GM news...Wagoner outed

[Offshoredrillin]

Maybe not an exact analogy, but if I loose a family of patients, 4 whatever reason, they move, they don't like my Cologne, whatever, am I gauranteed I will fill those spots, NO! Sure I post during the day while waiting 4 x-rays or gaps between patients, or no show patients, etc!! Not only do I not make $ if my hands R not wet & in somebodys mouth but I am actually go'n backwards fast, multiple girls on the clock, mal practice ins, office ins., work comp, utilities, lab bills, prop taxes & on & on!! Nobody pays me 2 do nothing! Nobody wants people 2 B work'n w/ dental ins. anymore than me!

Its a shame more people dont understand this. I recently had a dealership go to another installer that undercut me by 275 dollars per car. That installer isn't a legitimate business entity and carries no insurance, and works out of his spare bedroom of his condo. Ok it's a free enterprise, but I highlighted everything to the dealer and let them know what they got with me and told them like themselves, it costs money to run my business even when I'm not installing. I carry 1 million dollar shop keepers insurance and use premium films that last the longest in the industry, they wanted cheap, well the brand new 95K 750 I BMW that the guy did looks like hell after 2 weeks and just sitting on the sales floor, he CUT the paint and had to do the car twice. How can he make any profit?
GM needs to file and restructure, they wouldn't even miss a day, get rid of the union contracts and take the guys making 50 bucks an hour offer them 30 and benefits that the company controls NOT the union. they would only lose one shift, if that and overnight would be right back to being competitive, and then release the camaro and sales will skyrocket. when I left the teamsters in 99, UPS was paying 13000.00 per year to the teamsters for my benefits. I bought the same benefits from NASE for 220 per month. Sorry but unions have outlived their usefulness by being greedy.

 

[cuda]

One of them was actually told by his union boss to work slower, he ws getting too much done and it was pizzing off the rest of the slackers and making them look bad. Desides the union said only so much work can be done in an hour and that is all he was allowed to do.

I had a guy that worked for me, that told another guy to slow down, it was making him look bad.

Needless to say, he no longer works for me, because there is no union to protect his lazy azz from losing his job.
Better that he look bad, than me look broke.

 

[Ratickle]

What do you call the House Voting today giving Gietner the ability to limit the pay of 500 bank CEOs & Management 99% of which are profitable? Before it was only the banks that took $5 billion or more, now it applies to all the banks.

Getting hard to defend isn't it. thank god our founding fathers had two houses, at least the senate is doing what it's supposed to do, at least to this point.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/01/house.bonus.bill/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to give the Treasury Department the power to ban future "unreasonable and excessive" compensation at companies receiving federal bailout money.


The bill would give Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner greater say on executive compensation.

The Pay for Performance Act of 2009, which passed by a vote of 237-171, would empower Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to define what constitutes reasonable compensation, as well as to ban bonuses not based on performance standards. Geithner's guidelines would apply to companies receiving assistance from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

I actually have no problem with it. That CEO's think they can take taxpayer money, and still live the style they used too except on our dime, is absolute bull. If they don't want strict oversight, don't take the money.

 

[Ratickle]

Sorry but unions have outlived their usefulness by being greedy.

I'll make one small disagreement. Large unions have outlived their usefulness, or even place in society. Small, local company unions, are usually an asset to a company. They usually make it easy to improve almost all aspects of a business. It's when some bonehead small group can shutdown a worldwide multi-billion corporation with no repercussions that it is absurd, and should be illegal.

5 years ago 400,000 union employees at Chrysler and GM. Today, 120,000 and sinking fast. And the union management still doesn't get it. "We've given up enough." The stupid F's even had a strike. American Axle shut GM's most profitable plants down. Now they're ready to file.

It was the Union President of the Steelmills, I believe, who said "I would rather have one union employee making $100 per hour than 1000 union employees making $10 per hour." He got neither. (My Dad was a steel worker).

 

[Knot 4 Me]

I grew up in a Union family (UAW Local 974). I've got no use for big Unions as they existed in the late 70's through today. They damn near crippled our family on several occasions. I was proud of my Dad when he crossed the line in '92 and finished his career out working for the company. Had he not crossed the line, he would still be working at age 68 instead of being 6 years retired now. Like he said in '92, "Son, I'm just a whore to the company and the Union. Who pays me more?".

