No one ever said life was fair.

Especially to US taxpayers who will have to pay between 70-100 billions for this nationalization of industry.

Borat, where are you getting the 70 billion?

^^Will you say the same when they do are vets the same?
Is anyone surprised the working masses are getting the short end of the stick, while the execs get more golden parachutes.
“PBGC would only cover salaried retirees, not hourly.” Of course.
No its time for all the under paid idiots on here to bash those who had a decent job.

Another way US regulation is seriously lacking.

The company I work for is currently in CCAA (Chapter 11) and in Canada, the majority of the retiree’s benefits are safe because Canadian regulations stipulate that the employer cannot manage the fund.
It is only the underfunded amount that must be sought through creditor filings.

BTW, my father is a GM retiree. Glad he lives in Canada so I don’t have to support him…

With so many Americans—in unrelated areas other than the car industry—losing their jobs, retirement, and savings, there would be should a taxpayers backlash, the likes never seen, should the government decide to step-in and fund the pensions. Those retirees need to hold accountable those in management who had the authority and decision making, but failed to use it wisely. The wasteful use of taxpayers money to bailout GM and Chrysler is already enough to stem the beginnings of a major backlash.

Maybe the workers actually saved some of the 70 to 90 thousand they were making a year and put it into a piggy bank like the rest of us. Maybe if the hourly worker had to take a little responsibility for his or her own future this would not be such a life changing event for them. Ask all of the investors out there that had all of thier eggs in one basket if that was a good idea. I do feel for them and thier families but in the end we all should be aware of the possiblities.

Message to OBAMA please give GM the funds they need to survive lets not forget what you said in your election you wanted to work for small town America, well heres your chance small town America builds a huge majority of GM and other American vehicles, Please dont let this corporation collapse under your watch, not only will people not buy a new car from a Bankrupt company.

The consiquinces are much much greater involving jobloss, employee benefits, etc all these Billions floating around Washington start using those funds to build manufacturing facilities for GM now that sounds like a start to bring jobs home everyone is looking to make GM smaller they still can sustain, they just gave almost free money to the banks for them to buy new jets (jpmorgan Chase) etc. and all GM and Chrysler want to do is build better cars and keep people employed with their loan money. Please dont go down in history as being the pesident to end middle class what a catastrope that would be in North American. remember manufacturing is what made America.

carstuff, open either WSJ (Wall Street Journal) or Economist. 70 billion pegged as a conservative number. The range is 70 to double that. I don’t know if it is “double that”, but today GM is 64 billions in a hole. And we already own it (why else Government could replace CEO?)

LLL3, I respectfully disagree. My generation, baby boomers, went from drunken and smoking (no, not cigarettes) orgies to Wall Street orgies, which were equally excessive. Now we want government to fund our medical benis and retirement. Who will pay for it? Our children and their children. We love to drove Hummers, live in huge houses and someone (either children or their children) have to fund it? It was my generation who f*cked up Lehman Brothers and GM. Management did OK, the line workers who contributed to fall of those empires, lost. Well, they did not have to work there and they knew that they payed better then peers in other industries/companies but they enjoyed good paycheck. Time to pay the piper. Let the chips fall.

Hangonbig3 – I agree with you completely. If it weren’t for the pensions, they would be on a level playing field with all the imports. America is the land of opportuinity. Citizens should have grasped that opportunity and taken care of themselves instead of depending on a corporation and now the government. They worked for many years and should have saved. With 30 years until I can retire, I am not depending on any company or government for anything to be there 30 years form now. I want GM to survive, but they can only survive and compete by shedding these extra costs that are added to every product they sell.

Borat, your last comment says a lot about what North American society has become. As a ‘tweener’ – I am just outside the boomer generation – I agree (to some extent) with a lot of what you say. However, it is a bitter pill that many will not be able – or willing – to swallow.

Wait . . . a 65 year old RETIRED person is going to make more than most first-year lawyers working 70-90 hour work-weeks?! Are you kidding me? Why the heck am I in law school? I can turn a darn wrench! Oh, wait, my daddy wasn’t union . . . guess I have to work for a living.

If this happens I hope All the people that lose out get the addresses of all the people that bought imports and get to knock on there door and punch them in the face everyday for atleast a year. If you drive a jap car you should get hit and kicked.

Yes Borat – the chips may fall where they may …….but it’s a shame that so many will suffer
from the foolish and bad decisions made by upper management / the powers that be. How many innocent, hard working people are going to get burned because of others stupidity ??

