education wearing a shirt and tie making an average of $800-1,200 commissions per sale, instead of the factory worker making $24 bucks an hour to do a job many phyically couldn't or wouldn't do?...In other words REAL work.
...maybe we just don't like to see people with mere high school diplomas who work with their hands making a decent living. Maybe there's a bitterness there because America has convinced non-union white collar workers to spend 100K for an education to get a 30k job, and then spend the rest of our lives working to pay off the debt of education.
I honestly believe that Americans hate to see plain ordinary everyday hard-working people get ahead...
...you tout outsourcing and the foreign car companies now...America has become a nation whose inventors and builders are dying off to the information age...and world history shows that any country that doesn't work (physically) becomes a slave nation.
>>I just get tired of hearing people using terms like market rate wages and saying these workers are paid to much? Says who?>>
Well, here is the deal Kooz. You feel that what a person is paid should should not be a free choice contract between the provider (you) and the buyer (the employer). Instead you believe that providers should band together to create a monopoly on their service, at which point they can set the price to whatever they want. What you are arguing here is ethical considerations on how that monopolized price should be set.
I am not arguing at that level. What I'm saying is that you should not have a monopoly in the first place. We have all kinds of laws on the books disallowing monopolies because they are seen as an egregious violation of freedom. And for good reason - because they are!
So we have a double standard in our legal system. Monopolies are OK for some people, but not others.
So anyway, I am not disputing what the value of any given job should be. Unfortunately, in a free environment (no monopolies) the value of anything (service or product) is the highest you can sell it for.
>>I honestly believe that Americans hate to see plain ordinary everyday hard-working people get ahead...>>
Far from it. That is what socialists want you to believe. They have a vested interest in creating class envy.
Free market capitalists want you to make more - the difference is, they want you to do so by creating more value.
That is, they don't want you to just arbitrarily make more for doing the same thing. They want you to do increasingly more valuable things - pushing down the lower value tasks towards a) the entry level workforce (like teenagers and first time workers), b) to automation or, c) to someone outside the country.
Every one of those including those outside the country should be celebrated becuase it is your opportunity to move up the chain. But you are refusing to do so.
As the value of your service drops - you insist on using a monopoly to arbitrarily compensate you for the same value it was before. When what you need to do is change jobs.
Which is the perfect segue to your conclusion, which is absolutely correct:
>>America has become a nation whose inventors and builders are dying off to the information age>>
EXACTLY. We need more inventors and less auto workers!!!!
You hit the nail directly on the head. Now go out and get a better job because I want you to make more money!!
We need our population in jobs whose value has decreased to move a notch up the value chain.
Hey, A-Hole, if you're out there - do you know, in terms of legal structure, how it is that unions escape anti-trust law?
I asked a lawyer friend of mine and he wasn't sure but he thought is was simply a statutory exception. In other words, just an arbitrary, "this is against the law, except for...".
Can you point to any written opinions or the people who were behind creating the exception? I'd like to understand more about how and why it happened initially.
Section 6 of the Clayton Act (Title 15, Section 17, U. S. Code; 38 Stats. at L. [pt. 1], 760) contains the following pronouncement:
"The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the anti-trust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural ortual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof * * *."
There is no place in this pronouncement for any distinction between labor organizations and agricultural organizations.
Taken from SUPERIOR DAIRY, INC., v. THE STARK COUNTY MILK PRODUCERS' ASSN. ET AL.,(1950) 89 Ohio App. 26.
"The question presented is whether it is a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act1 for labor unions and their members, prompted by a desire to get and hold jobs for themselves at good wages and under high working standards, to combine with employers and with manufacturers of goods to restrain competition, in, and to monopolize the marketing of, such goods."
"The result of all this is that we have two declared congressional policies which it is our responsibility to try to reconcile. The one seeks to preserve a competitive business economy; the other to preserve the rights of labor to organize to better its conditions through the agency of collective bargaining. We must determine here how far Congress intended activities under one of these policies to neutralize the results envisioned by the other."