 

[Ms PatriYacht]

Paul are you suggesting that they take away the retiree benefits, unfortunately that's really where the bulk of the costs are. Current workers pay and benefits are less then 10% of the cost of the car, and are on par with Foreign automakers. Since 03 wages and benefits have been greatly reduced on the news this morning they said by something like 59%, I am not sure where they got that number, but I will admit is seems high. Why do you think they can make a profit on a truck but not a car?

There are no union workers that make $50.00 an hour. The highest paid workers make about $35.00, in some companies some of those jobs might even be considered engineers. These are jobs that take years of schooling and training to learn. Ian designs complicated multi million dollar stamping dies on a computer program that has taken many college classes and years of training (not at the same pay) to learn. Other types of jobs that pay close to the top are master electricians, think of the level of skill and knowledge that is required to wire large production equipment safely so the place does not burn down or blow up. If I was working there I certainly would not want to trust that job to someone that was willing to work for $10.00 an hour. In my sales job I have often gone on to the production floor to meet with engineers and purchasing people to discuss problems they are having with a piece of equipment my filter goes in. In almost every instance an hourly worker, is called in to our conversation because they are the only one that really understand how the equipment operates, these are skill sets that I think are grossly underestimated by the general populous.

I am not really pro union and neither is Ian, we are to conservative for that. I am for treating workers fairly and for paying them a decent wage for their skill level and for not reneging on a promise made to people 50 years ago when they started working. I also can't help but defend the fact that there are so many smart and skilled workers out there that are almost despised because of of this country's mind set about what they are worth. And most of those views are based on information over ten years old, and the fact that they have heard of an hourly worker slacking off. So now it's no longer cool to be blue collar and frankly that scares me for the future of our country. It's probably because just about every school age kid hears you have to go to college no matter what. I heard it just the other day, someone said I told my kid I don't care what you study just get that degree. So now there are droves of kids in universities studying who knows what from liberal professors just to get a degree.

The main reason the United States rose to be one of the most powerful nations is because we produced things. But now the rest of the world has caught up and can do it cheaper and often without the restrictions that make it a level playing field. So what do we do, I guess we build factories in other countries and put those people to work. Then we force the people still here to take reductions in pay and benefits, which for someone in the 40's with fixed expenses does nothing to help our economy. And on top of it less and less of our young people are interested in doing the backbone work because they are in college trying to get a degree, heaven forbid they would learn a trade and become a lowly hourly worker.

Our country is our own worst enemy, we build other countries up with aide and technology support and then gobble up as much of their cheap imports as we can. Yet we can't drill for new oil, and have such stringent environmental polices that it's hard to run a large industrial plant without spending millions to insure we don't speed up Global Warming. Now on top of the auto companies problems, they are being forced to spend billions they don't have to develop cars most of us don't want to drive, just so we can achieve better gas mileage and not use our precious energy that supposedly there is a severe lack of. I better quit before I continue to ramble any longer:ack2:

 

[boatme]

Simple question

Not related to engineers or degreed individuals

Why should a guy (or Girl) working on a stamping press make $30 an hour and big benifits when
a nurse,emt,teacher,pilot (comuter plane) does not make that much money per hour ??

 

[Ratickle]

Paul are you suggesting that they take away the retiree benefits, unfortunately that's really where the bulk of the costs are.

Unfortunately, yes. Those over 62 will get 80% of it covered by medicare/medicaid, at our (taxpayer) expense. They will lose Dental, etc. And they will get to keep 80% of their pension I believe. I think the balance of the problem can be solved with the two tier wage structures they are using.

However, that is the only way they will survive long term.


When Clinton signed NAFTA and gave China Most Favored Trading Status, they knew this would happen. They also knew it would take some years because companies don't automatically fold when new competition takes their markets away. So, we were extremely prosperous for a few years because we all could buy stuff cheaply and still make what we were making. But then, nothing else can happen except what's going on. Either our standard of living gets lowered to match theirs, or theirs comes up to meet ours. We will meet somewhere in the middle, I think....

 

[Ratickle]

Simple question

Not related to engineers or degreed individuals

Why should a guy (or Girl) working on a stamping press make $30 an hour and big benifits when
a nurse,emt,teacher,pilot (comuter plane) does not make that much money per hour ??

