Break the union… Northwest did it!

Oh yeah, Northwest is emerging from bankruptcy shortly, and like Delta should be doing better than ever.

Amazing how as said in previous posts, the union squeezes the company it works for like a boa constrictor killing it’s host. The only way to survive is breaking the union. I’m so excited for the 2007 labor negotiations and I don’t even work in the auto industry!

More idiotic union-bashing. The article clearly identifies the problem as the lack of national health insurance in the US. Unless its makes its money in health care, virtually every US-based business is put at a competitive disadvantage by this problem.

The best thing that GM can do is to join the UAW and other US-based manufacturers to lobby Congress for national health insurance. Either President Obama or President Clinton will give them the support they need.

$1000 more per vehicle, that’s an incredible improvement for GM in a very short period of time, I believe that deserves congratulations. Unfortunately, the war to get GM in the black is only just beginning. The UAW needs to be slapped down from their current high horse if GM North America is to survive.

Richard, having lived in the UK, I can tell you that nationalized health care is not what it’s cracked up to be. Private care found in the US is of much higher quality, and there are actually private health companies in the UK that provide insurance for many in the UK who are tired of the poor performance of the NHS. GM may expend less if they don’t have to provide insurance packages, but that doesn’t mean government health care would be free. GM might no longer pay for it, but all of its employees would in their taxes.

The true solution lies in between: to force employees everywhere in the United States to wean off their misguided belief that employers are supposed to provide benefits for them. Employees should be paid in a salary and nothing else, and it is the individual’s responsibility to shop for their own health and retirement plans.

I’m not so certain that nationalized heathcare in outside of the US will have a huge impact on Honda and Toyota’s bottom line. They employ 1000’s of people here in the states and have to pay for healthcare.
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And I know the next thing to be said is well they don’t pay for heathcare for their employees in other countries. GM also produces in OTHER COUNTRIES and so the same logic can be used, if they are saving money abroad it should help at home. But clearly the union contracts have increased that health care burden well above a ‘normal’ cost.
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But still GM has a $4.8B heathcare burden, again traceable to the union contracts. Every company in the US has a ‘health care burden.’ But the one at GM has been self crated by their union contracts. Yes nationalized healthcare might help but it is not a lack of nationalized coverage here in the US that has caused GM’s problem.
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GE is a huge comapany employing 1000’s of people with healthcare coverage, yet they don’t have the union contracts and they aren’t out 24/7 telling everyone how big there $Billion bill is for employee healthcare!

PrimeGTP wrote “Richard, having lived in the UK, I can tell you that nationalized health care is not what it’s cracked up to be. Private care found in the US is of much higher quality, and there are actually private health companies in the UK that provide insurance for many in the UK who are tired of the poor performance of the NHS. …”

There are much better models of national health insurance in Europe than the NHS. I am unaware of a bad model anywhere in Europe except the UK.

I am a salaried employee with employer subsidized health insurance. It is my understanding that most salaried employees have similar benefits. There is no way on Earth that we are giving that up. We have higher earnings than the typical wage slave. Is it your position that wage slaves should fend for themselves while their better paid brothers in management and the professional ranks have their health subsidized by their employers?

Root cause analysis (5 why)-
Problem: GM has high HC costs, impacting cash flow and resulting in high legacy costs.
-why? because of the employees salaries, etc.
-why? because retired employees have expensive coverage
-why? because it was guaranteed to them
-why? because it was in their contract
-why? because the union negotiated the benefit

Toyota has not got the same problem, makes more money per car then GM, and well cash flow is not a problem.
-why? because their employees are efficient
-why? because they work and design their processes well
-why? because they don’t keep employees who don’t perform
-why? because the employees must earn the right to stay employed – it’s not a god given right to have a job.
-why? because they don’t have a union contract that protects and supports the lazy worker.

But GM can’t get there with the work force benefit commitments they have. That is the whole point. Not having nationalized healthcare is not, it the way GM does business that caused the problem. The auto business is global, so a cost you have in the US as GM so does EVERY other auto company.. And when GM produces abroad in Europe, Asia, etc, they don’t have that healthcare cost because the benefit from the nationalized systems – just like HMC, TM, etc. GM blames everything and anything except their own way of business.
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GM would froth as the mouth if it has the fiscal year end profit of little 5th place Honda Motor Co. – $5 billion dollar profit. Or even the $1.5B quartlery profit which was off by 20% from last year! Ouch, but still.. Through March 2008 Honda is projecting a tiny profit delcine to $4.9B.
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How did GM fare… Well GM only managed to lose $2B last year, guess that’s better than $10B the year before! GM’s quarterly profit was $62M, only 96% lower than Honda. For GM to even catch up to little Honda they need a $6B+ change in the bottom line, you won’t get there unless you tackle that union…
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So this week it’s nationalized healthcare, that’s what brought us down, said mighty GM!!! Next week what will the excuse be from the PR department????

