Labor unions railing against private insurance. Union's gold plated insurance has pushed GM (and other companies) to the brink. Put your money where your mouth is, and sign up for cut rate insurance...then you'll have a bit more credibility.

Gold plated insurance? Really? You must not know anyone who works for GM today. Unions have made concession after concession to GM, only to watch their jobs move overseas anyway.

GM's problems are mostly due to their piss poor products. I've owned GM cars and every one of them sucked big time. Now, I own Toyotas, Hondas, and Mazdas. They are light years better than any GM product. Their current problem is that they bet the farm on SUVs and other trucks being best sellers forever, ignoring the inevitability of higher gas prices. Meanwhile, the Japanese makers kept their product lines fuel efficient and diverse. GM is getting what it deserves. Quit blaming the unions.

Decent medical care should be a right, not a job benefit to be used as a bargaining chip. Every industrialized nation in the world has less expensive and better healthcare than we do. Its time to demand a change.

Backing the big gas guzzlers has definitely hurt the U.S. auto industry again when fuel prices spiked, but by some measures, the quality gap may finally be closing, and was no smaller back in the 1990s when big vehicles were hugely profitable and selling like gangbusters.

A lot of the quality gap stems from attempts to cut non-labor costs such as materials in order to make up for gaps in labor costs incurreed by U.S. manufacturers and foreign competitors (even compared to the non-union Toyota and Honda factories in the U.S.). I've seen estimates that anywhere from $1000+ of the price tag on each current GM car goes to pay for retiree benefits for workers who haven't built a car in years (unless they happen to restore old cars as a hobby in their retirement), and that union work rules have resulted in differentials of hundreds of labor hours required for GM/Ford to build cars in comparable classes to Toyota/Honda. With Japanese manufacturers getting around some amount of tarrifs by assembling many models in U.S. facilities (my old Tacoma was built in Freemont, CA, and even contained a significant percentage of U.S.-made parts), that means the GM/Ford have to cut thousands of dollars out of the cost of making their cars in some aspect other than labor in order to be competitive (and have faced the additional disadvantage of a customer base which is generally willing to pay more for the competitor's product since they consider it to be worth more due to higher quality). It probably also doesn't help the end product quality to have UAW generally shielding workers from accountability for the quality of their work, either.

and have the UAW guys put up with the same terrible care that the indigent have to experience. Limited drugs, long waits to see doctors, difficulty in getting specialty care. Then we'll see who have the gold plate insurance and who is getting the shaft.

But, oh, I forgot, if we screw the insurance companies, then the 40 million people who aren't covered by insurance will we able to get that gold plated insurance. The insurance I buy, not generous by any means and in a low cost state, costs me 5 grand a year per person in my family. So call it 200 billion a year to cover people. Find that in the profit margins of the health care insurers.

Every industrialized country in the world has better care, and cheaper? Talk to somebody from the UK who has to use the National Health Service. Or someone from Canada, who needs an MRI. Or a Swedish man with prostate cancer (highest death rate from prostate ca in the developed world, because they don't treat it. Bad way to die, by the way, very painful).

and if you asked the average guy on the street if he would trade the NHS for our system, he'd laugh in your face before telling you where you could stuff it.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Health care in the UK, Canada, and Sweden is better and cheaper than in the US. Cheaper, as defined by per capita spending on health care (private plus government). Better, by infant death rates and many, many other measures. The prostate cancer thing is a complete urban myth. We are getting screwed here in the USA. The insurance companies are making money hand over fist while denying our claims. Do you realize that $5000 per year person is highway robbery? Are you really happy with your health care insurance? Really?

So which is it? Are you angry at the unions for demanding decent benefits for their members (how dare they!!), or are you angry because the retirees wont have those benefits under a national health care plan (not true)? I am confused...

Actually, if retiree health care costs are sinking GM (something I don't believe is true - do you really believe GM management is telling the truth?), then a national health care plan should instantly turn GM into a profitable powerhouse.

Bullshit. Reliability, resale value, and customer satisfaction are all much worse for domestics than for Toyota/Honda. You have bought the "blame the unions" line of crap from GM's marketing team hook, line and sinker. You sound like a GM PR guy during union negotiations.

So, Toyota/Honda are more expensive, but somehow $1000 per car is killing GM? GM can't give its crappy cars away.

First, people complain about profits from Japanese makers leaving the country. So, they start building them here. They treat their works so good that they don't organize. (I though you didn't like unions!) But, that's still not good enough for you. You turn around and blame them for not paying tariffs so that GM can have an edge over them.

Face it. GM can't compete. They just aren't as good at making cars as Toyota or Honda. They are going out of business because they aren't as good as the competition.

Go rent Roger and Me. Take a look at how US automakers really treat their workers. That'll tell you everything you need to know about why American cars suck.

In response to your apparent thesis that I have some problem with Japanese carmakers, I can use what appears to be your favorite word, bullshit. The first car I bought myself was a Toyota, which I traded in for the Mazda (actually owned by FMC, but my car was build in Nagasaki from 97% Japanese parts) that I currently drive, any my next car will likely be either a Lexus or a Subaru. The one GM car I've ever owned was sufficently bad to lead me to swear off the brand forever (with the possible exception of a 60-s era camaro if I can ever afford to take up restoring classic cars as a hobby).

What's killing GM/Ford is that they're facing a competitor who makes a product that customers are willing to pay more for at a lower cost, which leads to them selling their own cars at a loss (meaning they'd be financially better off shutting down the factories where those cars are made). Additionally, extending warranties on thier products in attempts convince customers that their quality is up to snuff is costing them significantly in the parts/service portion of their business which is where they really used to make their money anyway. It definitely hasn't helped that all of the U.S. automakers started switching over to import engines (I think Iacoca actually started the trend with Mitsubishi at the same time he was doing his Japan-bashing TV ads) and now may be paying almost as much in tarriffs on parts as Toyota/Honda in some categories.

