.

In some cases extorted is a better word. No reasonable person or CEO would agree to terms the UAW demands without extortion. 70+ dollars total compensation an hour to put on speedodometer needles is just plain silly and cannot be sustained. So the UAW dug at least part of the grave but refuse to do anything to help fill it in. Where else in the world is it EXPECTED to be paid 90% of your pay to be laid off? Then collect unemployment too!!

It almost seems unbelievable that at one time the Jobs Bank program made sense. Ahhh, the good old days. It certainly needed to go along time ago.

Mark, 65 hours? That would be a short week for me!

100% agree.

Everything was agreed to by management and it is called bargaining. Hard decisions have to be made by upper management from time to time and if those highly paid "managers" are unable to do so then get rid of them. As a possible investor I would expect nothing less.

When the GM CEO earns 15.7 million dollars in 2007 (up from 9.57 million dollars in 2006) and the company had a record loss of $13 billion (yes, 13 billion American dollars)
Fritz Henderson, who was promoted to president and chief operating officer in March, received compensation of about $9.3 million in 2007, up from about $5.1 million in 2006.
Vice Chairman Bob Lutz's compensation rose to about $9 million in 2007, from about $5.1 million in 2006. The product chief's salary was raised to $1.75 million, from $1.3 million.

And you talk about a UAW member's wage and the fact that he or she works overtime and earns more than some white collar worker. The fact that a white collar worker may have a degree does not entitle him or her to anything more or less than a blue collar worker.

Mark

I tip my hat to you for going it alone and taking the risk.
I have been there as well. Sold out when I had enough.

Mark

I'm not defending the CEOs. They gave up their salaries, what has the union given up?



Yea they can get rid of the managers, unlike a union employee. My wife worked with people caught dealing drugs at work, a 70 some year old lady who could not even find her way to work half the time so they would send someone out looking for her and then she would sleep all night. Then there was the guy who showed up with a note from a Dr that said he had to take naps so the union made them get him a cot. There was also a shop steward that was out on bail pending appeal after he was convicted of murder, of a co worker/girlfriend. The union even had something to do with him getting bail which I guess he would not have normally gotten. This is just one plant in a non union town/state. Imagine what it's like in Detroit?

All this crap but yet the non union folks at Mercedes here got paid a whole dollar an hour less which is the difference in their union dues pretty much.

I'm not anti hourly worker, hell I was one for many many years. I am anti UAW and anti
union in general. The have out lived their purpose. Ask the many folks who used to have union jobs at places like Dunlap and Goodyear whose plants don't exsist anymore cause the were not cost competitive. What good did the UAW do them, white or blue collar?

Big difference in giving up $15 million a year to someone who is living paycheck to paycheck.
How about every single leader below him down to the salary supervisor. I am a firm believer in; If you are a leader, then lead by example. If you are demanding pay cuts and concessions by the unions then lead the way as a leader. After all, you are paid to be a leader. Monkey see, then monkey do.
I have already stated in past posts that there is things the union should give up. eg job bank, pay after lay off. There is no argument along those lines, only regarding white collar workers who think and demand that union give up a lot more.

Mark

I didn't say every person on the assembly line, nor every person without a college education, fit that description. I'm sure you don't, and based on your post I expect (and hope) that you'll do extremely well in your career without "representation." We both know, however, that the UAW, and labor unions in general, have fought for many people who do fit the description.

And just as many white collar workers fit that description.

And who is fighting for those deadbeat white collar employees' jobs? And who is volunteering to pay their overtime? And where is the lament in the media over the loss of their jobs?

They too can join the union, but they choose or chose not to. So who should represent them?

I say again, there are good and bad in blue collar and white collar. Typically, a lot of jealousy over the pay scales of the union worker clouds a lot of minds in the white collar group.

Mark

Jealousy?? Not from me. I will make my career and succeed or fail on my own without the "help" of an organization that considers me a pawn. I reserve some of my highest respect for those blue collar workers who approach their lives with the same attitude.

Unions served a very real and important purpose for many years in this country. That was a long time ago.

Glad to hear it. Funny how with the demise of the unions has also seen the decline of the middle class over the years.
I still maintain that for the Big 3 to succeed, all workers, white, blue and starched are going to have to make a concerted effort. And I maintain that all leaders across all levels should lead the way and take pay cuts or whatever they want the union membership to accept.

Mark

OK

The UAW does not need to go away. They do, however need to make some changes to survive.

1. trim the fat. if you are going to make the claim that you are the best workforce around, you had better back it up. Dead weight members bring the whole orginization down.

2. less fighting with management and more cooperation. this one goes for management, too.

3. make the worker accountable.

4. make the labor officials accountable.