Like a passenger telling the captain on the Titanic – i asked for a passage, not
to sink with the ship

Yes – i know life can be tough, i have traveled around the world sufficiently to know that …..

@Borat, same generation, however, also know that the great business management minds, like Peter Drucker warned—decades ago—about this very situation with the unions. GM wasn’t interested in what Drucker was telling them. It still comes down to management as they call the shots. Also, I do not believe that unions are bad, just badly run. And I see white collar unions growing within the US.

Lionwithoutpride, what school are you in? My older one in NYU law, that’s why I’m asking. She is already working 90 hours weeks just to get a “B”.

And i don’t want the government to fund my retirement, medical, college, or anything else …….America was created for the individual rights, not as a whole …….Obama wants things to be fair – and what exactly is that ???? It’s downright scary.

This is the land of equal opportunity – NOT EQUAL RESULTS. That is life and DEMOCRACY.

Previous generations didn’t ask for the government to “help” them through life – they either made it
or died trying …….what happened to people actually being accountable for THEMSELVES ??

If you want a good life – save your money, stop believing someone owes you something, and
bust your a** at a career you enjoy and the money will follow …..

I have to agree with LLLL#3, life isn’t fair. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s true. The Guarantee Fairy doesn’t exist. She was kidnapped sometime in the 1970s by the Itsallaboutme Troll and has not been seen since. Although modern folklore has it her and Elvis are shacked up living in a trailer park somewhere near the Canadian border.

sctdiverdown, if you travel enough, you know our “poor” are far enough from poor in other parts of the world. We do complain a lot.

LLL3, you are an intelligent guy. I agree that unions were necessity in the beginning of the last century. But they followed corporate route. Unions are run by scheisters who could not get into good or bad firms or even pass local law bar(they got stock in the Irish bar, and none of them Irish).
For years it is been a shakedown society. You could not waltz into a good union: you had to be either born into it or pay into it. My old man was in bad union. He did not have to pay to get in. He worked 28 years with union, retired and union went bankrupt. Guess who got screwed? Not management of union. That’s life – if you want to belong to a group (have a job in a company, belong to a union) you have to realize risks and rewards. We all concentrate on rewards and refuse to accept possible risk (me included!). We do complain a lot.

I would not blame this on decisions made by upper management. When there were only domestics in the market and every domestic had the same promises made to their employees, every manufacturer was on a level playing field and could compete fairly. Once all of these foreign brands come in to the States with no pensions to worry about, it is now an unlevel playing field. GM had to create more brands to sell more cars in order to distribute the extra costs of pensions and benefits over more vehicles. As long as auto sales were in the 16 – 17 million range, everything was going to be OK while still providing the promises made to hard working Americans. With sales in the 9 million range, how is it going to work? Don’t blame GM for almost a 50% decline in sales. Something has to give. If Toyota and Honda had made these promises to their employees over the last 100 years, they would be in the same boat. If you live in America and love America, SUPPORT AMERICA. If our economy completely goes to shambles, do you think the Japanese government is going to help us? I don’t think so. Open your eyes and realize the American cars are just as good as the foreign and SUPPORT YOUR HOME TEAM!!

Yea.. lets punch those jap buyers Caddy-V, especially those who drive the ones made in North America, who are still employing Canadians & Americans.

At one time everybody wanted to work for GM because of the “work ethic” & easy money. Nothing like working for a company that has a union telling you that they will take care of you..’till you die! Why would you buy RSPs or save for a rainy day. The union still doesn’t get it that the good days are over…Its hard to feel sorry for those who think it’s only GM’s fault & not the way they voted in the last contract talks.

I wish I could think of this as crunch time for GM, but that puts it in too positive of a notion. Truth is a good 25% to 10% of their production goes to fleets or government positions, not the general public. The Japanese have eaten away more sales than any of us have realized, and GM, Ford and Chrysler have been alright with that. There shouldn’t be any grace to save GM, only for the (honest) people (who have not lobbied for years with GM as the union for ginormous wages and benefits) that will lose their jobs (and all they’ve invested in GM). Way to go for our American corporations, only one I see any hope in is Ford.

Oh, and without accounting/distributing fees, the average payout/compensation to each worker is $36,510. In more than one way that’s ridiculous.

I wonder if the union has realized that every day they make themselves look more and more like the enemy….

Most hard working people have to save their own money for retirement, its called an IRA or 401K.
These pensions are just a free ride and if those recieving pensions aren’t smart enough to save some money for these rainy days, then you get what you deserve.

