GM Employees Can Build Their Future… by Leaving
Ford wants its workers to connect with their future. And now GM is encouraging their employees to "build your future and live your dream." According to The Detroit News, specialists will show up at GM's factories across the nation to hold "opportunity expos" to beg show workers "the ways in which they can benefit" by giving up their well-paying jobs with great benefits for a few thousand dollars and the opportunity to take their chances on the job market. To try to entice people to show up, they're also entering anyone who comes to the seminar into a drawing for a $15k voucher towards a new GM vehicle. Meanwhile, Chrysler is reopening their buyout programs and offering employees who've already said "no" the chance to say "HELL NO." Some employees are confused as to why they're doing it. Comments posted on the Detroit Free Press' site show that not everyone who put in for Chrysler's buyout is given the buyout. One commenter stated "…there were just under 300 people at the Belvidere Assembly Plant who put in for the buy-out. Only approximately 200 of us were given the buy-out." Another commenter asks when they'd see a corresponding reduction in management, adding "most of the work done by management was once done by UNION clerical personel, and for a damned sight less money." It looks like The Big 2.8 still have a lot of work to do if they're counting on dumping old employees and hiring cheaper replacements to balance the books.
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@ Raskolnikov: I find that there is a consistent message, even through the varying opinions, to the big 2.8 on how to improve. The most commonly espoused advice is along the lines of: Get rid of overlapping brands and products. Focus the remaining brands into something that has meaning and is consistent and build vehicles that align with those brands. Stop badge engineering. Do one thing better than everyone else. Don't have Bob Lutz as your spokesperson. As a victim (contributor perhaps) of the current downturn I'm certainly critical of Detroit automakers, but I don't gain any pleasure from seeing them fail. The downfall of the US auto industry is and will be extremely bad for the whole economy and is nothing anyone who lives in this country should hope for.
The handwriting was truly on the wall for anyone to see, when the UAW and other unions kept pushing the envelope until it was possible for a guy (or gal) with a high school graduation certificate or GED to snag a job pushing a broom, turning screws or sitting in a jobs bank playing cards at the plant, and making a total package of about $75 an hour or more. One problem; the true dumbing down of our education system. Was at an antique store with mrs, bored. Looked at a book, it was an 1890's book which contained a test to graduate from public school (8th grade - age 13). High School was not public education in most US states until the 1920's (i.e. you had to pay for it, just as you did college). Long story short, the test was SO frapping difficult, that I honestly don't think 90% of 4 year college graduates could have completed it successfully, and I'm not exaggerating. Second problem; expectations that living standard will continue to go up, as if it were some predestined magical formula. Wrong answer; living standards increased between 1900 and 2000 because we tapped much of the oil beneath us (and when that started to run out, imported more). I read something interesting once; one gallon of gasoline and the equivalent work it can do (usually via electricity) is equivalent to two slaves working all day long. Plus, with slaves, you had to house and feed them, chase after them when they ran away, etc. In case anyone hadn't noticed, the oil is slowly starting to run out. Hence, the exponential increases in cost. Our standards of living world-wide are going to go down, and this process has begun in the United States. That's a long roundabout way of saying the Union guys are screwed, glued and tatooed.
Most line supervisors that manage UAW employees are co-ops in my college that get paid considerably less than the UAW workers they manage. Once one of my friends graduated he had to supervise 52 people himself. He left and took a job at A. Busch supervising 6 guys. Don't even get me started on the horror stories that still occur to this day involving the UAW.