ellives

They are but that's a "bean counter's" way of looking at it. Here's another way of looking at it: When you buy a house, say your mortgage is $1000/month and say your income is $4000 / month. Figure all your expenses add up to $3500/month (car payment, restaurants, food, insurance, etc.) so you're able to put away $500 / month in savings (consider this your 'profit'.) After a year you've saved $6000. All is good right? OK so now let's say you lose your job. Now your income (from unemployment insurance) is $1500 /month. Your expenses aren't going to change much - let's say you can cut back to $3000 / month. Just to get by you're going to need to supplement your income with $1500 from savings. After 4 months you're totally broke. This is kinda like GM if they're not shipping cars. They still have the $3000/month expenses and NO unemployment insurance so they better have a pile of cash to cover the expenses (which can't be cut back on like the mortgages on all their buildings and equipment and tooling and blah blah -- lots of costs.)

Look after the interests of the American worker? LMAO - This is a very complex issue. In fact the US has raised the standard of living all over the world but opening our markets. The problem is while we're bringing their standard of living up, we're naturally dragging ours down. It's doubtful anything drastic will happen like we'll switch places 'standard of living-wise' with third world countries but it's clearly the next few generations will not have it as well as the last few. Can't you just hear that "giant sucking sound?" (courtesy of Ross Perot.)

One word: "overhead" Even if they do nothing - nobody comes to work - no trucks roll off the line - GM has HUGE, absolutely HUGE bills to pay. They can't afford to NOT push vehicles off the line and sell them. This is another testament to their past management sins - getting themselves so leveraged in debt and other obligations that they have no room to move - backed into a corner.

That wasn't very nice. How about some intellectual banter instead of name calling? Oh that's right you must be a Democrat too. (Just kidding - sheesh.)

That's the whole point. The current situation is totally unfair. People continue to bash GM about every thing from bad product and bad designs but the deck is totally stacked against them. If the unions can't even things up they have to go. Simple economics.

One by one, they'll fall. They should focus their attention on unionizing the other manufacturers instead of milking a dry cow but alas they'll never learn.

Go Jerry go! Hey, sometimes change just for the sake of change is a good thing. GM needs to change in the worst way at this point. Given past performance I'd expect York to bring some and the Company will figure out the fact they need to improve and change the way they're doing things (change or die.)

Just the kind of attitude that killed the unions... like I said "we vs. they." Sorry but you're not based in reality when you say "no one does a better job..." In fact nobody HAS to do it better although there are those would argue there ARE some that ARE doing it better. All that's required is to do it just as well and for a lower price. This puts any union shop at a disadvantage and will eventually put GM out of business unless all its competitors are unionized. Otherwise the game is over. "Cheap tacky products?" This comment is totally ridiculous. Suppliers build what they are told to build to the specs they're told to build to. If you want to complain about "cheap tacky products" you'd better complain to GM. They are to blame for producing poor specs and/or for accepting inferior product. Either way they own it. If you want to blame someone for "corporate greed" blame the stockholders (which somehow I'm sure as a unionized employee you own stock) for not standing up for yourselves and ALLOWING GM to pay all kinds of ridiculous money to these morons while GM continues to lose money and market share. Who pays big money for poor performance? Well truth be told lots of companies do in the US. You're probably a Democrat.

It certainly is a mess. Somebody needs to establish an internal strategy (not one they'd make public) that prunes the company to the point where they're making money and can get themselves some breathing room so they can think clearly. Right not there's so much stress everywhere I suspect they're making irrational and emotional decisions. This little nip and tuck stuff they're doing right now is the kind of thing that will kill the company in a slow, painful death spiral.

Remember those teenagers are the buyers of tomorrow and YES they pay attention to the car market. They're the ones buying Civics and Corollas which were the original chinks in GM's armor. Don't forget. You're right that GM doesn't have the funds to build a unique small car for Pontiac so they should just bite the bullet and not bring anything to the market. If you can't be #1 or #2 don't bother. Competing with yourself is never healthy.

I think you can read into it more than that. It's clear older Americans understand what a failure of GM or Ford would do. It's also clear the more affluent Americans tend towards the "safe" choice and/or the one returning resale value. It *was* interesting the 18 to 24 year olds picked GM. Maybe there's hope yet?

GM should have weaned themselves from Delphi as a sole source supplier long ago or at least reduced their dependence to the point where having them strike or fail couldn't bring down the whole company. Now it appears that a strike would burn what cash they have in 3 months or less. As I said in a prior post it's time to throw down the gauntlet. The golden goose is dying and if the union is stupid enough to finish it off by striking so be it.

It's the nature of business in America.... it runs quarter to quarter with very little strategic thinking. I honestly don't know how a public company can survive with unions. When negotiation time arrives the union is well aware of the profit and cash pictures of the company so the union competes based on the company's ability to pay AT THE TIME THE NEGOTIATION HAPPENS. The union will look at the profit and consider it as their own little pot of gold. Unions create the natural "we/they" scenario instead of a spirit of cooperation and mutual goal of business survival and profitability. I have employees that behave this way even without the union - I get rid of them as quickly as I can. They aren't healthy for the business.

