The idea that Buzz is all about loyalty, and that the GM managers are all just mercenary is baseless and unfair. Buzz’s loyalty is just as bought and paid for as any of the others. If he could cut a deal for a better gig tomorrow he would do it. I see no reason to assign any of his actions to loyalty at all. Instead, I think he likes the job and all the perks. He is a celebrity in Canada for one thing, and he gets to stick it to the man on a regular basis. On top of all that he gets a salary.

As for hiring new MBA’s, maybe they have to catch them while they are young and naive. Otherwise, they would know better than to hire on at GM.

Such is the legacy of Buzz.

When the privates have UAW work rules instead of UCMJ work rules, even the best officers will often fail.

toxicroach:
People want and demand managers who are far sighted geniuses of iron will. Be nice if that were true, but it isn’t. Not many people are going to ride out the mother of all strikes because 30 years down the road its really going to bite the company on the ass. There’s too much pressure to perform today. That’s just human nature. Same dynamic on both sides lead to GM dying.

Well said.

And think about this. Years ago, Caterpillar went toe-to-toe with the UAW. And now Cat is worth 4 GM’s.

Anyone have any inside dope on how they pulled it off?!?

GM has no non UAW CAW plants in the USA or Canada building vehicles. They opened the OKC plant as nonunion years ago and that didn’t last very long.

So when is the money to be payed out? A year from now? If GM declares bankruptcy they will likely never see the money. Looks like GM is buying time and Buzz is covering his tracks before he runs off to collect his big pension.

Is Buzz’s pension secure even if GM goes into bankruptcy?

I remember reading back in 94 or so that GM’s R&D budget was 1.5 billion.

Toyota’s was also 1.5 billion. This is back in the day when Toyota was what, half the size of GM or less?

That was the point where I knew this day was coming; it was obvious to me that GM would fall behind technologically and eventually people would let their wallet overcome their loyalty to GM. They had too many brands and models to be spending the same amount on R&D as Toyota and keep it together.

I don’t know why GM wasn’t spending enough on R&D. Maybe it was the desire to maintain good profit numbers, maybe they thought they could save some money through badge engineering. Maybe they didn’t want to cut into the dividend.

Like I said, labor costs are not the whole story. But it didn’t help, and I think it was the major reason why the domestics never managed to produce a small car that was competitive, and why GM ended up failing in the more price sensitive cars and sedans.

Thats my opinion anyway.

Similar situation for the whole country.

I still wouldn’t trust the guy with a hot dog stand.

I wonder if Samir asked him my question… ;)

I asked Buzz about that. I asked him flat out:

“Is this [Chapter 11] a tacit admission that you are milking the Big 3 for everything you can get before they go?”

His reply was that C11 was specifically a US-thing, but they would be OK in Canada.

The rest will come tomorrow

I didn’t say that GM didn’t have any smart choices. I wonder if, from the perspective of an individual in the company, if that person could make smart choices. GM doesn’t have a brain of its own; it is the sum of a 100,000 employees decisions.

We could argue counterfactuals all day long, but it really amounts to the Great Man vs. Historical Forces argument. Could a genius have come in and saved GM? Or are such geniuses merely taking credit for what would have happened anyway? Was Napoleon a great general, or was he just riding historical forces that propelled him to the top? How much of a difference does a Napoleon make? How much of a difference does a Waggoner make?

Second, I have to take my hat off to Buzz. If he accepts that, he is the most sane person in the American Auto Industry.

The military analogy does not apply. Both sides are at fault, and even the third side, the government, for getting into this mess.

Plenty of blame to go around. The only merit to your argument is that the officers of the company have to ACCEPT responsibility, because they should not have signed up if they weren’t up to fixing things.

The unions used government to interfere in the relationship. Once they did that, they crossed the line and are now just as culpable as anyone else. Especially culpable when it comes to retirment benefits since even Buzz sees the writing on the wall, yet he knows the pensions are not protected. Will he try to get while the getting is good and force a switch to individual accounts? Not a chance. He doesn’t even want to get CLOSE to that discussion.

It might be too late now but GM had all of those problems for the last 30 years. Are you sure you want to claim GM didn’t have any smart choices other than the ones they chose.

Ford looks like they made some smarter choices in just the short time Alan Mulally has had. Oh poor GM their hands are tied.

How much parking so you have? The BK judge may grant you a settlement made up of nice, shiny Silverado pickups.

Far from it. But they certainly helped, and I can’t understand the attitude of Unions that it is in their best interest to weigh the parent company down with unfunded obligations, high labor costs, and work rules. Its asking for somebody to come in and start stealing your lunch.

And the fact that GM and Toyota make a few cars with union or non-union isn’t relevant to my overall point; the higher labor costs force GM to cut corners and make worse cars at the same price point.

Sure, management is dumb as hell too. But when I imagine being a GM manager and having to navigate between the unions, dealers, investors, other management cliques, the Feds, and 8 different brands, I can empathize with them. I’m not sure that they were left with any smart choices to make.

No one on either side of the Mgmt/Union negotiation table is interested in the health of the company or the workers. It’s a damn shame.

@mikey: things look bad to you right now because you look back at how good things were for others. In every other industry people would kill for such an opportunity (i.e. $100k to leave).

The trough has been so deep and so wide for so long that everyone involved has forgotten where it came from or how it gets filled. Soon though, there will be some very painful reminders.

But I am a fan of many of their engineers and do expect that when the dust clears, GM will be here, but its look will not be the GM we all know and, well…used to love.
And Ford Finally married outside the family for better DNA.

But the BIG thinkers on Wall street and down on the (panic) trading floors are not going to decide my future.
And these union leaders are not and never have been for the interest of any company they work for.

There are many folks that would do “something illegal” for such a retirement package.

It also shows that folks that are considering retiring need to alter their lifestyles…not an easy thing to do, or accept.

Ok, when has management been intelligent? Fewer times than the union has been cooperative.

Once the ship was already sinking.