http://www.canada.com/national/natio...4-a471141655b3
Sure hope this paves the way for some good things (and names?)to come down the pipeline soon!

Best regardSS,

Elie

 

Good news for the Camaro.

 

Very nice. Lets hope that this opens the floodgates.

 

Inflation protection, guarenteed raises, and a pretty nice salary. Why am I wasting my time with college?!

 

No Kidding!

I know it's a little off-topic, but related in the sense of union workers costing a premium but supposedly providing a skilled workforce...
I just bought a '93 Mustang notchback (exceptionally straight and original), and had to replace the door hinge pins (all of them suck!). When I got the fender of to gain access to the hinge bolts, I saw globs of body/seam filler everywhere, and I thought, "how wasteful... they could have saved more than half of this junk for the next car." No more than 2 minutes later, I am taking out the bolts for the door hinge, and 1 bolt out of 6 total wrung-off. After cursing, I moved on.

After taking the plate out to drill and extract the wrung bolt, I can see from the back side that the bolt was cross-threaded into the plate, and forced in by impact wrench - the threads were just mutilated on the exposed bolt sticking out the back. My next thought is, "Man, what retard did this one and thought nobody would ever know."

Front bumper cover has provisions designed in for 9 attachment screws at the bottom from the factory... 4 are there. 4 screws holding the center console in place (plastic-to-plastic) - 3 are good, one was stripped. I can go on and on, but I think you can see where I am going with this.

GM and Ford pay good money to people to put cars together RIGHT. After the deal is signed, they go to the line and do a half-@ss job slapping cars together, just watching the clock for quitting time, and griping about needing more money. This sucks! This is also why we are getting our butts kicked by foreign companies that actually punish (or heaven forbid FIRE) a worker that knowingly does not execute his/her job correctly. I am certainly aware that line workers get pushed to execute tasks on a tight schedule, they are always asked to do more, and they are pushed by managers - but so is everyone else working in todays economy - me included.

I am all for the union getting the workers what they deserve, but I also think they should be more conscientious about what their workers are actually doing. Defending a guy that puts in half the screws required because he thinks that's enough is goofy.
As we have said here before - they could just price themselves right out of a job if not careful.

Anyways - good news to see they averted the strike, and GM is clear to move ahead with plans up north.

 

November is going to be an interesting month.

 

Not saying it didn't happen on the assembly line, I found some assembly line boo-boos on my 442 during restoration as well.

But, the car is also 12 years old. Unless you've owned it from day one and never took it to any shops and did all work yourself the theory goes out the window.

 

Original paint was virgin and unbroken on the door hinges, bolts and fenders... factory job - guaranteed. I'm second owner, never wrecked, and and I can guarantee you that I can spot the difference between a factory-installed hinge pin (with the head forged down like a rivet to keep it in) and a replacement hinge pin (that uses a cotter or E-clip to keep it in). I was the first to be there since the folks that put her together.

Your point is well-taken, and you are correct about the 12-years-old too, but I'm more than certain that there are still the same types of people working on those assembly lines. Time may have changed, but human nature likely has not.

Fortunately, I think newer operations like GM's Lansing plant and the Auto Alliance group near Dearborn have addressed a lot of the "lethargic" issues of monotonous work through roatating shifts, and improved automoation/assist devices like the automatic torque-sensing screw guns. Still, if a human has to run it, there's the chance it could be a dud.

 

evok said the same thing. Am I missing out on something?

 

yea... I think I am too...

What about October? perhaps we are having a deadline with UAW in November...

jees we need some more inventory... at the dealers...

 

There's going to be plenty of interesting months between now and the end of the year, and I suspect it's going to start with sales info at the end of September.

 

yea I can say for being the biggest in socal... we are at probably 50% of last years sales... not good... hopefully its better elsewhere, and hopefully we didnt have the best in socal... at the end of the weekend we had i think a little less then 200 cars out for the month, when last year we finnished with 451... so

but seriously with an inventory of 10 trucks what do you expect, when usually have 200 trucks... atleast we have about 200 tahoes... which have to almost last us till the 07's come out... GM's sales are all out of whack due to demand... i guess thats never a bad thing...
HHR's are goin quick... Cobalts although arent a great seller for us.. that of course being right next door to Longo Toyota, the largest dealership in the world...

 

Just out of curiousity, does anyone here think that GM actually got what they wanted/needed from the union? It seems to me that 1,000 jobs (cut through attrition) and a small raise isn't exactly the sort of drastic cost-cutting that the General says it is going to pursue with the unions.

It'll be interesting to see how the '07 UAW talks go, if all hell doesn't break loose first.

 

About foreign companies firing workers, i can speak for Japan in saying that they dont do that. (Save for Nissan, but thats becaus Carlos Ghosn is running it and isnt Japanese) The Japanese have a different mentality than in other places around the world. And i mean people on every level. They have an extreme sense of pride they carry with them. For example, in America if someone asks you what you do you say "i work for GM". but in Japan its "I am a Toyota guy" and you say it with pride. They believe in working for the same company for their whole career. They also have a different system for operation in the factories. And they have quotas that must be met each day and you cant go home until your team, yes team, has met their quota. If you exceed it you get bonuses. They also have quality inspections of every product made. Another interesting thing is that when you get out of college say with a business degree, you dont go straight to the main offices and start doing business work, but rather you go to the factory and become a factory worker learning how every part of the product is made. And you are typically there for at least year (it all depends on how good you are and how much potential you show) before you can move up to the executive world. This helps to give them a broader view on what exactly the product is made of, etc and how to better and more efficiently design new products. I could go on and on about the differences that I am learning about in my Japanese business classes and from experience (visited a Komatsu factory (think Japanese Caterpillar) yesterday).

 

as said before payroll isnt the hugest problem for GM... its the benifits and its efficency... right now they need some of those plants running capacity trying to keep with demand, cutting jobs isnt necessary...