It happened for one simple reason. The union wanted it too. No free markets until the imports got to build cars here with no excise tax penalties. Free markets are shaking it out very hard now. Too hard almost.

 

[Ratickle]

Why do you think they can make a profit on a truck but not a car?

No free market competition until very recently. That's when they had to lower prices to compete with the new SUV's from everyone and the new Full Sized pickups from a few...

 

[Von Bongo]

That CEO's think they can take taxpayer money, and still live the style they used too except on our dime, is absolute bull. If they don't want strict oversight, don't take the money.

Now lets turn that around, I assume you have a loan of some kind, house, boat, car. If not good for you! Serious.

(TARP is a LOAN, it isn't ADC, that pays the govenment $9 BILLION (best Dr. Evil voice) a year in dividends, ever wonder if you will see any of that dividend? It's taxpayer money right?)

Now again lets say you have a loan and today the bank calls and says, Mr. Ratickle, we loaned you this money a while back and until you repay it you can no longer take vacations, put your kids in soccer, take your boat out on the weekends. No more living like a king until you pay us back. Oh by the way if you want to pay us back we are going to look at your financial status to make sure you won't be under undo pressure, we wouldn't want your savings to suffer by paying us back so, we may or may not let you pay off early, we'll let you know. Remember only to work and back until we're paid off! Sorry but if you didn't want these restrictions you shouldn't have borrowed our money.

Sound absurd? Welcome to TARP.

My closing thought. $9 billion a year is being repaid in the form of a dividend to the government for the TARP funds, thats assuming that $199 billion has been loaned out of the $700 billion that was pledged. remember how worked up everyone was over $700 BILLION (My best Dr. Evil voice). So far not even 1/3rd has been used and on a good note the remaining 2/3rds likely won't be.

Mr. Taxpayer, why are't you upset over of the $9 billion a year you won't see a dime? You raise holy hell about AIG paying $200 million of payments that the government knew were comming but didn't tell you about. But a sum 45 times that amount will be paid yearly FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS that is a return on the TAXPAYERS loan to the banks. You won't see a dime and you won't so much as question why? I guess it's OK for the government to steal from you, at least you're used to it.

 

[Ratickle]

There are no union workers that make $50.00 an hour.

True, the avarage Toyota worker makes more per hour than the average GM worker. The benefits for the average GM worker is what makes the expense to the company too great to compete apples to apples.

I believe Toyotas is about $11 per hour additional cost and GM's is about $23 per hour additional cost.

 

[Ratickle]

Now lets turn that around, I assume you have a loan of some kind, house, boat, car. If not good for you! Serious.

(TARP is a LOAN, it isn't ADC, that pays the govenment $9 BILLION (best Dr. Evil voice) a year in dividends, ever wonder if you will see any of that dividend? It's taxpayer money right?)

Now again lets say you have a loan and today the bank calls and says, Mr. Ratickle, we loaned you this money a while back and until you repay it you can no longer take vacations, put your kids in soccer, take your boat out on the weekends. No more living like a king until you pay us back. Oh by the way if you want to pay us back we are going to look at your financial status to make sure you won't be under undo pressure, we wouldn't want your savings to suffer by paying us back so, we may or may not let you pay off early, we'll let you know. Remember only to work and back until we're paid off! Sorry but if you didn't want these restrictions you shouldn't have borrowed our money.

Sound absurd? Welcome to TARP.

My closing thought. $9 billion a year is being repaid in the form of a dividend to the government for the TARP funds, thats assuming that $199 billion has been loaned out of the $700 billion that was pledged. remember how worked up everyone was over $700 BILLION (My best Dr. Evil voice). So far not even 1/3rd has been used and on a good note the remaining 2/3rds likely won't be.

Mr. Taxpayer, why are't you upset over of the $9 billion a year you won't see a dime? You raise holy hell about AIG paying $200 million of payments that the government knew were comming but didn't tell you about. But a sum 45 times that amount will be paid yearly FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS that is a return on the TAXPAYERS loan to the banks. You won't see a dime and you won't so much as question why? I guess it's OK for the government to steal from you, at least you're used to it.

