The last holdouts from Buick North:
When Buick City was at its peak production in the mid-1980s, G.M. had 80,000 workers spread across the city. Now it is down to about 5,000, a number that could fall more in a bankruptcy.
My brother is one of the survivors, but who knows for how long?
“My brother is one of the survivors, but who knows for how long?”
well if it’s up to the creditors, minutes.
If it’s up to Obama, months.
…(as usual, I have to ask this) and your point is…?
I presume his point is that, it’s better to draw out a decaying and ultimately doomed business a few more months than to let it fail now.
Nevermind that the effort is futile, hideously expensive to the taxpayer, thoroughly corrupt, and contemptible to the rule of law.
But this shows how low the bar has sunk. Even the One, with all his power can only grant a stay of a few months.
Clearly our Dear Leader needs more power.
” point is…?”
My point is a weather forecast.
GM hired lots of amazing meatheads, GM retained lots of amazing meatheads.The smart one’s left decades ago, the smart ones took buyouts years ago. Only the truly amazingly stupid stayed on at GM.
So even if you wipeout the Debts of GM, Even if you cut salary to the UAW and benefits to the workforce. You still can’t un$%^& the situation.
If your brother is smart, he should start trying to figure out his next best work option. Wether that’s driving a cab or shining shoes or something else, I can’t say.
My brother is smart (a lot smarter than you on the available evidence), and he is.
“So even if you wipeout the Debts of GM, Even if you cut salary to the UAW and benefits to the workforce. You still can’t un$%^& the situation.”
Then why is Obama tossing billions and billions down the rathole, if the situation isn’t fixable?
Is it just Union pandering? Is he delusional or misinformed about the viability of the situation? Does he not care that the effort is futile? Does he feel that he has to “do something” even if it’s ultimately pointless and damaging?
Why does he feel that propping up an inevitable failure is worth the costs?
And what does this say about his judgment in other endeavors in the economic sphere?
If even a supporter like Lee can’t believe… is it all just a cynical power grab?
“Then why is Obama tossing billions and billions down the rathole, if the situation isn’t fixable?”
The problems are as much structural as cultural.
Look, I don’t know if I have the right idea, maybe I do, maybe I don’t.
Here’s what I would say.
1) First you start with the idea that manufacturing products in the united states is important, and that importing finished goods is a way to reduce America to a Third world country.
If you want a third world country, then, leave the situation alone. If you want a strong vital manufacturing sector, then,you better look at changing some basic rules, starting with federal leadership.
2) If you want success, the US needs to balance it’s current account deficits. That means requiring the US to balance payments. It’s perfectly fine to import goods into this country if we have exports to match. wether that’s Insurance products, financial products, tourism, handbags, fashion, Jetliners, Corn, Milk, large scale infrastructure projects. But you can’t import a screw into the country without showing a matching export license that you buy on the open market. If you make exports yourself, now you are producing your own product, but, you need to have them. That applies to those GM Canadian plants and the maquiladoras in mexico, as well as china. Repatriated profit from overseas plants counts towards that, so GM China is a source of revenue for GM, to the extent the profit is repatriated.
3) GM needs to go into Bankruptcy. That breaches management contracts
as well as union contracts.
4) GM needs to restructure it’s union workforce contracts, stop paying by seniority alone, but have scales tied to the workforce education.
If you are a HS Dropout, you are on scale 1, If you have a GED, Scale 2,
AA Scale 3, BA scale 4.
Set productivity goals tied to profits for groups and plants and divisions.
If the unit hit’s it’s profit goals, share 6% of the profit with the relevant work unit. If the division is Sucking wind, but your plant does great, you get something.
5) Hire people to run the divisions and the company for $1/year plus stock options on X Thousand shares. BTW, that’s the Deal Iacocca took when
he lead Chrysler through the 70’s.
6) Let the new Company Borrow up to $15 billion from the treasury
as it shows new products through a set of milestones.
Fundamentally, More and more Value added for GM has moved overseas.
now if you want to Walmart cars, that’s fine, but, if you want to do it domestically, you need to balance the playing field. The more value Toyota produces domestically, the more they can participate, but, firms like BMW or Hyundai that import finished cars will need to buy export certs or move manufacturing to the US. You can’t have Workers with US standards of living competing with chinese peasants.
Now, to compete in China GM will need plants over there, but,
they need to show how their productivity of process and engineering
is better then asian engineers and designers.
then the dynamic and culture of Detroit is deeply dysfunctional.
