Boycott Of GM Called

[limiman12]

I stand corrected (and apologize to anyone that I personally offended)if they are now demanding diplomas. Got the info from an someone that is older, but that I trust and I will corret him as well.... Did not mean it to be running people down. Actually saying that the smart thing to do personally was to take a good job instead of delaying income, racking up student debt in order to secure employment oppritunities that are no better then the job you could have gotten without an education. was any of the rest untrue, great benifits, good salary and ful retirement at a pretty early age??? Weather it be at starting at 16 or 18 still getting to retire early. Good for the person, not for the society when education is not valued as is the case in any area that has that kind of drop out rate.

Their wage would also increas ethe wage oher companies in the area would have to pay in order to hire good workers, and it pulls every wage up, or the "competing" industries leave the area to find lower labor costs, in other parts of this country or others. the other jobs leave, those that are mobile leave with them, the ones that aren't mobile are stuck which invites all of the social issues that were mentioned....

Still does not increase the odds of higher education when we are comparing RN salaries to manufacturing jobs. How will Obama ever get us all to go to college????

FWIW the "good" manufacturing jobs in the town I live pay 16-17 an hour, and they are the only plant in the company making a profit right now....

[honker88]

I don’t have an axe to grind. I just don’t believe the UAW is the villain you have made them out to be. I’m not anti-union.

I am pointing out the UAW is one of the major contributors to the auto industry's problems. The other contributors are government, management, and probably quality. I do lean a lot closer to the anit-union side of the fence. I think there are probably legitimate instances where unions still do good. I can't think of any, but there has to be some.

Second, I do believe capitalism works. In fact, one distinguishing feature of capitalism is that each person owns their own labor, and is therefore allowed to sell the use of it either singly or jointly to employers. Kind of sounds like what the UAW did, doesn’t it?

I guess I look at it differently. The way I look at it is; you perform your job to the best of your ability and always look to improve yourself and your company. If you do those things you shouldn't need the protection of a union. The union allows for the underacheivers to benefit from the overacheivers work. That is not right. That's why I say unions = mediocracy.

One last thing... I apologize for my tone and attitude in the last post.

[zeus3925]

This sounds racists. Don't get me wrong Zeus i know you didn't mean it that way at all but when you say detroit is in disaray because white people are leaving the area, looks kind of bad. Again i know you didn't mean it that way but when i first read it i was like, "what" lol

What I meant by that was that the people that had the skills to make the city go left for the burb's taking their tax paying ability with them. Realtors had a huge hand in this with their block tipping practices.

[zeus3925]

I am pointing out the UAW is one of the major contributors to the auto industry's problems. The other contributors are government, management, and probably quality. I do lean a lot closer to the anit-union side of the fence. I think there are probably legitimate instances where unions still do good. I can't think of any, but there has to be some.

I guess I look at it differently. The way I look at it is; you perform your job to the best of your ability and always look to improve yourself and your company. If you do those things you shouldn't need the protection of a union. The union allows for the underacheivers to benefit from the overacheivers work. That is not right. That's why I say unions = mediocracy.

Honker:

Please don't take what I have to say in an angry tone. Blackstone is in the auto industry. I grew up south of Detroit and people from my family have been involved in the car business for several generations now.

I think that if you pulled a shift in a car plant that very quickly you would realize they are not the the worker's nirvana you portray them as. The jobs in the plants are repetitive and boring. The working conditions are often uncomfortable and incredibly noisy, especially if you work in a stamping plant. I often went home after a 12 hour shift at Ford's resting my hands on the cross bars of the steering wheel, unable to grip the wheel because of the pain in my hands and arms. That pain did not go away for months after I left the company.

Management's attitudes toward line staff are often akin to a zookeeper's toward monkeys. A favorite term for GM management for non-management employees is "shop rat". (If I ran an auto company I would ban the term as the first order of business.) You don't get quality out of a workforce with that kind of attitude.

The auto plans have no room for a Horatio Alger story. The culture doesn't work that way. If all you do is bolt wheels to a chassis day in, day out there really is no way to demonstrate that you have improved yourself. Most plants work a 12 x 6 or a 12 x 7 week. Try going to school at the same time to improve yourself. You may not get noticed anyway.

I was talking to another member of my retriever club who was a UAW national committee man. He related a story about a woman that was refused permission to go to the bathroom at a Ford plant. She ended up soiling her pants on the line. Still she wasn't given permission to leave the line. When he went to bat for her he was reprimanded and given an eight day suspension.

[Buzz]

One problem with the wages the autoworkers make, is seen in the detroit drop out rate....

Why go to school, graduate from highschool, pay to go to college for four years, in order to earn a lower wage than a highschool drop out? Blackstone, if you are who I think you are we can debate it in person at the next circle of wisdom, you are one of the exceptions. Most people that "get a taste" of that kind of income won't go back to school. Good wage, early retirement etc are supposed to be the BENIFIT for going to school, not the incentive to drop out. Probably off the GM topic, but pretains to the whole social issue surronding it in cluding backlash from a lot of educated individuals NOT making that much. And also a DIRECT reason Obama's idea of every american going to college will never even come close.

I grew up in Detroit. This post tells me that you don't know the first thing about the Detroit Metro area, or it's people. The graduation rate there has nothing to do with the auto companies. Most of those who didn't graduate are spending their days on the street corner or out in front of a party store, drinking a 40 of malt liquor.

[honker88]

Honker:

Please don't take what I have to say in an angry tone. Blackstone is in the auto industry. I grew up south of Detroit and people from my family have been involved in the car business for several generations now.

I think that if you pulled a shift in a car plant that very quickly you would realize they are not the the worker's nirvana you portray them as. The jobs in the plants are repetitive and boring. The working conditions are often uncomfortable and incredibly noisy, especially if you work in a stamping plant. I often went home after a 12 hour shift at Ford's resting my hands on the cross bars of the steering wheel, unable to grip the wheel because of the pain in my hands and arms. That pain did not go away for months after I left the company.

Management's attitudes toward line staff are often akin to a zookeeper's toward monkeys. A favorite term for GM management for non-management employees is "shop rat". (If I ran an auto company I would ban the term as the first order of business.) You don't get quality out of a workforce with that kind of attitude.

The auto plans have no room for a Horatio Alger story. The culture doesn't work that way. If all you do is bolt wheels to a chassis day in, day out there really is no way to demonstrate that you have improved yourself. Most plants work a 12 x 6 or a 12 x 7 week. Try going to school at the same time to improve yourself. You may not get noticed anyway.

I was talking to another member of my retriever club who was a UAW national committee man. He related a story about a woman that was refused permission to go to the bathroom at a Ford plant. She ended up soiling her pants on the line. Still she wasn't given permission to leave the line. When he went to bat for her he was reprimanded and given an eight day suspension.

I didn't take your response negatively at all.

I work in a manufacuring plant myself, although not on the plant floor. I totally repect the work that is done by the folks out in the shop. I come from a family on both sides that is very blue collar. It's in my blood. I wasn't trying to portray individual UAW members as primadonnas in any way. My critizism of the UAW is directed towards the organization as a whole. Most unions have a take, take, take or a me, me, me attitude. They really don't care about the company's well being. It appears to me that the UAW definately has that mentallity. They took all they could get out of the big 3 to the detriment of the companies and the UAW members. That's part of why I say management played a major role. They rolled over and let the UAW take too much.

The story you told about the woman in the Ford plant is ridiculous and absurd. Nobody should have to deal with that type of treatment. Obviously there is more to that story, because on the surface it doesn't pass the common sense test.

A big part of my problem with unions is that they reward the folks that don't deserve to be rewarded. In any company you have superstars (people that give 100%, know everything, and don't complain) and you have the duds (people that half-a$$ everything, constantly complain, or do everything they can to get out of doing a task). The unions protect the duds that are a drag on the rest of the members and the company. That's not right, and it's not good for the company or the other union members.

[zeus3925]

I didn't take your response negatively at all.

.
The story you told about the woman in the Ford plant is ridiculous and absurd. Nobody should have to deal with that type of treatment. Obviously there is more to that story, because on the surface it doesn't pass the common sense test.

The source of the story is a well respected and he is widely known in the retriever community . His honesty is impeccable.

I once went 14 hours of a 21 hour stint without seeing a white shirt. They simply forgot that they put me on that station. I had to pee behind a parts bin, an offense that could have got me fired. When I finally saw a white shirt and whistled him over, they weren't going to let me go home.

My experience with the UAW isn't that draconian as you see them. I once lead an effort to prevent a bill that would have destroyed the Porcupine Mountains State Park, Michigan's crown jewel park. I called the UAW seeking assistance. Even though I was not a member at that point, they ponied up a team of 3 lobbyists plus a Union VP within two hours. We won that fight but it was the UAW that turned the tide.

[Hew]

My experience with the UAW isn't that draconian as you see them. I once lead an effort to prevent a bill that would have destroyed the Porcupine Mountains State Park, Michigan's crown jewel park. I called the UAW seeking assistance. Even though I was not a member at that point, they ponied up a team of 3 lobbyists plus a Union VP within two hours. We won that fight but it was the UAW that turned the tide.

That's comforting to know that a portion of the money I spent on my last GM paid for three lobbyists and a union honcho to work on a state park in Michigan. Heaven forbid they spend their time on, oh, I don't know....automobiles maybe? That makes me want to rush right out and buy another GM so I can fund some more union payback, lobbying, influence peddlin' and pet projects.

[honker88]

The source of the story is a well respected and he is widely known in the retriever community . His honesty is impeccable.

Not questioning this honesty. I'm just saying based on the short synopsis you gave there has to be more to the story. Why was the guy who stood up for her suspended. Why wasn't she allowed to go? etc. I'm not saying that it's excusable to not let her use the restroom, there must be more to the story.

[honker88]

That's comforting to know that a portion of the money I spent on my last GM paid for three lobbyists and a union honcho to work on a state park in Michigan. Heaven forbid they spend their time on, oh, I don't know....automobiles maybe? That makes me want to rush right out and buy another GM so I can fund some more union payback, lobbying, influence peddlin' and pet projects.

I completely understand where you are coming from on this. If somebody chooses to not buy a product from a company because that company donates to specific causes, I have no problem with it. Just keep in mind that many large companies donate money to various causes. Many of those organizations/causes are very contriversial.

My only point with this is that it's not uncommon for companies to donate to organizations and causes that have nothing to do with their business.