shaginwgn

Who do you mean american made autos: honda, toyota, and hynduai are made in america but profit is sent back to their country of head quarters, While GM and ford are made mostly in canada and mexico thanks to NAFTA.

Kingfrog

[QUOTE]It will not turn around as long as products don't sell or have a perception of being unreliable. 11k Miles and I have had steering column replaced. That should not be.

Not so. OSHA and the employment laws put into place prevent things from going back the way they used to be. Many many workers work without Unions and are not suffering like you predict. Look at the non-union Toyota workers.
They are REFUSING to be represented. Not exactly the behavior of poor working conditions. Of course the Unions would love you to believe they are still "protecting" you from Henry Ford.

Here is a real reality check.
How many HS educated middle classs workers make an equivalent of $92 an hour? Surely those who have the degrees and advanced degrees should make 10X what they deserve as well.

Middle class income is approx $40,000 year per family. A RETIRED UAW worker gets more then that!! I don't blame GM for what they are doing. They may have to reorganize like Delta and other companies just to get rid of the UAW.




You cannot build cars at a profit paying $92 and hour for basic labor and retired health benefits. The competition is not doing it and BUILDING BETTER CARS!!! Go figure. Whats a "fair" salary for a HS educated person providing labor anyone can do? Less then $30k a year would be my answer to fair.
Health benefits are great but they are not a right. How many married people are making a $600 a month car payments, living in 2000 SF homes and claim they cannot afford $300 a month for health insurance. Its a matter of priorities. Many people CAN afford health insurance but they dont want to give anything up for it. At even $25 and hour one should be able to afford to buy health insurance,easily.


Its not up to the Federal Government to dictate what insurance companies should do. If enough people bought insurance the rates would drop.

You cannot gain profits paying workers $50 and hour, providing health insurance and fat pensions and remain competitive with companies that are paying their worker $25 and hour and telling the UAW to go fly a kite, You HAVE to find less expensive labor.

I really like my GM car. (Last one was a 1969 Firebird) BUT fit and finish leaves much to be desired. It costs as much as a Toyota but is not made or engineered like Toyota and Honda, or even KIA.

Earn your pay GM workers. Its because of GM's unrealistic astronomical labor related expenses they have to cut corners on their cars.

rcsart

Going back to my earlier statement about American companies producing their products here in the US. and the American public becoming proud of these products again and buying American made, thus making our economy strong once again.

Black Rose

GM and Ford have been building cars in Canada for generations, so that is not something new...can't totally blame that on NAFTA.

One benefit Canada has is our national health care program. That's one less big cost that the automakers have to deal with. There are still health care costs, but not as high as in the US.

rcsart

Have you or have you known anyone who has worked for a company that needed OSHA a government org. to come in and do an audit on their working conditions? What a joke they are under paid and under staffed. $40,000 is lower middle class and I don’t see many young people out of high school pulling down these salaries. At 40k a year with a car payment house payment not in the hood and two children and a wife I don’t know many people who can afford their own insurance coverage. I did state they needed pay cuts across the board and receive a fair wage with insurance. I don’t see $92 an hour being a fair wage for the work done, I don’t work for GM so I’m not sure what a line worker is paid an hour but I seriously doubt it’s that high, I would sure hope not. I worked for dell as a supervisor for four years I made less then 40k a year and worked 14 hours a day 7 days a week and that was mandatory I worked holidays and a double on Christmas eve. I know how big companies screw the little guy when there aren’t checks and balances I agree the unions need to be revamped, but large corporations do not care about the little fish if no one is looking over their shoulders. I don’t know what Toyota pays their workers nor what benefits’ they pay I do know they run a tight ship but doubt they really care about the American workers in their plants just my opinion. Plus the profits go where? As far as our government helping make health care affordable to everyone who works in the US why shouldn’t they help? They spend tons of money for crap non of us need and make excuses for why they drop the ball on fixing the real problems I guess that’s all propaganda. Halliburton isn’t making a huge profit off this war we’re in right and it’s all for the cause and it’s improving our economy. A lot needs to be fixed in this country but don’t place all the blame on the unions and don’t deny someone who works for a living the tools they need to be 100 % everyday to support their families. And don’t be bitter that someone with a high school education makes a fair wage to support their family so we don’t have to support them living on welfare. Or walk the street to sale drugs because it pays better then their minimum wage job, where their fed crap because their young snot nose kids.

Daverb

I worked at one place that had a Union, you could join but not manditory. I will say they did look out for you unless you really screwed up. After 11hrs, I finally burned out working for The Federal Bureau of Prisons ( worked at the US Penatentuary, Lewisburg PA). But will say, most did not make the salaries that the Auto workers make. And how about our People in the Service, laying their life on the line for us. It took me about 10yrs to win my claim with the VA for disability.