"Finding no purpose of Congress to immunize labor unions who aid and abet manufacturers and traders in violating the Sherman Act, we hold that the district court correctly concluded that the respondents had violated the Act." "Our holding means that the same labor union activities may or may not be in violation of the Sherman Act, dependent upon whether the union acts alone or in com ination with business groups."
So Saith the US Supreme Court in
ALLEN BRADLEY CO. v. LOCAL UNION NO. 3, 325 U.S. 797;clear as mud....
The A-Hole.
posted by TheAssHoleLawyer on Sep 26, 2007 at 04:03:04 pm #
What Babs needs to figure out is the difference between sensible market pricing and what labor monopolies really are. He fails to understand (intentionally?) that executives are ALSO part of a labor monopoly in corporations. He covers up that misunderstanding by rolling out the old "class warfare" trigger words.
Why do we accept that it's somehow BAD class warfare against the executive class, but GOOD class warfare against the labor class? This is just an arbitrary choice and has no foundation in any economic truth. Union halls are just the laboring class' version of the Board room, and the same scheming happens between them.
The assertion that JeepMaker can't go "someplace else" and make the same money is false. He can go to the next auto manufacturer, which is the proper place for his skillset, which is by definition limited since there are only a few auto manufacturers. Auto workers make good pay since they create high-value items. JeepMaker will naturally face much lower wages by moving into the factory of some widget maker, since said widgets are of low value per item ... and additionally experience huge competitive pressures. High-value production otherwise involves higher skill sets, like machining.
At any rate, the problems of unionization are well described here and the unions are unfortunately the last entities who will fix them, seeing as they are the primary beneficiaries of said problems. They must be fixed from the outside, and that generally means catastrophes. Even the company executives are not a sufficient exterior force, since they have a union-shaped groove worn into them. Market -- even government -- force will have to fix all this crap. It's therefore going to be brutal. Since Americans are incapable of learning economic lessons any other way, it behooves those of us who can REALLY think, to anticipate these adjustments and plan accordingly. (I'm sure Babs has done so.)
>>He fails to understand (intentionally?) that executives are ALSO part of a labor monopoly in corporations.>>
GZ, can you explain how this monopoly works. It is not really clear what you are referring to. Are you saying they collude on the pricing and distribution of their products, on their own pay or on their workers pay? This is roughly the same take as jeep and kooz - the man is holding them down. I think it important that we explore this further. Because if it is happening, I would like to understand it better.
>>Why do we accept that it's somehow BAD class warfare against the executive class, but GOOD class warfare against the labor class?>>
I'm not sure who "we" is, but count me out. I don't think that class warfare is good in any direction. But socialist governments and unions, by their nature, have to create economic interest groups and pit them against each other to gain support. My only interest is in an ability to enter into contracts freely - for everyone.
>>The assertion that JeepMaker can't go "someplace else" and make the same money is false. He can go to the next auto manufacturer,>>
My assertion implied, I thought obviously, that he couldn't go outside the cartel and make the same providing the same service. Of course he can stay within in the cartel and make the same.
But bottomline, it sounds to me like you are saying that management actively engages in collusion and flagrant violations of anti-trust law and non-competitive practices. There is nothing we can do about that, therefore, the government should not only make an exception for labor to laws that protect the freedom of the market, but moreover it should take an active role in advocating labor collusion and providing for its durability.
Is that what you're saying?
Why not break GM into it's original parts? Pontaic, Cadillac, Buick, etc.
Sell a few plants to the UAW and let them develop their own company... with a built in market of loyal union-friendly people.
They haven't produced any "killer must have" since the in-dash 8-track.
Why not get some cheap Mexican execs? Or cheaper German or Japanese ones? China is such an economic dynamo, why not buy some of its "talent"?
People can point fingers in relation to their traumatized biases, but if the auto industry is in such bad shape (it probably isn't), you need to question everything.
What I fear is the company will allow the strike to continue and then they will walk away from their obligations due to financial problems caused by the strike. Once the holders of GM stock start bailing out we can say goodbye to the last American automobile companies
posted by bill on Sep 24, 2007 at 03:48:06 pm #