Richard – Yes, wage slaves should fend for themselves. You do. I do. They should too. I went to college, didn’t pay a dime the whole time I was there and have paid off all of the loans since. No excuses. My tax dollars will not support those who are unwilling to support themselves. End of story. Nationalized health care is a joke and one more step towards Communism. If you want nationalized health care, go to Canada

It’s the same with unions. We live in a country today that protects even the brain dead through the court system. To say unions help protect workers from anything is BS. Safety standards, hours, wages are all protected today through other means. The unions are used to inflate wages to absurd levels so the leaders can skim off the top of their members’ paychecks.

PrimeGTP – What you propose actually use to be the norm. During WWII, the US work force dwindled as soldiers were sent over seas. (If you know this already, bare with me, it’s for everyone) Laws were enacted to prevent companies from luring workers away with higher salaries. So benefits such as health insurance were born. Companies competed by providing better benefits.

There is a huge faction in society that has a real problem with the gimmees. Everyone wants a freebie. What so many forget is that competition spurs innovation and improvements. Competition generates lower prices. Nationalized health care creates one customer, the government. How effective is one customer at creating a lower price? Couple that with the widely popular belief that most government services are screwed up and disfunctional. What about the VA hospital **** happening now? But somehow US nationalized health care would be the exception to the rule? ANNNGGG! It hasn’t worked in any country thus far and it won’t work here. Social-ism is for nazis.

nationalized healthcare sucks

anything the US government runs also sucks

jsherm007 – That’s what it appears to be on the surface huh? I understand what you are saying, it just happens to be a bit more complicated than that. GM does not manage their plants. The Union does. GM signs a contract with the union, and they carry out the contract. Everything is under contracts. There are contracts governing contracts. There are contracts stating GM will agree to pay for a certain amount of work done even if the work is not done. It’s not as simple as GM is a poor manager. And doing away with all of these contracts is not the answer either, nor is it legal. The answer unfortunately is having to work with the Unions and hope to hell they will reason.

What is the common denominator of all domestic brands? Unions. What is the common denominator of the Japanese and Korean brands? No unions. I think there may be something there….

Richard – No, my position is that NO ONE should have their health care subsidized by their employer.

Well I’m from Detroit and I can attest to “culture of union workers”. Past highschool a lot of my friends’ goals were to get a job at GM or Ford because with no skill you can start off a $20per hour with much overtime if wanted and of course healthcare.So higher eduction takes a backseat. Many people count on the GM and Ford and thats why the economy in Detroit sucks right now. There is no support market if things go wrong in the auto industry. This mind set comes from unions having strong power and the members know this. I didnt really see the power of the union until my father a (mechanic) got a job with the city after owning a garage for 10 plus years, told meabout how easy the work is and how lazy the workers are. There’s a lot of alcoholics and he even has a friend who has more senority than him who is illerate( I mean seriously can’t read). He once told me a story of a guy who became a new supervisor and made a serious attempt to change things, to make the workers more efficient. To make a long story short, his car was vandalized and he was beat up by his subordinates for this. I also have friend who’s dad works for GM , and he’s told me many stories like this. He’s admits many people get drunk on the assembly line. I guess what I’m trying to say is a union can be good , but given too much power it’s members become complacent and unmotived workers. I still love Detroit and plan on moving back after school because it once was a great city and still has the potential to be. People just need to stop relying on mommy’s milk(auto industry) so much and start a new economic movement there. ….just my 2 cents

GM: ageed. The health care industry is screwing over most U.S. companies, and something should be done about it quickly.