Harpozep

Love for it to happen, but the products have to cost as little as the imports. Americans have proven they are cheap and really want the bottom line to be price more than quality. That is why we vote with our dollars at Wal Mart. Just the messenger here.................

We tend to cut our brother's wages for the sake of bettering our selves. Human nature I guess. Not just an American trait, I'm sure. But we are living it now.

I buy American when I can, but all my cameras are made overseas as are most of the electronics I use. However I did build a computer in the US, but almost all the parts are of foreign origin. Not much we can do since we are at the mercy of corporations that build things we need mostly elsewhere to maximize their return.
Just good capitalism. Too bad it turns around and bites us at times, eh?

No , I do not see America building more stuff unless we all want to pay each other some living wages, and that some would say smacks of government intervention, or Communism, or some thing that controls the free market. We do not want free market controlled since it works so splendidly, etc.......

The only way I see the US getting back to being a manufacturing country is if the rest of the world was all paid a higher wage. Then our corps would have less incentive to actually make stuff elsewhere. Not gonna happen.

SO let's see, We want things cheap and our manufacturers want to make things as cheaply as possible. This leaves most of us out of actually MAKING things for other Americans since the opportunities to please both ends of this equation drives all to seek foreign and lesser paid help in the manufacturing process.
Of course a number of things are made in the US, some cars ( Not ours ), but I speak in generalities here. I suppose I could look and see if my toilet paper is domestic, but it's late Likely made in Canada.....ya ever smelt a paper mill..........

Oh, I worked in a non-union printing shop for years. As soon as a threat of union was whispered, folks were fired en mass for suddenly not doing their jobs in the correct manner, etc. When a union was inevitable, they owners shut down and moved the work to the South leaving two thousand people unemployed.
Dunno what to fear more, the unions, or the management of companies that fear the unions. Both leave me with a bad taste.

Gotta thank unions for one thing though, our work week Weekend's off They got us that for whatever it is worth

captain howdy

Yes. OSHA does an annual audit where I currently work and at a few of my past jobs. It's part of their standard routine around here at machine shops and factories. At least it is in all of the local machine shops I've worked for. We also have an annual ISO audit seeing as how we are an ISO approved company. I doubt OSHA does an annual inspection at a place like McDonalds or somewhere like that but I don't know having never worked there.

Harpozep

OSHA came into a place I used to work. We made , yes actually made in the USA, transformers for many large and small corporations. Part of the process was/is to cote the finished product in a resin. You know the stuff if you have ever held a transformer power supply. The resin is heated/cooked onto the finished armature.

Anyway, the ovens we used were actually old refrigerators with oventop heating elements added. A bank of several or more of these converted old fridges lined the baking room. The room had inadequate ventilation and the ovens were at best, crude and very unsafe. So the inevitable happened......

Doug,the worker bee who ran the room ,was blown out the nearby door one day in a moment out of Hee Haw! He was Ok, but blackened like in a Road Runner cartoon ! However OSH did intervene on all our behaves to make the place safer. Explosions in the basement made us all a bit uneasy, afterall

I think OSHA's teeth have been reined in during the current administration though. I seem to remember reading about less funding to get their work done in the "Pro work" environment of the conservatives. I'm not sure smaller government is always the best approach when the market DID drive this small transformer company to cut costs to be competitive and in the process endanger all who worked there.
Sometimes a bit of government funded oversight is a good thing. For this reason, I do like OSHA

hhrcrafty

Your steering column was supplied by an outside vendor and probably designed by a salaried engineer, not the guy installing it on the line.

OSHA exists because of the unions, and the unions still keep OSHA in check. The Toyota workers don't have to unionize BECAUSE they get just enough of the same benefits that the UAW gets with the domestic manufacturers. They're scabs, plain and simple.

Where on earth are you getting $92 an hour from? With benefits included, try $30 an hour.

Lower middle class. Most people that can retire comfortably in this country already average more than that.

Show me your sources about these "better" cars. Also, you cannot get a job on the line starting out at MORE than $30k a year. Your pay increases with experience and seniority, just like every other job out there. You want to talk health insurance? Okay, try buying a non-group plan for your whole family for less than $400 a month. Try it.

You really believe that?

You can and they did it for years by building competitive products for a nation that used to be proud to buy American.

Where do you get off saying that? Because you had a bad steering column that wasn't manufactured properly and was replaced FREE OF CHARGE? My girlfriend's driver's side door handle fell off her Camry last week and it cost $200 to replace it!

I tell you what, go work at a car lot for a few weeks and see what those Kias and Hyundais are worth on trade in compared to every other make out there. Show me a Toyota with an engine that's good for 1,000 HP with no structural modifications to the block, head, crank, cams, or pan.

They've earned it. They build the car they're told to with the pieces they are given and they do it well. They're fighting to keep their jobs while the rest of the country has abandoned them and let a million of them go unemployed over the last 20 years. I don't blame them at all.