Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

[cjforumadmin]

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/Friday-Excuse-to-Go-Home-and-Drink-Depression-in-Detroit.html

[Mr4Speed]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

I don't have a socialist bone in my body but I'm going to have to call shenanigans here.


$8,500,000 CEO bonus / 500 employees = $17,000 per laborer.

$17,000 / 52 weeks = $326.92 per person per week or $8.17 per person per hour for all 500 employees.


This whole thing about having to go outside the US to be competitive just isn't holding up. If the people on the factory floor had to give up pay to keep the company competitive to save their jobs, then how can the company afford to pay management those kind of bonuses and remain competitive? If the CEO got that much you can bet that there are a bunch of other executives that got a big check too. The took all that money that labor gave up and kept it for themselves-didn't reduce costs one bit. This is a systemic problem in American business-and it's everywhere.


I can also totally see what the management said about being sick of the absenteeism and entitlement mindset of the work force-another systemic problem here. The question I must ask is why are the negotiations between management and labor always about pay and benefits? Why isn't anyone (on either side) trying to modify their agreements to allow incompetent workers to be fired? Why aren't the unions leading the charge to hold their own members accountable and deliver the value for the compensation they are demanding? Why isn't management asking them to?


Nobody wants to actually earn their pay. The entitlement mentality is not exclusive to labor-it's rampant in management too-and that's what's really sad.

[Loren]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

Bill Alford, the president of UAW Local 235, shambled up the street to punch in for work at the American Axle & Manufacturing plant No. 8. He cut a pathetic figure ...

Alford had the task of operating a forklift...

...presidents of local unions do not (normally) go to work at the plant, as management prefers not to have labor agitators on its factory floors...

"They don't want a middle class," said Alford, 34, standing in the rain, the shoe still untied...

Dick Dauch, the CEO and chairman of American Axle, was given an $8.5 million bonus...


My opinion now...WHAT AN EFFIN' CIRCUS. Why should a forklift operator believe he deserves to be in the "middle class", along with doctors and dentists...and why isn't the CEO of a failed enterprise in turn put in charge of 99-cent tacos, if that, at McDonalds where he belongs?

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

The question, as I see it:
how do you motivate a secular person to do his job? If he's not doing it for the love of his job, what other motivational tool is available?

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

Why should a forklift operator believe he deserves to be in the "middle class", along with doctors and dentists...and why isn't the CEO of a failed enterprise in turn put in charge of 99-cent tacos, if that, at McDonalds where he belongs?

For some reason I like this point. It seems to me to sum up entitlement for both the unskilled labor and the Upper Management.

[JRoberts]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

I don't even know what the "middle class" is anymore. I don't believe most folks ever saw doctors and dentists in the middle class.

[milkovich]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

I'll never understand the disparity we've gotten to.

I'm not saying we didn't have it back in the day, a Deusenberg or Packard cost more than a 500 acre family farm back then but the fact that any CEO makes 7 figures as a company does a half gainer into oblivion doesn't make sense.

Stock options I understand, head hunting guys like Hatchet Jack and Chainsaw Al I understand, but a bonus for a CEO nobody as the doors are being locked blows my mind.

[Barry_R]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

I don't think he was a forklift operator - that's just what needed doing that day without enough employes left to run the plant. It sounded like he was loading equipment to ship out to Texas, and then most likely onward to Mexico.

Two issues here.

One is that these guys on the line definitely were making too much dough for the skills involved. That's management's fault - the union is supposed to ask for the moon and the boss is supposed to offer dirt - this is how you negotiate. Hard to really blame the union for doing a good job and still give management bonuses for having "round heels".

More important issue is that the workers cannot take a big enough pay cut for it to even matter. They can drop wages by 50% and still be ten times what a guy in China will take. No EPA, no OSHA, no heath care - people are a disposable resource with a never ending supply of a billion destitute folks waiting behind them...

[realsteelfreak]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

Most everyday Joes want to be in the middle class, society puts guys like a forklift driver with limited education and yearly wage range in there, and those guys at a union plant at the auto mfg's make twice the amount than the axle plant guys , but they have the same education background and are still in the middle class. Doctors,Dentist,Lawyers,and Sales makes up a lot of the upper middle class.
Society says its OK to put the CEO's back in charge of something else that needs screwed up,he got a education with some degree.
For those CEO's its just a notch in there belt,a reference if you will.

Bill Alford, the president of UAW Local 235, shambled up the street to punch in for work at the American Axle & Manufacturing plant No. 8. He cut a pathetic figure ...

Alford had the task of operating a forklift...

...presidents of local unions do not (normally) go to work at the plant, as management prefers not to have labor agitators on its factory floors...

"They don't want a middle class," said Alford, 34, standing in the rain, the shoe still untied...

Dick Dauch, the CEO and chairman of American Axle, was given an $8.5 million bonus...


My opinion now...WHAT AN EFFIN' CIRCUS. Why should a forklift operator believe he deserves to be in the "middle class", along with doctors and dentists...and why isn't the CEO of a failed enterprise in turn put in charge of 99-cent tacos, if that, at McDonalds where he belongs?

[ponchoman]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

One is that these guys on the line definitely were making too much dough for the skills involved. That's management's fault - the union is supposed to ask for the moon and the boss is supposed to offer dirt - this is how you negotiate. Hard to really blame the union for doing a good job and still give management bonuses for having "round heels".

More important issue is that the workers cannot take a big enough pay cut for it to even matter. They can drop wages by 50% and still be ten times what a guy in China will take. No EPA, no OSHA, no heath care - people are a disposable resource with a never ending supply of a billion destitute folks waiting behind them...

A couple points and a main idea.....

The union is not supposed to "ask for the moon". They are supposed to be responsible, and should be considering their future as well as the companies. It's the height of stupidity to make demands that may ultimately result in the elimination of their jobs. The problem is that often the union had sufficient power and protection such that they could impact productivity, resulting in them having too big a stick in the last couple decades. I'm not defending management whatsoever, just making the point that you can and SHOULD blame the unions as well.

As for China (and frankly other labor pools), it's even more complicated than that. My company has done some manufacturing in China for the past 25 years. We also continue to do the bulk of our manufacturing in the US, but injection molded stuff is in China a lot. I've been there bunches of times, and it's hardly slave labor. Our working conditions are every bit as good there as they are here. Happy employees.

But the real point is that we all saw this coming. It's not because of one particular political party, or anything else - except for the fact that technology has advanced SO much that the old obstacles to outsourcing (atlantic and pacific oceans) are no longer relevant from a cost perspective. Remember that we in the US took business away from Europe. Now somebody is taking it away from us. The "middle class" is frankly a BS term these days. When somebody can not even graduate from HS, go to work with no experience or skills whatsoever (such as the York union employees at HD) and go on strike because an annual STARTING salary of $37.5K will full benefits and free medical is not enough then the world has gone nuts. The fact is that unfortunately we have a higher standard of living than anywhere else in terms of homes, houses, vehicles, etc. I'm in the Pgh area, and grew up watching steel workers drive Caddys and buy second homes. We all see how that worked out. Or the idea that a "minimum wage" job should be paid highly enough to support a family of 3 or 4? CEO pay gets huge focus because it's emotionally easy. But, senior executive total compensation is typically less than 1/10 of 1 percent of a large organization expenses so even when it is totally eliminated, it essentially makes zero impact to the bottom line. That doesn't mean they all deserve what they get. They don't. But it's a separate problem. Unions and labor need to recognize this and get serious. Another thing to keep in mind is that in many cases, failure to outsource results in the business shutting down. We were just purchased not that long ago, and before that we were at over $1.2B in revenues. Our senior execs didn't earn those huge bucks. But, without doing the injection molded plastics in China, we would be in EXTREMELY bad shape right now.

[dieselgeek]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

As for China (and frankly other labor pools), it's even more complicated than that. My company has done some manufacturing in China for the past 25 years. We also continue to do the bulk of our manufacturing in the US, but injection molded stuff is in China a lot. I've been there bunches of times, and it's hardly slave labor. Our working conditions are every bit as good there as they are here. Happy employees.

So, it's not just me then. While at Spectre, I observed that our factories in China were NICE PLACES. The employees were happy, and both major facilities had to meet emissions requirements that were very, very aggressive - big money was spent on emissions and enrivonmental impact. Both places management were PROUD to display and talk about how "green" their facilities were, and they were heavily regulated by the government...

Employees were well taken care of, on-site education, physical activities during breaks, the places are NICE.

so when some yahoo here tries to claim how China is nothing but an oppressive communist regime and all the laborers are working for pennies - well, that clown has zero clue what he's talking about. Maybe it's like that somewhere else, but not where we were having our stuff made. These people were also CRAZY about meeting your specifications. If something came out "crappy" then it was because they were working around your initial specs. That's how they work - as long as they meet your design specs, then they'll work around it (just like Smokey Yunick and NASCAR) to benefit their manufacturing cost.


I think there's a lot of good wisdom in the posts in this thread. I think blaming China for killing our manufacturing here is wrong, though. They do it more competitively, period.

-scott

[Not A Duster]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

so when some yahoo here tries to claim how China is nothing but an oppressive communist regime and all the laborers are working for pennies - well, that clown has zero clue what he's talking about.

20th anniversary of theTiananmen Square massacre was a couple weeks ago. This is the event where the Chinese Government unleashed the armed forces on the their own citizens, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands....because they were staging a peaceful assembly advocating democracy and reform.

The Chinese Government of 2009 marked the anniversary by arresting anyone who tried to commemorate it.

[realsteelfreak]

Re: Friday Excuse to Go Home and Drink: Depression in Detroit

Hey its alright, its in the name of good commerce and bigger returns for investors.