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.

Agreed 100%. I have seen and experienced the same exact scenarios myself.

Our workers in our China and Taiwan facilities use the exact same equipment we use here in North Carolina, making the exact same product, etc, yet they consistently run at 90-95% total plant O.E. where our domestic plants struggle for 85% O.E. After some brief study, the reasons why were very (painfully) clear... they take pride in their work - PERIOD. In short, they take pride in their product, and take care of their equipment, both at the operator's and the manager's level.

All of our machines run 24/7 in process mode - there is no "off" switch on a machine in a process line. They (the Chinese/Taiwanese) have followed our engineer's recommended practice of daily preventive maintenance (P.M.). They actually schedule 20 minutes of downtime on each machine every day to wash it down, clean it, lube it, perform any required maintenance, etc. The result is a machine that runs the next 24.5 hours with little or no stoppage, and good product. If they see something that needs attention during PM, but don't have time to fix it right then, it gets scheduled for the next day's PM - and so on.

Here in the States, our omnipotent plant and production leaders have decided that they can't afford to have a machine down for 20-30 minutes a day - that is unacceptable, and we need to maximize our productivity, so we run continuously 24/7. The result? Machines go down sporadically and unpredictably for dirty sensors, dirt-clogged mechanisms, faulty switches, etc. And, since the problems are unexpected, maintenance is constantly in a "jump-and-run" reactive mode trying to get problems fixed ASAP, and keep production going. While sensors and machine movements are gummed-up and cruddy, the machines are struggling to make a quality product, and the operators are always pissy because their machines aren't running well. Once the operators get the rashy-*** and bad attitudes, they just decide to sit on a stool and watch the machines struggle. It becomes an ugly catch-22 where operators don't care so they don't try to keep the machines/area clean and working, and because things are nasty and not running well, the operators get an "I don't care" attitude.

What peeves me is that management HAS the power to intervene - but won't. Not only won't they, but they refuse to see that THEY are the source of the problem because they refuse to listen to their technically skilled people (engineers, techs, etc.) and instead adopt and implement some rediculous bean-counter policy that they don't have to live with every day. Management could implement a policy that requires PM's be done, and if employees don't comply, they are first warned, then reprimanded, then terminated (I like the 3-strike approach myself).
Instead, they just call meetings to b1tch at us engineers about how unreliable the machines are that we design, and b1tch about how lazy and unproductive the workers are.
It's VERY politically-incorrect right now for us engineers to sit in a production meeting where they are beating us for more efficiency under the guise of "having to compete with Asia", and we point at China and say, "Our machines are running great over there... maybe the problem is our policy and production management." ... but I do it!

I guess my point in this rant is that I personally don't see Unions as the entire problem or the entire solution to the workforce problems in the US or Canada. Both the workers and management have to have a good basic plan and both have to care about what they are doing every day for ANYTHING to work well.
I would personally like to see both the Union leaders and the carmakers show more interest in getting the processes more manageable and effective than hearing the same-old "jobs, cuts, raises, pension, benefits" type of BS. That stuff is important - I know that - but a quality product made by employees that WANT to be there seems to eliminate most of the problems like "jobs, cuts, raises, pension, benefits" by default.
Plants should (and could) be places people WANT to go work in and be proud of their job. And, if the plants cared about their people as much as their bottom line, there would eventually be no need for unions anyways.
But NO, we humans have to go and fudge everything up all the time and make things soooo complicated...