http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=101462

 

BTW, I'll be posting chapter 2 of the "Prince and his horse", in the next few weeks.

 

can you post that story on Christmas Eve??? That way I can read it to my nephews after Christmas Dinner and hopefully it will be a nice story.. you know like the santa ones that give you a warm fuzzy feeling all over.

 

And every union boss in the land took a big bite of his own toungue...

 

And this is the rediculus part....

I want a job where I can make $25 an hour to screw a screw.

There is a serious problem when a domestic company is having trouble competing because it's own unionized labor is so expensive. Making matters worse..Toyota is overachieving with US plants that are ununionized....and are ununionized because the workers do not want a union.

Wagoneer needs to do like Iocca did at Chrysler back in the day. Pull all the union leaders into a meeting tell them..."You take these concessions...or we will all be looking for jobs". With GM's current labor an benifits package...this is where it is quickly heading.

 

When Lee Iacocca and the union had their "talk", they really actually were at the point of bankruptcy & the union understood that.

GM management got GM into this position it's in now, piling tons of money to sell near obsolete cars because they can't get new ones to market as quick as their competitors. Union shouldn't take any hits this round.

They should hold off on new demands for now, IMHO.

Someone who's no longer an apprentice, getting paid base pay as well as a shift differential may make $25 a hour. But I'd classify his job as more than just turning a screw. There's plenty of trades where people make more than college grads.

By comparison, in 2003 GM's CEO recieved 2 million dollars base pay, $34,000 in compensation, and owns 600,000 shares of GM stock (approx $24 million at the moment) as a part of his compensation package which made him an additional $5 million last year. Bob Lutz, probally the lowest paid Chairman pulled down $3.7 million along with $7.2 mill in unpaid awards & stock.

Meanwhile. the leader of the free world whose decisions impact pretty much everyone on the planet to varing degrees only gets $400,000 per year and a $40,000 expense account, free room, board, transportation, $152,000 per year pension, almost the same amount to run his library, and use of the Secret Service for the rest of his life.

Kind of puts that guy bolting in suspension sub-assemblies or installing seats making $25 per hour and medical in perspective.

 

I fully support union labor, but the UAW/CAW bosses in this case are trying to sqeeze blood from a rock. There just aint anything there, and if they dont realize that soon, their hard-fought contracts might not be worth the paper they're printed on.