Pensions should be negotiable like any other agreement and revised down! They have always been too expensive for the providers, especially for us taxpayers, concerning local gov’t pensions – they all should get cut and cut our taxes!

Oh, Please. Putting the blame on anyone group here is silly. The fact is that pension systems in all industries have been a drain on their companies and these companies have looked at every angle imaginable to rid themselves of them. I worked in Telecommunications and saw the same thing happen there. As the article says, this is not just in the auto industry. Thank God, I started funding my own retirement when I started working, knowing full well that I would most likely never reach full penion maturity at any company. It just doesn’t happen anymore. It’s sad to see people in retirement (or close to it) face these problems, but most of us are not in a position to correct this or even make a sizeable dent.

As for bashing people who buy imports, again, grow up. Consumers buy what they want for the reasons that they choose. You could argue that a GM employee/retire should cause harm to their neighbor for buying a Ford or Chrysler product, “because it wasn’t a GM”; that has the SAME impact on their salary/retirement as buying a Japanese or European car.

If you want the customers, you have to get to the root of understanding why they made their decision, embrace the customer’s decision making process and figure out how to market to that decision. That’s how you get customers. Period.

Caddy, buying an import had nothing to do with it. It’s called bad fiscal management, & greedy, lazy unions & their workers.

Not to mention the greedy, lazy CEO’s.

Way to jump on the common sense train ricky_b. Well said.

People like CaddyV, with their blind devotion to the big three and unwillingness to see the truth are great.

“If you drive a jap car you should get hit and kicked”? Hahaha..Obviously he’s exaggerating, but it’s not the consumers’ fault. American car quality has been declining for the past two decades. They have stagnated and allowed every other car maker’s products to surpass them in quality and reliability. First the Germans beat the US, then the Japanese, now the Koreans and Chinese are trying. If the economic collapse hadn’t happened, it would’ve been ten years before the Korean cars were better than the big three.

And I keep trying to remind people of this: MOST AUTOMAKERS BUILD SOME OF THEIR MODELS IN NORTH AMERICA. Just like US automakers build some products overseas. It’s cheaper and more cost effective.

I drive a BMW Z4. It was built on a South Carolina production line staffed by Americans.

Let’s be realistic. Cars from the big three are generally poorly designed, don’t drive well, not very pleasing to the eye and have shoddy build quality. They’re expensive because of the legacy costs incurred from having so many employees getting paid a lot. In twenty years, all foreign carmakers building cars on American soil will have similar fees, and we will have these problems all over again. As long as the Unions get outrageous benefits, it will make the long term operation of any automaker impossible.

“I drive a BMW Z4. It was built on a South Carolina production line staffed by Americans.

Let’s be realistic. Cars from the big three are generally poorly designed, don’t drive well, not very pleasing to the eye and have shoddy build quality. They’re expensive because of the legacy costs incurred from having so many employees getting paid a lot. In twenty years, all foreign carmakers building cars on American soil will have similar fees, and we will have these problems all over again. As long as the Unions get outrageous benefits, it will make the long term operation of any automaker impossible.”

^ This is funny! Im sorry but most of us cat afford driving your perfectly brand new, expensive, well built BMW, so of cource you think American cars arnt built well. At least their not 50 grand for a little 2 door coupe.

This is exactly the problem. People think that American cars are built like crap and have bad realiability and bad gas milage. When in reality american cars built just as well and are as relieable if not better now then their foreign competition. I agree in recent decades the qulaity has not been good, but at least they always have fun factor and good looks in their cars, which japanese companies seriously lack.

People who bash the Big 3 need to drive them and actually compare before commenting. The 70’s through the 90’s – yes, the Big 3 had their quality problems. But to say today’s American cars are poorly designed, don’t drive well, and are not pleasing to the eye are all opinions that are not backed by facts.

The fact that they still offer pensions, when just about every company in the USA doesn’t anymore, shows just how much of a dinasour the auto industry is here. Another example of how out-of-touch the Big 3 and the union are.

Borat-

Penn State (or Dickinson if you’re a traditionalist).

If GM & Chrysler go down in flames, import owners will become public enemy #1. Especially if you are driving a brand new import.

As sure as I’m sitting here, you will wake up one morning to find the import sitting in your driveway suffering from major baseball bat damage, or God forbid, the lives of you and your family could be in jeopardy.

Buy American. It’s the right thing to do.

I suppose it will be the union guys and gals with the baseball bats…….imagine that!