(EDITED FOR LANGUAGE)

primegtp,
fine in theory, except I don’t think you have the slightest clue what a private citizen will pay for decent health care. And I seriously doubt GM management would be willing to sacrafice THEIR health care coverage either.

jsherm007,
Sorry, wrong. Toyota makes money because they design build and market cars that PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT!
To all the usual illinformed union bashers. Simple question.
Name the last car model designed and marketed by UAW workers………..still waiting……….
Oh, right. They just build them EXACTLY like they’re told. The executives responsible for making the bad decisions, putting out the wrong car, marketing it badly, ARE NOT the ones being blamed for GM losing money. ARE NOT the ones being asked to take cuts in pay and benefits. And, ARE NOT the ones laid off when the company does badly.
Big news flash here. Knocking another grand off crappy cars WILL NOT save the company. I wish the union bashing mouth breathers would think about these facts for more than a second.
Nice field of work, IF your in management.

How come you never see the three stooges (Lutz, Wagoner, and Henderson) posing in front of the financials, demonstrating how poor of an executive management team they really are?
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http://www.leftlanenews.com/wp-content/plugins/iimage-gallery.php?idpost=5039&idg=1&idi=1
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These three gloryboys are always so eager to pose in front of a car as if they made it themselves!

Just to add a twist to the “Free national Health Care”. In most countries where there is National Health care, there is a tax called something like “Tax for national Health Care” how this gives GM a “disadvantage” can only be due to US health insurance companies being worse than European beurocrats at managing health care efficiently…

Btw having lived in the UK and US (amongst a couple of dozen countries), I can easely say that NHS is better than Blue Sheild or Kaiser…

Anything’s better than Blue Shield or Kaiser. I always opt for the “freedom of doctor choice” options which cost me more but avoid the HMO bull**** that Hillary wanted to ram up all of our asses in 1993/94.

In a land where hedgefund whores can get 1.7Billion annually, I think there is a place for unions. Just think…I read somewhere where the top 15 hedgefund managers got 14Billion between them…and the top three or four got in excess øf 1Billion apiece!!!

It’s time to bring back the 90% income tax bracket for anyone making in excess of say 100million per year!!

And the Tyco guy should have been drawn and quartered. How many poor black kids have to die of tooth abscesses while these whores are wallowing in $6K shower curtains for 5th avenue penhouses they stay in two weeks a year? 40million Americans have no health insurance while these guys are worrying about three dollars per gallon jet fuel for their Gulfstreams (and a shot to Travolta’s more or less empty 34 seat Boeing 707 fer crying out loud).

You want healthcare? You want gun control (on the Australian model, take them away…lookie lookie for constitutional amendment, the second amendment CAN be amended!) vote for Obama.

You want fewer taxes, more death and destruction, more Iraq (what, Iran next?), more and more government surveillance, etc., vote for the other party.

thank you norby i couldnt have said it better myself there is a huge gap between pay of the uaw and management at my plant my boss makes ten dollars more an hour than us and does nothing but sit in a a/c office and speak over the 2 way radios while where busting our asses making GMs cars and trucks

wayyyy too much management and uaw workers who do nothing there i said it some of them do absolutely nothing time to retire

Since when do you unions dictate how much the company leaders make? They don’t. So your rational for needing a union isthe need for your own gluttonous slice of the pie. Because two wrongs make a right. Absurd.

By no means will I ever believe anyone can morally, ethically, and justifiably make the ludicrous amounts of money they rake in year after year. I am just shy of supporting wage caps for CEOs. But I happen to believe in the open market more so. The reasons these CEOs make so much are buried in the past 50 years of evolving American business. As our society slowly took on the “gotta have it” attitude, ethical behavior is slowly taking a back seat. The consumers are just as much to blame as the CEOs. The consumers are the ones who pay thier paychecks. But “gotta have it”, consumers will now buy products from businesses that they know are corrupt. Gotta have it. That wasn’t always the case. Today corporations like Comcast can dole out the worse customer service in America and yet be one of the richest. If consumers put their foot down, and chose otherwise, it wouldn’tbe the case.

Wanting a union for increased wages because the CEOs are making bundles is hardly a reason. They will make their money no matter what. It’sthe ‘gotta have it’ consumers that all lose in the end. That includes everyone reading this.

…sorry, omit “you” unions…

400HorseSS – The truth shall set you free!

SloopJohnB just made a perfect representation of everything that will drive the US into the ground EU-style.

why hasn’t 1487_GM_SALES posted a comment in here yet? would love to read his opinion on this.

Union is part of the problem, not ALL of the problem GM has. Asking the union for concession will help in the short run, but in the long run, GM and companies in general will just pass the burden of healthcare cost to us.

