They call that bargaining bluster. When the time comes, as it did with
Chrysler in the seventies, it will be the Union and the workers that do the
most to save the company


mike

Would you rather have 10,000 jobs that have 50% better benefits than a
college grad OR no jobs because you negotiated yourself out of a job
by making your company unable to compete with Toyota and Honda.


Making more than $100 per hour for anything less than curing cancer is
indefensible.

Translation: U.S. auto workers are committing suicide fast rather than
wait to die slow.

Without a strong, national-spirited government, globalization cannot
be fought. There is no longer a first-world country with such a
government; certainly not the U.S. The only way the American auto
industry can survive longterm is by reducing their labor costs to an
equivalent with China.

Since this cannot happen, given U.S. costs of living, it is inevitable
that the big three will either go out of business or become shell
companies selling cars engineered and manufactured in low-cost
countries. They might stave this off a bit if they used prison labor
and paid the govt. third-world rates for those prisoners.

Protests like this are merely steepening the slope towards this
inescapable outcome.

One might be careful for what they wish. The UAW has lost over 800,000 good
paying American jobs since 1970. Import vehicle manufactures, who mainly
only assemble vehicles in the US of mostly imported parts, the profit on
which go to Japan federal tax free, have only created about one third as
many jobs. Workers in those import assembly plant earn around $5 less per
hour, have hearth care and other benefits that are not nearly as good as
offered by domestic manufactures and they do not even have a pension plan,
only a 401K to which few employees chose to contribute. Is it any wonder
workers in Hondas Ohio plant are trying to unionize?

Circuit City is firing 3500 employees. They are welcomed to reapply for
their old job, after a period of time, at $4 an hour less, because Circuit
City say $14.50 an hour does not allow it to "compete in the market."

If greedy Americans continue to buy imports over the products, made by
American manufacturers in their own county everybody can soon see THEIR job
go away, or their wages and benefit reduced as well. Wake up Americans,
those are your jobs you are loosing.

mike

The greed of the America consumer will eventually cost them big time. If
the US manufactures are forced to operate like the import manufactures, and
only assemble cars in the US of lower cost imported parts, at some point
none of the cars we buy will be assembled in the US. It will be even
cheaper to assemble in the lower cost countries. If you think that will not
happen you have not purchased an electronic product lately.

The America consumer is already being screwed by the Japanese car makers and
do not even know it. If one is a smart shopper and shops many brands it
quickly become apparent it cost 20% to 30% more to drive home a Japanese car
than a similarly sized and equipped domestic. Korean cars can still be
driven home for less but if you do a search you will discover the same car
can be purchased in Korea for less than half of what it costs in the US.


mike

How many American Made parts does your computer have inside it?

I love how people say "buy American" but if you searched their homes
you'd find 75% of the items made somewhere else.

It's a nice saying but meaningless.

What percentage of the electronics you own, car and home, are made in
the USA?

DUH, are you that slow? That is the point, if we continue to buy imports
over
domestically made products it will not only electronic equipment that takes
American jobs out of the country. The US lost the textile industry over the
past ten years. Our shoe
companies are all going down the dumper as we speak. Do you think the loss
of domestic production to imports lowers the cost? If you do you have not
priced a pair of athletic shoes that cost from less than a dollar, for nylon
and plastic shoes to $5 tops, for leather shoes, to produce in countries
like Korea and China.

For American companies to stay in business they have no choice but to do
what their customers are doing, look for low cost production off shore, as
well. Many are even moving the company of shore to escape high US taxes.
Who do you think will need to make up those lost taxes?

Everything I purchase is made in the US, if I can find products still made
in the US by American companies, before I will buy anything imported. One
reason I stopped buying Toyotas and Lexus cars in 1999 was dealers were over
charging me for the cars and
the Japanese corporations take all of the profits they earn in the US back
to Japan, federal tax free. If possible I even look for products made
within the states were I pay taxes.

The Japanese consumer is much smarter than greedy American consumers, they
buy Japanese products even if they cost more, to support their own economy.
They only buy imported products that are not made in Japan by a Japanese
company.


mike

It is no longer possible to buy domestically manufactured electronics
[exception: some extremely high-end specialist gear that's hand-built
in runs of hundreds or a couple of thousand at most, and military
electronics]. I think Mike H's point is that soon the auto industry
will be the same - I agree.