If I miss one payment, or go apply for an additional loan, etc, they will do exactly that. I have a friend who's house was foreclosed on because he moved. Didn't miss one single payment. Every home loan has a clause about your principle place of residence.

I do agree with you that the rules should have been put in place first, not modified after the fact. But, no one thought they would be dumb enough to pay out bonuses, go to parties, have vacation trips, on a loan that essentially kept them out of bankruptcy. They could not have gotten those loans from any other lender. Dumb on their part, now they all have to pay for the idiocy of a few....

You have someone foreclose and then go try to get a loan, see how well you do. Most banks will put a controller in your business office to approve every cent.

 

[LaughingCat]

I think my IQ just dropped 10 points. . . and that's just from skimming this thread.


:rofl:

 

[Ms PatriYacht]

Paul, Ian has seen lazy and incompetent workers both in union and management positions and most are protected by their bosses or the system. Don't think only union workers are protected, management at GM has always be quick to protect their own whenever possible. Often in Ian's job to proceed to the next step in a design he needs information from a manager. Unfortunately it is not un common that he sits idle because he can't get the information he needs in a timely manner. I am sure there are many reasons for this, but very often it is not because they are so overworked, they slack off as well. He often complains about how frustrating it is to sit and wait while he could be working on the project, he also seems to regularly get wrong information or direction because of the lack of understanding the manager has about the die projects he is managing. He also has had instances where he argued his point on a design issue to no avail with his boss and then was forced to go ahead and design something that he knew would not work. On a few occasions this has caused problems with a die that was put into production and the changes that were needed cost millions. In these instances everything is always traced back to where the problem originated and lucky for him he kept documentation. In none of these instances was a person let go, or a manager demoted. I am not posting this because Ian is so great, I am sure he does his fair share of slaking off and I am sure he has made mistakes. I post this because I am sick and tired of reading only about union workers that slack off.

 

[Ratickle]

Paul, Ian has seen lazy and incompetent workers both in union and management positions and most are protected by their bosses or the system. Don't think only union workers are protected, management at GM has always be quick to protect their own whenever possible. Often in Ian's job to proceed to the next step in a design he needs information from a manager. Unfortunately it is not un common that he sits idle because he can't get the information he needs in a timely manner. I am sure there are many reasons for this, but very often it is not because they are so overworked, they slack off as well. He often complains about how frustrating it is to sit and wait while he could be working on the project, he also seems to regularly get wrong information or direction because of the lack of understanding the manager has about the die projects he is managing. He also has had instances where he argued his point on a design issue to no avail with his boss and then was forced to go ahead and design something that he knew would not work. On a few occasions this has caused problems with a die that was put into production and the changes that were needed cost millions. In these instances everything is always traced back to where the problem originated and lucky for him he kept documentation. In none of these instances was a person let go, or a manager demoted. I am not posting this because Ian is so great, I am sure he does his fair share of slaking off and I am sure he has made mistakes. I post this because I am sick and tired of reading only about union workers that slack off.

I did not say only union workers, management started this mess and have done nothing to improve it. The post where I say if anyone thinks $10 or $20 billion will fix it they should be sitting on the GM board of directors is accurate. I think that's what Obama's guys told him and that's why GM's Pres is gone.

 

[Ms PatriYacht]

Paul
My post was in reference to the comment below that was in one of your posts. Plenty of management workers are lazy and incompetent and not only are they are often protected many are even promoted. For every bad worker there are hundreds of good ones.

And, Donna, I have nothing against the hard workers at GM or anywhere else. But, you cannot tell me that Ian hasn't seen the Union protect the lazy and commented on it. I have a very good friend who may lose his job in Saginaw, but if they don't do something to change NOW, it will all be gone.

 

[Ratickle]

For every bad worker there are hundreds of good ones.

I have no reason to disagree. I know at least 8 good ones and only one who uses the system.

 

[boatme]

I have no reason to disagree. I know at least 8 good ones and only one who uses the system.

I know the other 7 LOL

 

[Ms PatriYacht]

Paul that's good at least we agree a little:kiss: now I am going to do my best to stay off this thread, it's not like you all don't know my opinion by now
Here I am defending the non slackers when I have spent the better part of the morning being one, I gotta go do some work:willy_nilly: does anyone need a filter......

Marc *&%%++$ don't get me started:biggrinjester: