"tin cup" wrote in message
...
wrote:
Ford and GM took a look at trying to compete with Honda, Toyota and
Nissan in the small, efficient cars ten years ago. They were
completely unable to compete because of the labor cost in their
vehicles compared to their competion, thanks to the UAW.
Their only way to make enough money to continue to meet the finacial
obligation forced on them by union labor was to continue to build high
profit SUVs and trucks. Now that that's over, the UAW slobs with
barely a high school education living on easy street may have to
tighten their belts to allow the auto makers to survive. Heh.. will
that happen? Of course not... the unions say screw everyone else, we
got ours!
UAW slobs??
How white of you. In your world only Investment Bankers should make a
decent living.
The average wage was around 58,000.00 a year. So you want them to make
20,000.00 or 10,000.00?
The UAW is not the problem. The problem is the bean counters building cars
that are not desirable as we want at too high a markup and interest rates
that may be, in total as much again as the price of the vehicle. Global
Wall Street demands for too high a return on investment, and then their
gambling with worthless, imaginary values causing a collapse is the
problem.
I don't consider UAW members "slobs", but I agree with his overall
assesment.
The auto industry has signed up to some very expensive union contracts over
the years,
providing pay and benefit packages far in excess to those earned by
non-union workers with a similar education. This was done in robust
economic times and the high margin vechicles contributed the most towards
covering the costs of the benefit packages.
The small, fuel efficient cars are low margin products. Now that they have
become "desireable", GM, Ford and Chrysler are facing bankrupcy. The whole
structure has to change. Nobody in their right mind is going to pay $50K
for a fuel efficient, Ford Focus, nor should they.
Eisboch