If you don’t change the management/labor interaction, it’s going to just
be a repeat, and adding some money won’t help with that.
I don’t mind stacking up some bright american engineers and designers against the best of asia and europe, but, the process culture of GM is badly busted, and until that gets fixed, it’s not going to help.
I don’t want to preserve GM, just for GM’s sake, but, they need to reboot.
anyone else got a better idea?
BTW, i’d do roughly the same thing on wall street.
“My brother is smart ”
So why is he hanging around Buick City as it swirls the drain?
So why is he hanging around Buick City as it swirls the drain?
Buick City was demolished years ago, you ignoramus.
It is my understanding Buick North was the last plant in Buick North?
So what’s anyone doing at Buick if they had any skills?
Far better jobs in Energy or software.
So what’s anyone doing at Buick if they had any skills?
They are making a living. But my brother doesn’t work at Buick. And he remains smarter, and better informed, than you.
Then why talk about him in conjunction with Buick City?
And if he is so smart does he still own a house in the detroit metro area?
Then why talk about him in conjunction with Buick City?
I didn’t, you moron. I said nothing about Buick City. And the post I cited was describing history. And he works for GM, but not Buick. Learn how to read.
And if he is so smart does he still own a house in the detroit metro area?
This post has nothing to do with Detroit, you moron.
If you are so smart, why do you post such idiotic and ignorant comments at my web site every day?
> 4) GM needs to restructure it’s union workforce contracts, stop paying by seniority alone, but have scales tied to the workforce education.
If you are a HS Dropout, you are on scale 1, If you have a GED, Scale 2,
AA Scale 3, BA scale 4.
That’s dumb even for Jack Lee.
GM’s problem is not that it has an uneducated workforce, it’s that it has an unproductive one, too many costs, and they can’t legally sell a profitable product mix. (CAFE plus customer beliefs about domestic small cars put GM in a no win situation.)
GM’s work force is unproductive because they are uneducated.
How many workers on the line know how to do Statistical Quality control? How many in japan? How many GM workers know how to read blueprints? They dumb down the work to an 8th grade level and have to train the workers to rote production tasks. German workers will follow a car down the line.
> GM’s work force is unproductive because they are uneducated.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
> How many workers on the line know how to do Statistical Quality control?
Surely Jack Lee doesn’t think that they all need to or that folks with a BA necessarily do.
> How many GM workers know how to read blueprints?
Most of the folks I know who know how to read blueprints didn’t learn to do so in college.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that GM doesn’t pay folks correctly, but Lee’s proposal doesn’t fix that problem.
> German workers will follow a car down the line.
If they’ve left their station to follow a car, they didn’t do what they needed to do at their station and who is doing that job on the next car?
Yes, they can follow a car as part of a rotation, but that just tells us that they know multiple stations and raises the question of why they and the car are moving instead of the stations….
In some places, a small team basically builds a whole car or a large subassembly, each person performing multiple tasks on a car/subassembly that doesn’t move. Some of these places are known for extreme quality and productivity. Others were British Leyland.
GM doesn’t need change. It isn’t enough that someone else successful does something that GM doesn’t do. (If it was, GM’s problems could be solved by painting Toyota over the door and putting it on all the uniforms.)
GM needs improvement that is actually relevant to its problems.
For example, no matter how good its small cars are/become, folks won’t buy them without a significant discount, at least not for a couple of years and probably not for a decade or so. Any “plan” that doesn’t address that fact isn’t realistic.
“GM needs improvement that is actually relevant to its problems.”
In general that’s true. Franky I think GM is just screwed. 40 years of cruddy management is not easily undone. The brands are damaged and the company lacks Sustaining cometitive advantage.
Globally we see capacity for 90M cars and demand at 55M. North american Capacity is 16M and sales is at 8M.
GM sized itself under planned obsolescence in the 50’s and never got over the energy crunch of the 70’s and the quality crunch of the 80’s. The strategy of the 90’s was finance and soon enough that ran out.
Now if there were taxes and import restrictions GM might get better or we may end up with the LADA and Trabant as their product.
It’s been 25 years since I bought a detroit product and I am not atypical.
GM was living on truck sales since 94 and it left them without a car line.
As for paying for education, it’s part of a culture change. Detroit used to pride itself on stupidity. GM management like Knudsen used to deride the Egggheads in Research and Engineering.
If you want your people to work smart you need to pay for smarts.
If you want a factory of dropouts just stay with the plan of yesterday.