Without a doubt, much of GM's problem is the directions chosen by their upper management, but if you actually think that those decisions aren't influenced by the facts of dealing with UAW, then I'd love to get my hands on a few doses of whatever you're on. Inability to get out of the retiree benefits obligations (not that I'm saying they should be allowed to, the company agreed to the contract and should live up to it) adds an additional burden onto an operation which is already disadvantaged, and the resistance of UAW to serious attempts to modernize and increase the efficiency of U.S. manufacturing operations eliminates a major option for possibly making the company competitive again. Faced with the rigidity of the union, the company can be left with the choice to continue operating an inefficient and uncompetitive factory at a loss, or shutting down the plant altogether; hence, what was shown in "Roger and Me", probably the most factually accurate of Michael Moore's "documentary" films (I did love "Canadian Bacon", though).

You're right, I don't much like unions. I do know that there are places where they have and can do good, my problem is with what many of them have become these days. From what I've seen, the upper leadership at AFL-CIO is no less corrupt and self-serving than the upper management of Enron were in the late 1990's. I think it's great that the U.S. Toyota and Honda plant remain non-union by virtue of the companies treating their employees well (I know that's the one thing the Union sheep find more objectionalbe than employees being treated badly with or without representation).

In short, I agree with you that the biggest problem facing GM and Ford (and what's left of Chrysler) is that they're fundamentaly uncompetitive in their market. I disagree with your apparent position that the UAW has not been a big part of creating and entrenching that lack of competitiveness (I'm sure part of the commitment to the SUV path was that the things were selling at a premium in the 1990s, and the extra costs arising from the UAW contracts could be absorbed more easily). Finally, I realize that if the company goes out of business, every employee is out of a job anyway, meaning that the UAW is somewhere between myopia and flat-out disregard for the long-term good of their members if their recalcitrance contributes to the total failure of the U.S. domestic auto industry (from my experience the overall view of union leadership is that the interests of the company and the interests of the employees can never coincide even by chance).

mike_in_nm:

Actually, if retiree health care costs are sinking GM (something I don't believe is true - do you really believe GM management is telling the truth?), then a national health care plan should instantly turn GM into a profitable powerhouse.

Not really, since a gapfiller plan wouldn't eliminate GM's contractual obligation to their retirees. Maybe a full single-payer system would if it eliminated all privately provided health care and insurace. Further, it appears that your underlying logic is that if something isn't a sole and direct cause, then it can't posibly be contributing in any way. This line of reasoning, as you so succinctly put it is bullshit.

One thing that's common on both sides of the pond is that the most people are accustomed to the system they have grown up in, and don't usually know what the real impacts of all the differences are. The idea of not having to wait a few months for surgery to correct a non life-threatning issue is as foreign to most of them as the idea of only being entitled to a 5-figure settlement from a hosptial which removes the wrong leg in an amputation is in the USA.

Most people are likely to opt for the system they're familiar with since there are advantages and disadvantages either way, and understanding of the familiar system is always more thorough, and both systems have generated anecdotal cases which are sure to scare anyone used to the other.

"What's killing GM/Ford is that they're facing a competitor who makes a product that customers are willing to pay more for at a lower cost, which leads to them selling their own cars at a loss (meaning they'd be financially better off shutting down the factories where those cars are made)."

Yep, GM cars suck, plain and simple.

Unions aren't perfect. But, without them, GM workers would be making minimum wage and have no retirement or benefits. And, GM cars would still suck. The union has nothing to do with GM's success or failure.

Well, you are probably right, a reform plan will likely not bail GM out of its contractual obligations to the people who gave their lives to that company. However, future retirees can be included in whatever national plan we end up with, meaning that GM will be able to see the end of the tunnel and plan for the future. Personally, I don't think it'll make a damn bit of difference until they start making cars that don't suck, but (generally speaking) a national heathcare plan will help big business.

More than likely some bankruptcy judge will let GM out of its commitments to its retirees. I give them 5 more years, max. Then, the taxpayer will support those retired workers.

Yeah, yeah, without unions we'd all be in sweatshops making 17 cents a week for 27 hour days with hourly floggings as our only fring benefit.....

Without UAW, the vast majority of their members still have a marketable skill and would be making wages based on the value of the products of their labor. Incompetent and deliberately negligent employees would be subject to discipline and firing (a good friend of mine's father was a UAW rep at a GM parts warehouse, and the two things he did in his career which he described as being proudest of involved saving the jobs of a worker who was found sleeping on the job and another who was caught stealing from the warehouse), and one welder would have to weld both frame and body joints in the course of a day because there's no use to the factory employing 2 people each doing half a job.

The union we fought to get rid of at my old job tried spreading propaganda about how we'd be unable to even file complaints under federal labor laws without them around to call a lawyer and that we'd lose benefits which had recently been added to the union contract (including severance pay in the event of a layoff) because the company had been giving them to non-represented employees with the same job description at non-union sites for years, and it was easier for them to provide a standard package to everyone. In the end it turned out that what the union was really fighting for was the right to protect the top union officers from being laid off and eventually the goal of taking money out of the paychecks of those of us who didn't want to become members. The worst compensation and benefits I've had in an 11 year career were the 2-3 years I spent working under a union contract against my will (that was also the only time I ever faced the possibility of a layoff, and had lost my claim to severance pay as a result of being forced to work under the union contract).

Just because you've partaken of the kool-aid, doesn't mean the people who have been at the business end of things and have done some research are buying the AFL-CIO's propaganda any more than the corporate slogans.

bm:

The smallest component in the cost of manufacturing. Does that make sense?