$12.50 an hour..screw that, i'd go on strike too. i understand cutting costs but that is just a slap in the face

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060524/...i_bankruptcy_4

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. asked a federal bankruptcy judge in New York to postpone a hearing on Delphi Corp.'s request for permission to void its labor contracts, but the hearing was moving forward Wednesday, court officials said.
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GM said the postponement would have allowed more time to avoid a disruptive strike at the auto parts maker.

Delphi was part of GM until 1999 and annually sells about $14 billion in car and truck components to the automaker.

The case is before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who had scheduled a hearing Wednesday. Troy-based Delphi has 33,000 hourly workers, most represented by the
United Auto Workers.

In a letter to Drain on Tuesday, GM asked for an adjournment of up to 60 days during which talks would continue among Delphi, GM and the unions.

"We did it because we wanted to allow the parties to focus all of their time and all of their energy on negotiating a consensual agreement," GM spokesman Jerry Dubrowski said.

But Drain was moving forward with the hearing Wednesday morning, his chambers said.

Despite the decision, GM remains "committed to reaching a consensual agreement," Dubrowski said. "We will continue to cooperate with the court and with Delphi and its unions throughout this process," he said.

Delphi had opposed the adjournment request. Delphi already has delayed the motion to void the contract twice with no results, and there has been no counteroffer from the UAW, spokesman Lindsey Williams said.

Delphi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October. It is seeking the right to cancel its contracts with the UAW and other unions, saying that is a crucial step in its efforts to cut its costs and ensure its survival. UAW members overwhelmingly authorized their leaders to call a strike.

Delphi has proposed cutting its workers' wages from $27 an hour to $16.50 an hour. That proposal, however, would require a large contribution from GM.

But GM has not agreed to supplement Delphi workers' wages. Without such a contribution, Delphi is only prepared to pay its workers $12.50 an hour. The UAW has rejected that offer.

Delphi also wants to close or sell 21 of its 29 U.S. plants.

___

 

Seems every bit of hostility I have towards Delphi management over all this is being proven a bit more than just well placed.

Delphi is closing 21 of it's 29 US plants...... regardless. Union refueses to accept the ridiculous Wal-Mart wage of $12 per hour & strikes, Delphi gets the added bounus of closing all it's US plants and becomes an American company who's parts are made overseas.

General Motors (who unlike Delphi, isn't paying it's executives $60,000,000 in bonuses or purposely trying to run themselves into the ground in the US) feels that with more time (a mere 60 days) everyone can focus on making a deal instead of going into siege mentality. Delphi is the only one refusing by saying they delayed twice.... but convieniently forgetting that during those delays, Delphi absolutely refused to budge, simply raising their proposal from $10 per hour to $12 and giving a take it or leave it attitude with no change in plant closings or health care.

The guys at Delphi are not intrested in keeping their American operations afloat at all. This also means that Delphi is not the least intrested in keeping GM going (GM buys most all those parts Delphi makes in North America in those 21 of 29 plants they want to close). And unlike GM's upper management, who at least understand the importance of General Motor's health to the entire United States economy, Delphi could care less. Upper management all have bonuses, and I'm sure there's golden parachutes if the company goes belly up.



Think about it. GM is about to cut 30,000 union jobs over the next few years, but the UAW loves GM right now and has given up their confrontational tactics to get GM back on their feet!

Though it seems Delphi management disagrees, I still say THAT is the type of people I'd pay attention to if they were mediating a deal between my company and my workers.

Too bad GM doesn't have the cash to simply buy back Delphi, cancel all bonuses, and simply fire these guys.

 

Actually Wal-Mart is more like $6.50 an hour or so (Or in the ballpark of whatever the state minimum wage is.). For most positions it's about minimum wage. Only position I know starts slightly higher (like $7.25) than most others in Wal-Mart is Photo-Lab Technician... I had a part time job about 6 years ago in the Photo Lab. It was great fun actually. Getting to see everyones photos was a hoot. Until you get the ones PO'd at you for not printing their 'adult' ones. LOL

Granted those amounts may have gone up slightly, but the minimum wage in NJ hasn't gone up much, so I doubt they have.

