VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION General Discussions GM good & bad news...

National news tonight; GM laid off 25,000 workers...will ripple effect a lot of other workers.

GM TV ad yesterday and today that I saw; their new sale "everyone now gets the employee discount when buying a new vehicle from GM"

Looks like GM needs to rethink the type of vehicles people want...

Sure hope that they get their act together without dropping more marques.

Look again-I think it said plans to lay them off by 2008 or some thing like that.
GM can not continue to pay past as well as present employees and make enough money to be competitive.

Think American and BUY GM-or go to Korea and try to make a living building their cars.

gator,

and this would be just the first step...gm's a lot of issues right now affecting their profitability...so much so that bankruptcy is a real possibility, if it doesn't take drastic measures to quickly right the ship...


epi

Hey Gator,

I also saw where they are coming out with a new model - but I never saw what it was. I'm glad I bought my new farm truck this year with the "327".

But.......no matter the outcome you can bet your bippy that the CEO will still get his multi-millons per year! :( :( :(

http://www.forbes.com/static/execpa...on&uniqueId=SOX2&datatype=Person

yeah, dog...ain't that the sad truth...and a whole bunch of his cronies near the top, too...


epi

lets see: mopars now owned by the germans, Fo-rd in bed with the brits. guess that leaves the Fiat folks to buy up our beloved GM if they take a crap.chevegene's got it right- i'll keep buying chevys even if the tundras are half the price.can't see me working in china or japan. my 2 cents. mike

There is no practical reason automobile executives at GM are compensated the large pay packages they receive. Likewise, there is no objective basis for providing hourly personnel the over $20/hour pay they receive to assemble automobiles. Heck, most of us on this board assemble our own cars for free.

No golden parachutes for the workers...only for the overpaid bosses if they are ever let go.

Some folks are finding that the Golden parachutes are in fact a hod of bricks that have been sold as a parachute!

The whole thing is upside down. Not likely it will ever turn right-side-up. Look what happened when the "Big 3" kept making the monster size cars into the 70's. Then GM/Chevy finally built a TERRIFIC big car - the 94-96 Impala SS - and they closed Arlington to build TRUCKS!! The only reason, more profit!! Allso because after spending millions, likely billions, in promo to convince the buying public that they wanted a 'truck' they can't stop building trucks!

It seems like the results of a 3 martini lunch with an ad guy, a politician and a lawyer!! Good luck to all of us.

HOWEVER, altho this country has many, many problems it's #1 by such a wide margin that whoever is in second place might as well be in 5th place.

Go USA!!!

Bill.

I'm sorry guys but this is a real hot button for me after I got burnt buying a new Jimmy and having nothing but poor quality problems one after another. It makes me boil when I hear the higher ups blaming the unions and health care costs when the problem is they are building poor quality automobiles. How many cars have wheel bearings go bad in 16k miles, rotor castings that flake apart in 14k miles, ball joints that fail in 40k miles, seat mechanisms that have broken 3 times in 54k miles, door hinge pins that failed causing the door to fall off? I could go on.
None of those probelms have anything to do with engineering department or the factory guys putting the vehicles together. It's the management making the calls on the quality of components that goes into the vehicles. If the quality were good, the sales would be good and GM would just have to cut costs (i.e. health care etc.) The fact of the matter is very few people are buying their product because they don't want to pay $20k+ for a piece of junk and that is the real crux of the problem. When you think of all of the people that work directly or indirectly for GM many Americans are suffering because of these stupid decisions. It is really sad to think GM is giving the industry away.

"there is no objective basis for providing hourly personnel the over $20/hour pay they receive to assemble automobiles."

You just can't single out the paid workers at GM since many working folks around the country now get over $20 per hour. UPS drivers are a good example, so are contracted letter carriers, electricians, and the list goes on and on. Around here.......at $20 per hour, it is awful hard for some folks to survive because of the high cost of living, the property tax base and etc. :eek: :eek: :( :( :(

hey dog...I agree that it's not fair to single out any one issue...not the hourly employees (110,000 for now), the highly compensated execs, the over one million people (employees current & past, and their eligible dependents) that participate in the health plan, the quality of the vehicles (okay, I admit that my most recent gm purchase was the '97 silverado, which has had only two minor interior trim issues during warranty, but no problems whatsoever since), the pension fund, the over-reliance on truck & suv sales, the rising cost of gasoline, under-investment in production facilities, competition (and remember that many "foreign" makes are produced here)...it's all of the above, and more...

and their own nummi partnership & plant is profitable & productive...can't they apply anything from that?..


epi

Hum........sounds like you have just described many of the major corporations throughout the USA! :cool2:

Seems as all of these conversations happened before, about when Nero saw flames and smelled the smoke about 1900 years ago!

