Another nail in the coffin for the US auto industry...

[winky]

how can you blame the unions. There guys like you and me that are middle class people making under a 100 thousand a year when the big wigs are making 6 figure and even 7 figure wages. To me that is what killed the car industry. Greed. then you want to go and buy a vw! thats the attitude that caused this trouble in the american auto industry to begin with.

Couple this with the union's increased power and goodbye US auto industry. then someone is going to go buy a vw gulf!!! Now thats the attitude that is sure to kill them and take jobs away from americans.

[Littlelebowski]

how can you blame the unions. There guys like you and me that are middle class people making under a 100 thousand a year when the big wigs are making 6 figure and even 7 figure wages. To me that is what killed the car industry. Greed. then you want to go and buy a vw! thats the attitude that caused this trouble in the american auto industry to begin with.

Negative. Do you really think the Toyota and Honda execs got paid that much less than their Big Three counterparts? Or could it just maybe, perhaps be that union workers cost on average $30 more an hour?

So here's your choice: eithermake more an hour and get laid off while praying for a bailout from the gov't OR work for a stable, non-union shop.

You just let me know if you require facts to back my statements, winky.

[BAC]

Screw the Golf, how does say...a mid sized or small diesel truck sound?

Hey, you get my point though. 50+ MPG in a car, easily 25+ city for a medium sized truck... yeah, like I said, if the average American knew that this is what foreigners were getting from these same manufacturers, they'd revolt. That I would want a foreign-made version of the same car over the domestic version is telling more of the company's choice of offerings than anything else.

how can you blame the unions.

You know, we played this game recently on these forums, and Unions lost that argument too.


-B

[Macx]

how can you blame the unions. There guys like you and me that are middle class people making under a 100 thousand a year . . ..

They're guys like you and me who are getting raked over the coals by the unions. Union gets a cut from the worker, union gets a cut ftom the company .. . union has a good racket going. When the mafia got out of illegal booze and into the unions .. . . hey, they recognize a good deal when they see it. The unions are a leg shackle passed through a cinder block with a cuff on the worker and a cuff on the company .. . . re-read my story about CAT tractor above, they threw those guys over a bridge to make a point unfortunately it cost the jobs it did and that "protection" customer washed up. Only the company made it to shore still breathing (working a job). . . the 23,000 hourly workers not so much.

[Left Sig]

The last union discussion started to get personal and got shut down. My only response is that all of the unionized auto plants and companies in this country are dying, and the non-union ones are doing OK. Blame whoever you want, but those are the facts. Do you think this is just a coincidence?

Now, we do have to admit that one of the big problems with the (former) Big-3 is their lack of truly compelling products compared to the Japanese and the Germans. Quality has lagged, but Volkswagen has proven in the last 10 years that consumers will look past quality issues if they really like the car. If you look at the numbers, VW historically is pretty bad on quality. "German Engineering" doesn't run downhill from Mercedes and BWM, who have even had significant quality issues of their own. The US manufacturers made a succession of bland cars that were mostly forgettable and not enough people bought them. Get it right, like with the neo-retro Mustang, and you'll sell a bunch.

As for preferring the overseas models - I felt the same when I worked for Ford in Detroit in the mid 90's. The Euro-market Modeo was better than the Contour/Mystique and should have been sold in the US relatively unchanged. The American marketing pukes decided Americans don't want Euro cars and redesigned them into bland rental fleet vehicles. The Australian market Falcon 4DR sedan with RWD and a Mustang drivetrain was a blast. I got to drive one with the steering on the other side in Dearborn and I'd have killed to have one of those.

I came to the conclusion that the marketing people were doing all of their customer clinics with Detroit area retirees and housewives who had the free time to attend. If they were from the Detroit area they were already programmed from birth to hate foreign cars, so they always led the marketing pukes down the wrong path.

But here's the rub:

At that time, cars sold for a lot more in Western Europe than in the US because they are more of a luxury. The V-6 Contour that was hard to give away at $20K sold for the equivalent of $37K in Europe. So they can afford to make them cooler and still make money.

And all those high mileage diesels they have over there that make plenty of torque to satisfy American driving styles cannot pass the new US diesel emissions regulations. With common rail injection pressures already at 26,000 psi, you still have to inject urea into the exhaust to bond with the nitrogen oxides to meet the requirements. Nobody wants to do that with a passenger vehicle, so the next step is another steep rise in injection pressures to previously unheard of levels.

[Littlelebowski]

Good knowledge on the diesel stuff, Left Sig. Now what's the environmental impact on buying a clean gas engine that might last say 200K miles versus a 300-400K mile diesel engine?

[chadbag]

how can you blame the unions. There guys like you and me that are middle class people making under a 100 thousand a year when the big wigs are making 6 figure and even 7 figure wages. To me that is what killed the car industry. Greed. then you want to go and buy a vw! thats the attitude that caused this trouble in the american auto industry to begin with.

All the execs in the top 10 tiers of an auto company all making high 6 figures would not put a dent in the companies problems. That amount of money is insignificant.

The unions drove up costs and lowered quality through work rules. Unions forced through compensation packages that are totally unrealistic. Maybe some exec is getting more than he really should -- no arguments there -- his pay and all his other co-exec pay added together is merely a footnote in the balance statement of an auto company.

As an example, say the top 100 execs at ford each get paid 1 million (this is obviously way too many execs getting paid a too high average). That is 100 million. These car companies are BILLIONS of dollars in the hole, mostly due to high labor expenses and high and stupid labor regulation by the gov (a mix of both). That is at least one order of magnitude more and could be more than my overly simplistic and overly high example of executive compensation

[chadbag]

And all those high mileage diesels they have over there that make plenty of torque to satisfy American driving styles cannot pass the new US diesel emissions regulations. With common rail injection pressures already at 26,000 psi, you still have to inject urea into the exhaust to bond with the nitrogen oxides to meet the requirements. Nobody wants to do that with a passenger vehicle, so the next step is another steep rise in injection pressures to previously unheard of levels.

VW claims theirs passes without Urea. Mercedes and BWM are going the Urea route...

[Littlelebowski]

Here's a typical story of what my wife as a Director of HR has to deal with on a daily basis. A supervisor needed to get a critical job done. He asked for a volunteer to take some overtime. A volunteer was found and the job got done. The union is now grieving said action because the senior person on the job was not offered the over time. Now the company has to pay the overtime to the senior person on the job though he did not work for it. This is at a company that has already conducted layoffs and is contemplating more. It doesn't take much imagination to envision how thousands of these actions can bleed a company to death.

[Nathan_Bell]

VW claims theirs passes without Urea. Mercedes and BWM are going the Urea route...

You should see the CF that the new system that some of the MFG are using for school buses so that they can pass 2010 (2011?) rules.

They have soot burners and urea injection. One tank of gas one tank of urea!