Fortunately I got a job working for the NJ Dept. of Corrections paying more than I had made with both my full time AND part time job... Though I do miss the fun I had at the Photo Lab on occasion.

 

I think what's being overlooked is that the only reason Delphi exists is because GM created them. Simply put, GM didn't have the walnuts to break the union and offshore their supply chain so GM spun off a financially insolvant part of their business to do their dirty work.

However, GM executed this plan so poorly that Delphi went bankrupt much sooner than expected, thus leaving GM with a singlevendor supply chain, and potentially making GM responsible for investor fraud lawsuits. The entire situation is of GM's own making. Tough to feel sorry for them.

I'm not denying that the Delphi execs are selfish asswipes playing with the "nuclear option" and essentially moving the company offshore in one swoop. But frankly they were handed a bag of crap by GM, and they're just trying to make out with the best deal for themselves, so of course they don't care about GM's best interests. If GM was concerned about Delphi and their employees they never would have created this lead balloon to begin with.

So, GM will bail Delphi out, it's just a matter of playing chicken for a while.

 

I am sorry, but the fact that it is accepatable to pay people $20 an hour to screw screws is a much larger issue IMO. It is why the US is not longer competitive in manufacturing.

I am all for people making good money, but does any Delphi assembly worker do work that could worth three times as much as a photolab worker at Walmart makes? Engineers and such I understand...but line workers?

People say "$12 an Hour...that's insane"....but should they be making $20 to begin with.

I think the UAW realizes it has been getting away with murder for a while and now is not the time to make asses of themselves.

 

formula79 -- Even at the $6.50 minimum, the US isn't competitive in manufacturing with the Chinese paying $0.50 an hour. There's no point in going on about unions because this is way beyond the UAW at this point. The supply chain is going off shore no matter what. This has already happened for virtually every industry except automotive.

 

It is still easier to keep manufacturing here at $12 an hour compared to $24. Some people wanna write it off as a lost cause....but it was our manufacturing capacity that won WWI and so forth. Also, remember, making things in China creates a pretty long supply chain. Dell found it cheaper to make PC's in the US because of the shipping and supply chain savings.

 

Hydraulic/Lubrication/PowerGen Industry? Hardley offshore and more $$$ then the Auto Industry. Chinese suppliers get laughed at by any reputable mfg. German/USA is where it's at.

Chinese Labor is going up. You still have costs of shipping and long lead times. We can be competitive.

I read the other day more "Textile" mfg are bringing jobs back to the US because the difference is not as good as it used to be (labor) and the fact that the long lead times can force them to be late in a "New" Trend.

Don't be such a pessimist.

 

All the high value parts of a PC (CPU, Hard Drive, etc) are made offshore. Dell simply snaps the plastic parts together in the US so they can build-to-order. Similar to how Honda/Toyota make engines offshore but prefer to do final assembly in the US because it's cheaper and more responsive.

I agree that First World manufacutring can still be competitive in certain areas, but check back in 10 years and the Chinese are going to be a lot more technologically sophisticated, and they'll still have 500,000,000 unemployed people willing to work for peanuts. Economists think it's going be 25 years before worldwide manufacturing wages stop dropping. "Opening China" to global capitalism is a very large and long term change to how the world works, and now everyone's just going to have to deal.

Back on topic, GM might not like this game of UAW chicken that Delphi's playing, but the goal of getting their manufacturing offshored is exactly what GM wants.

 

uhmmmm...............no.

not quite.

anyway.......this is very painful to a lot of people.

A couple of perspectives:

>I'll paraphrase -- I think it was David Cole (Center for Auto Research) -- from a recent 60 minutes segment --

..........."If I asked you if you would rather have Gold or Silver, you'd say Gold.........the question now is 'do you want Silver or aluminum?' ".........