Wake up America!

When gas cost is near $2.50 a gallon you really think $20 an hour is a good wage? Very sad! Also FYI, as an electrician who works for a contractor the last time I made $20 an hour was well over 20 years ago! It takes just a little more training to be an electrician than a mailman, so the pay should be more. A fair days work for a fair days pay! The Auto Workers brought us many things that WE have ALL learned to appreciate, such as a 40 hour week, overtime, even things like a day off for our family, along with hospitalization. A worker is only as productive as the supervision is efficient.

I am trying to stay true to GM I just purchased a 05 Cobalt it seems to be a well put together car but only time will tell gets great gas mileage that was one of the main reasons for the purchase much better then the 01 Silverado I guess what I'm trying to say is i want Gm to be around a whlie so it's my little contribution to help keep em going

Well i think MrsMack and I helped out, We bought an 2005 Tahoe, Mrs Mack wanted one with a warrenty and onstar! our old 02 Tahoe had almost 100,000 on the odometer and the only repair was a running light bulb (no charge from our friendly all GM dealer in Comanche, TX) many of the miles was pulling a car hauling trailer with either the 28 sedan or the 53 2 door sedan. I like all the bells and whistles once I got used to them, I really like the MPG rolling total and the indivigual tire pressure monitors. MPG has settled down to 20.3 at 75 mph and 10.1 at 65 towing the enclosed trailer loaded.

Also it was built by our good neighbors in Arlington, Texas!

Any of you folks ever read this web site?http://www.autoextremist.com It's a weekly publication that I've followed for over three years now, comes on line with a new issue every Wednesday, and I believe a lot of the Auto Execs read it or at least get word of it's content on a routine basis. I have it flagged as one of my Favorites. This weeks issue is pretty mild when compared to some of its past Rants.

I can't believe it! What the heck is happening to our country! Every American worker is being laid off and replaced by the Japanese or Mexicans. What ever happened to the days when EVERYTHING was "Made in America" and "import" was an unfamiliar term? GM has to stick in there, or there is going to be a heck of a lot of very unhappy people in this country! If GM goes under, bye bye cruel world! There would be no reason to live!

A person I know well just got a new Nissan full size pick up, when I said he should buy American he said that more of his truck was made in America than my 2003 Silverodo.

Sad if he is right....don't know???

gator, he's probably right...if it's a truck, I think it's probably assembled at smyrna, tn, with the powertrain coming from another tn plant...I think the minivans & other models are assembled in ms...

so, bob, it's too easy to look to pointing the finger at other nations (they're just doing what they need to do for their own livelihoods, same as we would)...if nissan can produce these vehicles in america and market them with a 5-10% margin, why can't gm?..

my silverado was built in canada...


epi

Do you think this is being done (layoffs) to grab some government attention and in return some "sympathetic" contracts, similar to Chrysler in the early 80's? I am sure that there is a bigger picture that has been figured out a long time ago that we will never know. The made in America issue has been coming at us for a long time. I remember a few years ago attending an Army Football game at West Point. At the souvenir stand we could not find one hat or sweatshirt that was made in the USA.
John

The top 3 GM plant for quality are Canadian according to the JD Powers survey. We in North America are under a Free Trade agreement that included Mexico. GM workers in Canada have their Health Care benifits the same as US workers. But the basic Health Care is provided by each and every Tax Payer in each Province (like a State). This lower GM over all production costs by $1500.00 per vehicle. We also have several Japanies plants in Ontario. We export to the US about 80% of our production. All the manufactures of parts as well as Honda, ****, Chrysler enjoy this same benifit. We the not employed at the car plant or retired pay with our tax dollars to provide the benifits enjoyed by GM and the others. The profits are returned to the Mother Company for each of these companies. China is your's and our biggest threat. Look beyond Japan, Korea to the Billion's waiting to get you life style. GM is already there with assembly plants paid for by you and me. As are most of their larger suppliers. The pensions and benifits and early retirements are only part of the isssue.