BuyUSA, seriously, if someone damaged my car because it’s a Toyota, I would lose just about all my respect for America. Not only because it’s 20 years old and has nothing to do with the state of our economy, but because Americans use, buy, consume, etc. SO MANY things outside the realm of cars that are imported. Clothes, shoes, the computer you’re on right now, radios, TVs, video games, sports equipment, paint, cameras, I mean the list goes on. Just because America is having trouble selling cars doesn’t mean they can call foul on the Capitalism they seemed to love so much before.

Most people can’t afford to replace their current car with something American right now, some don’t want to an that’s their right AS an American, honestly I gotta tell you I’ll probably be buying a Toyota for my next car because I’m happy with the one I have now and changing brands is an unneccesary risk for me. That’s part of what America is, I’m sorry if you don’t like it.

Another right of mine as an American is a car alarm and a shotgun. If any punk decides he doesn’t like my car because of where it’s from, I’ll gladly send him on the next train to hell with half of a face hanging off his neck.

shane train-

Depending on your jurisdiction the gun wouldn’t be a good idea. In the VAST MAJORITY of places it is your DUTY to REMOVE YOURSELF FROM DANGER. In other words. If some axe wielding maniac goes off on your old ‘yota then you still have no right to shoot him. He’d have to be physically threatening YOU (not just your car) and EVEN THEN you’d be required to “flee to the place of last retreat” (your home, office or some other place that is considered so intimately personal that it is inviolable by intruders . . . cars don’t count).

Some places are more conservative and have “stand your ground” statutes that allow you to use deadly force in defense as soon as you are threatened with loss of your life. Coincidently, many of the places with such statutes claim that their crime rates have gone . . . DOWN. Gun control . . . making sure that only the bad guys have guns . . . naw, I’m sure the criminals will register their weapons and when citizens can’t buy “assault rifles” (ask your buddy in the army if he considers the “assault rifles” available for legal purchase to be an assault rifle) that criminals won’t have other ways of getting them.

Lionwithoutpride, depends on state. Since I am NRA member, you can shoot someone in NJ if e threatens your property. It is advised to prevent future litigation due to damages form wounds, I would aim for vital organs. Furthermore, if someone wielding a bat at your car, you have no idea when the bat stop swinging, I would pull a trigger. Then again I don’t have to the bravest one on the block, just able to afford a good scheister

I just wanted to say…life is not fair, but you need to learn how to live it. Government has too much to do with the U.S. industries. It is worse than the communist China.

Eh, I live in Massachusetts, so gun control is tight compared to some other states, but in all honesty, it couldn’t be too hard to tell the authorities that I was walking from my car to the house and he came out of the woods.

It’s not like he’d be there to say otherwise.

buyusa, thats EXACTLY the kind of rubbish some unsuccessful painter from austria called adolf hitler was spouting about jews… if you’re not into allowing people a free decision on how to spend their hard earned money, dont bother going to any dictatorship all over the world. how about north korea? some of the banana-republics down south or over in africa.
but leave people here alone with your weird ideas.

noone forced the big 3 to produce the crap that scared people away from them, so its big3 VERY OWN FAULT. period.

fan- I admit, I secretly orchestrated the introduction of the Pontiac Aztek to get revenge on GM for my brother’s Cavalier breaking down.

So, it’s all my fault.

Borat – yes we “complain” a lot, but the point is that who wants to see good people get burned ?

Not me …..

Our “poor” is not like that of say, Mexico, where there are really only two classes – the
rich and the poor. There really is no middle class…..but then again, how many people have
truly lost “eveything” or in debt up to their ears because they go layed off ?

Things can go badly pretty quickly ……no matter what country you live in.

General Motors’ Segway to heaven — not!
While the mainstream media gleefully watched three-minute clips of the GM-Segway transportation device zipping around Manhattan, the rest of us realized the electric transportation pod was about as relevant to the Detroit automakers’ current bottom-line as Britney Spears is to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dubbed P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility), the hobbled-together example is an electrically powered two-seat prototype vehicle with two wheels, featuring a lithium-ion battery, digital smart energy management, two-wheel balancing, dual electric wheel motors, and a dockable user interface that allows off-board connectivity. GM said it can travel at speeds up to 56 km/h, with a range up to 56 km between recharges. The automaker estimates a production P.U.M.A. would cost about one-third that of an average family car, or about $10,000.

I’m sure struggling GM’s dealers with stockpiled lots were thrilled to see GM’s PR dollars and time wasted on this distraction.

VERY FUNNY