GM Restores White Collar Pay to Stop Brain Drain
Back in February, a tipster told us that pre-C11 GM was cutting white collar pay. And so it did. Thousands of non-union GM workers—both here and abroad—took a three to seven percent hit for the team. Executives salaries received a 10 percent haircut. The move saved the on-the-cusp of nationalization automaker a reported $50 million. That’s not much compared to, say, the $100 billion in taxpayer funding and subsidies and whatnot that GM’s received since. But at least the move signaled the beginning of a new era of accountability at GM. Just kidding. In any case, we now read that GM workers’ in-boxes received a notification from HR that New GM is restoring previous pay levels.
“GM was losing employees to other companies because its pay scales were no longer competitive with other automakers and manufacturing companies, spokesman Tom Wilkinson said Friday. He did not know how many had left or exactly how many workers were affected.”
To quote the Talking Heads,”facts are simple and facts are straight; facts are lazy and facts are late.” Or, to quote the Sex Pistols, never mind the bollocks. Anyway, the pay restoration is retroactive, and highly recommended.
“Salaries were restored starting Sept. 1 because GM needs to retain workers and keep them happy, Wilkinson said. “We’re into a period where employee morale is really important as we’re starting to launch products and rebuild the business,” Wilkinson said.
The simple truth: New GM still has too many models, brands, factories, dealers and workers, at all levels. That’s how they rolled into this mess. That’s how they roll now that we own them.
[Hat Tip: DaedRuo]
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How did this comments section turn into a big Dog Pile onto Mikey? This article is about white collar workers getting back their previous salary cut because they are Geniuses who might move to another company. Who do you think is responsible for all the quality issues and bad rep against GM? Those leaking 3.4L engines are an engineering design issue. Plastic 3.8L manifolds are an engineering design issue. What about most recently the rear ends on the Camaros, and the electrical problems on the LaCrosse? These are all problems created by the "Close Enough" mentality in the white collar work force at GM. I can't think of a recent issue created by plant folks. Make no mistake about it. The white collar folks at GM were paid very handsomely for very little effort or work.
Mikey, I have no issue with you personally. I'm sure you're a nice fellow. However, almost everyone who's ever spent time in a UAW facility as an outsider has a story similar to oboylepr. I have a couple myself, but I'm not going to get into the details. If you want to blame anyone for the general public's view of the average UAW worker, blame your brethren. Especially the ones who "sneak in a beer on friday night" and "pass around a doobie in the break room". As for your claim about transplant workers "do it too" please head to your local library and check out the following book: "On The Line at Subaru-Isuzu" (ISBN 0-87546-346-0). In my opinion, it was written with too much of a (admitted) Union bias, but inadvertently shows the failure of the UAW since these workers never display any of the behaviors that you mention happen anywhere there is a shop floor. They are simply too busy working.
Mikey, I have no issue with you personally. I'm sure you're a nice fellow. However, almost everyone who's ever spent time in a UAW facility as an outsider has a story similar to oboylepr. I have a couple myself, but I'm not going to get into the details. If you want to blame anyone for the general public's view of the average UAW worker, blame your brethren. Especially the ones who "sneak in a beer on friday night" and "pass around a doobie in the break room". As for your claim about transplant workers "do it too" please head to your local library and check out the following book: "On The Line at Subaru-Isuzu" (ISBN 0-87546-346-0). In my opinion, it was written with too much of a (admitted) Union bias, but inadvertently shows the failure of the UAW since these workers never display any of the behaviors that you contend happen anywhere there is a shop floor. They are simply too busy working.
I hate to bring this (irrelevant) union bashing thread to an untimely end with some facts. White collar folks are not just car designers or product planners. They are the lifeblood of the folks you have to have to do business - IT folks, accountants, HR, PMs, and so on. Heroic individual efforts don't produce cars today. As an employer, losing a single highly skilled employee costs at least $20k-30k PER PERSON in * Lost opportunity cost - their work is no longer being done, or is being done in a half assed manner by their now overwhelmed and demoralized cow-orkers. Guess what - the cow-orkers don't do their own work properly either. Everything starts being late or not done properly, further causing stress and anger in the workplace. * Danger of running far behind schedule. The resigning staff member could be a critical resource with lots of other folks and projects waiting for them to do stuff only they know how to do. I was that person in 2006. I really left my boss in the crap with 20+ projects and hundreds of project workers at risk. I still feel bad about it to this day. * Recruitment costs. These are non-trivial for higher end white collar folks like IT staff and managerial accountants. Typical recruiter fees are 20% of the person's first year salary. * Spin up time. A person who has developed personal networks and knows how the system works is far more productive than an off the shelf contractor. I've found it takes about 18 months to be as productive as you can be in a large corporation. At a Byzantine hot bed like GM, I'd dare say it's longer. Adding all these things together - you want to make folks stay. It's just cheaper not to treat them properly and give them decent benefits. It might only cost $4-5k per year to pay 'em properly and have free sodas. One place I worked at had free in-seat massage therapy. It was awesome. Henry Ford worked that out about 80 years ago. Andrew