There is alot more, but I'll leave it at that, and I won't touch the money side of it.

and if you don't think that can happen, it can. It's already happening in the skilled trades.

When that "educated beyond his intelligence" snob needs his Escalade worked on I'll bet he wants a trained, skilled, experienced, career mechanic to fix it.
I am college educated (advanced degree) but found long ago that depending on someone else to provide me with the lifestyle and freedom I want wasn't going to happen, so I became experienced and started my own business (4 or 5 times) and blame no one else for my failure, and credit no one else for my success. I've also found that the most successful people I meet and the happiest are people who found something they liked and were good at and had the guts to go it alone (this is America for goodness sake).
Some examples: I sold a 33' Doral to a 32 yr old for cash who while in high school learned to dry wall, and never went to college. He now is a very successful and skilled home builder who hires college educated accountants and lawyers to do the little things he doesn't have time for.
Another, I sold a 38' Donzi, for cash, to a high school drop out who started going around to lumber yards and getting paid to haul away their saw dust, he now makes wood pellets from it and has 4 or 5 Tractor trailers hauling wood pellets around the Northeast.
No wasted money on college, and no bitching about how bad their boss or company treats them. I know many others with the same story.

Lets keep in mind how short-term managements vision is. They have agreed to anything that the UAW has gotten, even if they know it is crazy. Why? They don't want to take the chance of a strike which would be very costly to the company in the short-term and no doubt cost the CEO his job. The CEO doesn't care about the long-term health of the company because he will get his dough and be gone in a few years. Sounds a little like government? It's quarter to quarter thinking with no long term personal investment. Same with UAW management. What do I get NOW? So, here we are on the edge of a cliff.

What to do? Blow these companies apart, find some real leaders/statesmen and make everybody an owner with a chunk of the profits; both short and long term. Exec pay limited to a couple of times the pay of people on the line. Bonus' for all, even UAW management if they are still even needed, based on longer term profitability of the company. Same with the good 'ol boys know as the BOD's. I know this has been tried elsewhere with poor results, but what are the other choices?

Sorry, I didn't sleep well last night. I think I just saw a swine fly by!

100% agree with bperg and heyboer. There's nothing about a college degree in and of itself that means anything other than you had the money and nerves to stick it out for 4 years. I have the utmost respect for BCW's who take their profession seriously; I've thought many times about becoming one myself. The fact that most of them in this area are union jobs is one of the many reasons I haven't.

I predict that one of the results of the phase we're moving into now will be a renewed respect for the trained electrician, plumber (and yes, auto assembly line worker), etc. And hopefully more of a realization on their part that unions do more to hold them back than to help them.

A group of Sales and Marketing experts were given the
assignment of measuring the height of a flagpole.
Wearing suits and ties, they marched out to the flagpole
with their ladders and tape measures, falling all over
themselves to get an accurate reading.

An engineer comes along and sees what they're trying to
do. He walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground,
measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to
one of the so-called experts, puts the pole back vertically
into its slot in the ground, and walks away.

After the engineer has gone, the sales guy turns to the
marketing guy and laughs, “Isn’t that just like an engineer?”
he says. “We’re looking for the height, and he gives us
the length.”

As much as the suits make---Mark rattled off numbers that totaled around $36 million in salaries-- for them to drop their wages isn't much more than a "goodwill gesture". The company lost thirteen thousand million bucks. That's equivalent to making 4 theives pay a fine of 1 cent each for stealing $130...

interesting that now some are complaining that the "rich" people loosing fortunes in Madoff scandal isn't the tragedy. The tragedy is that they are letting service personnel go and they are the real sufferers. What goes around comes around, rich people need to be taxed more so they cannot afford the luxury of employing people and their higher taxes (on lower income) gors to unemployment pay for those now unseated.
UAW is the real culprit in this mess (management too) the current workers are for sure not the ones who have created it and probably not the current mgmt. The sufferers potentially and the ones who supported UAW mob bosses in the past, are the retirees with all their benefits. They will need a bailout no one else as a restructuring would give work to the others who are good at it and can adjust to new requirements.

The other side of the coin then when someone gives up their salary is what kind of motivation the "owners" are expecting these managers to have to pull them out of this mess?
They also need cashflow to pay for their bills and their holding probably having lost up to 50% of their value and more of their returns could be hurting. No one is making it up for them because they may not have a mortgage.
So bottom line is that the diligent ones are the ones to pay for those who have not saved anything but lived high (over their means) and are now in trouble..... where is justice in this society?
So we are all happy that the wealth is being shared now and that it comes out of our wallets, the 95% who still work and the portion who pays taxes (not the politicians).
My short version..