The problems lie in
1) Weak political intervention to reign in healthcare cost and doctor’s insurance
2) High salary for doctor in the US
3) Ambulance chasers and bogus lawsuits, when will this country learn to make the loser of a lawsuit pay court cost and attorney fee?
4) High salary for management position in GM
5) Wall street expectation for a company to grow year after year and to push the bottom line
6) Union contract

NHS is supposed to provide BASIC healthcare to all, and it should at least be available as an option. If you are wealthier and can afford to buy better healthcare, then more power to you. Don’t misunderstand that NHS only benefits the “lazy” peopl, there are disabled and single-parent family, for example,who just can’t afford the high cost of healthcare anymore.

NHS is not communism. You want to know communism, research North Korea before you write. NHS is a social program, existing within a capitalistic society. You have the power not to use it and the choice to purchase better private coverage. The government will also have to follow the market economy in deciding how much money they need to have to run it and that market economy involves insurance companies and hospitals alike. So no, the government is not the only customer, unless in doing so, congress eliminates the possibility to purchase private insurance.

Just want to add one thing about union though: Seniority and ranking is a joke!!! Let the most productive and capable workers do the job.

the two main problem gm has is

- poor quality
- poor design

this sums up for poor products. and if you want to sell poor products, the price you can sell them for will be poor too… and noone ever grew rich getting paid poorly and spending high (what they do, due to uaw)

so, the uaw contributes to the bad situation, but its not the core problem… of course, after years and years of poor products, its hard for them to turn around…

norby413 wrote about the fact that UAW workers don’t design the cars, they just build them, so they can’t be held responsible for lost income due to designing crappy cars, poorly marketing the ones that are built, etc. I think this misses the point of the article. Regardless of the product GM is building (and it can make a profit), there are $4.8 billion in healthcare costs that slice off the bottom line. With the right union contract or nationalized healthcare, can this cost go down to $0? Almost certainly not. But the point is the costs can be reduced in the union contract.

Having an NHS may impact the car company in a good way, like the article says, but it may not affect the bottom line for the car company’s employee, who has to foot the higher tax bill to pay for a nationalized system. Still, I think part of the solution is the union contract. I don’t think, as has been suggested, that it should be every man for himself, when it comes to healthcare, because your employer can probably negotiate better group rates, than if you bought a policy off the internet just for your family. But, that doesn’t mean that your employer will subsidize all, or even part, of the healthcare cost. Sometimes, a nice group rate is all you get, and the entire cost of the insurance is passed on to the employee.

I’m not ready to call myself a “union basher,” but the union has to bend, before the U.S. car industry breaks.

Whoa – there’s a lot of ignorance in here. My favorite is “Social-ism is for Nazis.” What’s that thing Carlos Mencia does? De-de-dee!

Or the person saying having one customer, the gov’t, would make healthcare more expensive? No, rates go down when people use collective bargaining. Look at how small businesses are coming together to get lower health insurance rates.

Also, everyone is saying, why don’t Toyota and Honda have these costs? Because they’re LEGACY costs. Honda and Toyota have not been producing cars in this country near as long, or in as large numbers, as GM has. As they continue, they will start to accrue these costs as well.

Stadt – You can call me out by name, it’s okay. Please, explain why “Social-ism is for Nazis” is an ignorant statement. You might as well throw in an example too of where social-ism was/is widely successful…
My statement on insurance companies…You are incorrect relating collective bargaining to my statement. When small businesses group together for collective bargaining, you are talking about a few businesses for one, not the entire country. They’ll take offers from multiple insurance companies, taking the best offer in the end. There are also MANY, THOUSANDS, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, of small businesses out there. All individual customers. Insurance companies compete for these customers, thus CAPITALISM. Now, if the government represents everybody, where is the competition? One single insurance company can not “win” the contract for the government. No two, either. It would be a single contract for all insurance companies, that’s the way it works. Can you explain to me how there is any innovation or improvement in this type of medicine? If there is no competition, everyone gets the same damn thing, where will the innovation come from? When all doctors start getting the same paymennt, the only way to increase profits is to skimp on service. This is what happens in Australia, Canada (whose own government admits their program is a failure), and across Europe. Do we even need to discuss the Soviet Union? Social-ism IS for Nazis, because Nazis ARE social-ists.