>I've been with GM for 29 years. I've moved all over the place at the request of GM. I uprooted my personal life. (yes! it was my choice -- but if I said 'no' -- I would have to leave the company -- and RIGHTFULLY SO!
I do not get overtime when I work 7 days a week. I don't get overtime when I work at 1am. I don't expect to! However, I carry many problems home -- or to the hotel room in which I'm staying every night. The sleepless nights cannot be counted. That said -- I could have made more money working in one of our assembly plants or a Delphi plant (with max overtime) than I made for most of my career. When I say "I" - that goes for a lot of people at GM-- not just me. I'm not playing martyr here.

Yes, the job in a plant is mindless in many cases. -- but when the whistle blows, you can leave and forget about the job until tomorrow. I won't talk about the breaks and work rules.

........ that's my PERSONAL outlook -- not that of the Management of the company I work for.

It's truly tragic that the job market in the United States has come to this. But it's time to get real. Unless the people of America wake up and realize that we need to support our country and the people in this country -- this is gonna happen.

One last anecdote: I had a conversation online with a retiree -- he was mad at GM because of the cutbacks, so he went out and bought a Honda built in Japan. Please -- I'm begging you -- help me to understand his rationale!!!

 

I saw an ad in a Detroit paper not long ago for a Chevy dealer that stated a purchase of a GM car helps pay health insurance for 200,000 or so retiries. I thought, hey, why not buy one. And then I realized that $1500 of the purchase price of that vehicle goes toward GM paying health benefits for all those people and I dont have health insurance for myself. After purchasing 21 new GM vehicles in the last 12 years, I decided to take a look at Civics and Corollas and like what I see. GM has nothing to compare. 40 mpg with great relibility and excellent resale. I still want a new GTO to replace my 04 GTO lease vehicle, but for the first time I started driving in '68, I am considering purchasing a new *** import. GM is losing hard core customers like myself, and that helps explain why their US market share is down to about 23%.

 

Maybe something like, why 'buy american' just for the sake of it when the company is doing things he considers bad for america(ns) anyway. As TA Jack put it,he might as well look out for himself and buy the car that will have a much higher residual value and is at least perceived to be more reliable.

 

What's an even larger issue is that we're using humans to drive those screws, regardless of the pay rate. I've said this in other threads and I'll say it again - it's a cryin' shame that this country has turned to offshoring its manufacturing instead of addressing the root cause (inefficient deployment of human capital) and fixing it, which was the way we've made efficiency improvements ever since the dawn of the industrial age. Humans are a hell of a lot better at thinking than they are at doing manual labor, and forgetting that even for a moment is to lose the understanding of how we've gotten where we are.

I'm with flowmotion - GM placed itself into this mess via a cynical attempt to shed 25+ of its least efficient plants and 50,000 workers, and just crossed its fingers that the train wouldn't derail until 2008. Um, it didn't quite work out as well as GM hoped.

Scott, as a fellow salaried professional, I know exactly where you're coming from with your comments - it definitely sucks to hit 40 hours for the week on a Wednesday afternoon, and know that your employer is getting the rest of the week's work for free.

 

GM needs a new small car more than it needs a new Camaro. The Aveo is a joke. The Vega and Korean Lemans didnt work out. If only the largest automaker in the world could produce a small efficient car that is good looking and gets 40mpg on the highway. It would probably sell 200,000 units annually and help out with GMs CAFE. Whos going to be interested in a V8 Camaro if fuel is going for $4 a gallon? The Malibu is ok, but if I get a car that small, I want to get 40mpg out of it. Its hard to believe I'm even considering an 06 GTO thats going to cost $600 a month and probably sit in the garage a lot (until I can afford a turbo kit). I have decided that its GMs best buy for the dollar in todays market. The 3 Duramaxs I have owned have treated me well and I am looking forward to the new body style and 6.9L motor. I just cant understand why GM cant get a small car right.

 

Better project/program management(which is actually hard to get!) helps relieve some of that trouble... only if upper management is willing to support you, and understand working more than about 40-50 hours a week is not sustainable(maybe sometimes, but not all the time).