easy. there's a difference between the spirit of the agreement and the letter. to help you understand how the UAW is abusing their position lets flip things around. Imagine the US auto industry is now in it's hay day. and agreement between GM and the UAW specifically states there will be no wage increases until the next negotiation period. how likely is that to happen, heh? but just imagine. So as per the letter of the agreement, GM is in the right. they're making butt loads of cash and aren't paying the workers fair wages. so what does the UAW do in that case? I can tell you they wouldn't just sit around waiting. they would rally the troops and have a big-ol strike. for GM to continue making cars they need their works and for that GM will make consessions.

now, do you see this happening in reverse? do you see the UAW making concessions on behalf of its members to help SAVE THEIR JOBS? No. You do not. therefore, UAW is in the position to abuse it's agreement. if GM had a bargaining chip similar to a strike, do you think this kind of abuse by the UAW would have gone on for so long?

as far as WANTING everyone to work for **** wages, I certainly don't. I'm personally trying to work my way up and away from that. but its also important to be realistic. in an ideal world we'd have no outsourcing or corporations taking advantage of their positions (again, abuse) but we don't live in an ideal world. and hopefully, when asked point blank "would you work for $12/hr or not at all" maybe you'd answer "I don't like it one bit, but I'll take the job because right now there is nothing better."

I'd be willing to bet your parent's parent's parents who went through the Great Depression would smack you on the back of your head if you answered different.

 

Are you actually saying this with a straight face? We have no idea what the nature of the accounting scandal is, yet you're saying it's THE reason for Delphi's bankruptcy?

This isn't Enron or Worldcom (companies frequently compared to when accounting scandals and bankruptcies come up). Those were companies that grew very big very quickly in relatively new and little-understood markets, and posted amazing profits all the while. Along with the dot.com bubble happening at the time, people didn't have a lot to gauge their performance against. Contrast that to Delphi, which has not experienced incredible growth, has not made money, and is an old-world manufacturing company that used to be under the control of GM. This is a very well understood industry, and while there certainly could be accounting scandals, it's very unlikely that they could hide enough to be anywhere close to the scale of Enron or Worldcom.

Whether you wish to admit it or not, the union agreement is a huge factor in Delphi's bankruptcy. The jobs bank costs $400,000,000 per year. How can a company hope to make money paying almost half a billion dollars for workers to stay home? And it's already been established that Delphi's workers are being paid approximately double the market rate. Take 25,000 US employees, figure their premium over prevailing market rates (salary + benefits) is ~$30,000 per year, and that's $750,000,000. So right there, the union is costing Delphi well over $1 billion every year. Suddenly Delphi's loss of 'only' $750 million in the first half of this year sounds almost like a success.

 

the bottom line is this was agreed upon and thats the way it is.

if youd look into the history of the UAW theyre not the disagreeable tyrants people try to make them out to be.

theyve agreed to numerous plant closings and buyouts and havent forced the issue to replace workers though they could.


the truth is GM and the other domestic automakers wouldve thrown those laid off workers out on their *** if they had a choice.



you have a problem blame the people who made this agreement not the UAW.

 

yeah, bottom line, the UAW HAVE a choice, but continue working the same angle you accuse of GM...

 

You will very seldom see a union go out on strike during a contract for more wages. The NLRB would be all over that. However the UAW does seem willing to help GM out now and not wait until 2007 when their contract is up.

$1 billion in concessions

 

They got laid off, its a part of every industry, even the auto industry. If a company can't afford to employ people, they are laid off, its the way the world works. There are VERY FEW if any jobs where you can be laid off and still get paid to sit home and watch The Price is Right.

I'm not saying its good that they get laid off, but thats the way it is. I have about 15 people working for me now, and guess what, if I can't afford to employ them any longer, they're getting laid off and not getting paid.

 

having to explain this fact of life goes a long way to show how far from reality the UAW really straied.

 

Sooner or later GM and Ford will file for bankruptcy. They can't continue on their current path. Everybody is going to have to ante up some concessions from the top to the bottom.

 

GM isn't getting "screwed" in any way - it's the reason this whole thing went down the way it did.

Back when Delphi was spun off, GM took 50K of its workers and over 25 of its plants and said, "Here, you take these". Then, GM agreed to cover obligations to those workers out to '07 if Delphi failed, apparently with the hopes that Delphi would hobble along for at least 8 years before going Tango Uniform. Things changed, Delphi was mismanaged, and the whole enterprise nose-dived into the ground. GM is now going to get stuck with up to $11B in pension and healthcare liabilities, and I don't feel the least bit sorry for the company. Reap what you sow.

In my opinion, the union hasn't done Delphi any favors, but it did do what it's supposed to do - secure the best short-term deal that it can for its workers. And then Delphi management went and signed the fat contracts. Of course, that management team will now get an extension of their severence packages, while the union rank-and-file and many white-collar workers get to wave buh-bye to what was promised to them.

There's much more to follow on this one, but I think what WERM said is exactly right - this marks the end of high-paying (and by that, I mean the sort of wage that can be used to raise a family) manufacturing jobs in the US. I don't think many of us will like the endgame.

 

a deal is a deal.so now they have to live up to it.


they didnt work anything.it was agreed upon.

 

once again.thats not the way it works here.


im not saying its right but as i keep saying this was agreed upon so they have to live up to it.

 

Everybody's piling on the UAW -- and they certainly aren't above blame in this mess, but...

If you work in manufacturing, your competitor is the Chinese. Forget Mexico, forget Japan, forget just about anywhere else. It's China. Even if there were no UAW, Amercan wages would still be uncompetitive with the slave labor rates in China. You wanna live like that?

Any of you geniuses know what the average Chinese laborer earns (wages + bennies) in a year? Well, I don't either, but it's pretty damn low. A you-know-what load lower than any of us would ever consider working for. And the totalatarian, oppressive regime in China is working overtime to make damn sure that mfg. wages there stay low long enough to take U.S. mfg. out of the picture. That won't take long (relatively speaking).

The really annoying thing is that the American people and our government turn a blind eye to this BS because we just can't get the needle of cheap Chinese goods out of our arm. It's like heroin. You know it's killin' ya, but ya gotta have it.

Pay very close attention to what happens with Delphi over the next few months, because GM is next. When GM files, Ford has to follow -- they'll have no choice.

I think we all saw this coming, but it's still a shock.

 

Unfortunately, most people fail to account for logistics, shipping, and quality costs associated with making things like car parts in china. Consider this... you've got a months worth of parts in transit crossing the atlantic when they find a defect in the last shipment. Now you've got to air ship parts over ($$$) to keep your production lines running, and then you've got to deal with those other parts. When you take all these costs into account, China isn't the manufacturing paradise they make it out to be. Of course, this doesn't account for the fact that the yuan is undervalued which distorts everything (and not in our favor).

It's going to suck if we lose the auto industry in this country. Cars are about the only things left that we still make...

 

Excellent point. You know what happens when a country loses their manufacturing capacity, they lose the ability to defend themselves.

The worst part is we are sending it to our biggest advesary.

 

As a side note, if you get put in the Job Bank (sit at home doing nothing), you get 90% of your wages AND get to file for unemployment!!

If my company can't afford me, I'm kicked to the street, you know what, it sucks (and I've gone through it). But, thats the way things are, if I owned a business there's no way I'd be paying someone who wasn't working for me (vacation time an obvious exception to this).

However, look on the bright side, now would probably be a great time to buy Delphi stock. When you're on the bottom there's only one way to go