So what I took from this is that Toyota is in the position that GM was in 30 years ago. So little time to ruin a great company. Shows you what greed and lack of planning will do.

It's time for the nuclear option GM. Break the union now!

So am I old enough to remember "YoYo's" (as one of my college buddies used to call Toyotas) coming in. The reason the Japs got a foothold was because Detroit was willing to cede the bottom of the marketplace to those 'lost cost' providers. True the gas crisis helped push things along and the quality issues didn't help but in the end it all added up to not paying attention to the marketplace. All of a sudden when gas was expensive the whole marketplace moved to smaller cars (the market Detroit abandoned) and the Japs had the foothold they needed. (Does this scenario sound familiar? Ahem... gas prices spiking up... ahem... everybody moving to more efficient vehicles.) From there the Japs have eaten Detroit from the bottom up. They've also used a simple rule: (strikingly similar to another American corporation - GE) Be #1 or #2 in a segment or don't bother. They've waited patiently making money on a very small number of products and then making the leap up to the next product line when the time is right, slowly and steadily with decent, reliable products. The thing I find amusing when I visited toyotanation.com earlier tonight (my first time over there) is how ignorant most posters are over there. Most indicate they're from somewhere in the US - I saw locations all over the US - and most just aren't acknowledging the fact that if GM and Ford were to fail, the ripples throughout the US economy would plunge the country into a depression (yes I said depression) that would rival the 1929 stock crash. Unemployment would shoot through the roof and a good percentage of them would be out of work too because the number of Americans capable of buying their Toyotas would plunge. Personally I don't give a $h! what happens to Detroit because if and when the perfect storm of the failure of the US auto industry and the default of the US government on their debts happens I'll leave the country and watch these same fools cry about the jobs they had. I have enough assets in enough places that I'll survive nicely in Europe some place. They'll have their Tundras to live in anyways right?

8.5% was ridiculous in a age where CD's are paying 4 and the prime rate in recent years had been .5%. I wonder what GM's employee turnover rate is. I suspect it's very low.

This is another case where deals were made at GM that *seemed* like a good idea at the time but came with problems later. I don't know the details of the original contract (which I think is where the real issue started.) Why would you sign a deal that forced any kind of payment later? I hope whomever was responsible for the original deal is out in the cold with none of the famous GM pension. Plus, to the point of a few of the posts here, if you just had a pile of cash handed to you I'd hope you'd be able to turn a profit for a while. Even though I love Italy as a cultural center it is also a place rife with corruption. Ya think maybe this had something to do with the sudden profit?

Sane men do though.

1. You can sell just as many ADDITIONAL Chevy trucks instead of the GMC "version" and get even more good brand exposure for Chevy so why spend any more "minimal development funds?" This would be an easy and benign transition. Your theory goes to the idea of not telling the consumer that GMC is the same thing as Chevy because they're too stupid to figure it out themselves. Pure rubbish. Truck buyers ain't that dumb. 2. They've also been saying Cadillac buyers are dying off too for 30 years. Guess what? They are! Look at how many are buying Lexus now. Haven't you noticed that the Toyota Avalon has become the new Buick? The baby boomers are now hitting "old people" status so they're just buying bigger Toyotas. Surely you jest when you ask about the GTO? When I say "they have" I mean "something they have that sells in volume." Volume is what pays the overhead and we know GM is all about overhead. I don't see something that's overpriced and sells 10K units a year as anything to get excited about. This said, I think the GTO is a decent car but I'm not going to plunk down the kind of money they want for it.

Good for him!

Nobody can really predict what will happen. The union likes to use the George W. tactic: Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD.) In the end the UAW has to know the free ride is over and they'll HAVE to accept some major concessions if they intend to survive at all. It will be a dare game to see which side dares to take the risk. GM will risk the strike if they insist on more concessions than the UAW will accept and the UAW will take the risk of having GM say no to their demands, which is something likely to happen since GM simply can not continue to be burdened with costs that are out of touch with the reality of the marketplace (and still survive.) Personally I suspect (and hope) that GM and Wagoner grow a pair and tell the UAW to get out and see how many workers renounce the union and come to work anyway. The non-union thing works fine for Toyota - it should work fine for GM too.

... to which I say GM should offer the Delphi workers a non-union job with a defined contribution retirement plan if they opt to take it. No more defined benefit plans should be negotiated or even be on the table. They're just going to saddle GM with yet another obligation further degrading their competitive situation. Let Delphi go bankrupt and get the court to void the contract.

I fear you're right to which I say "take them down with the ship!" It's high time GM stopped kissing their asses. The goose that laid the golden eggs has died. The UAW has been unsuccessful at Toyota so they should die and die quickly. As much as we want to complain about bad GM decisions, quality or designs, in the end it's all about money. GM can't afford to spend the R&D money to build a better product than Toyota when they have a $2K disadvantage per vehicle sold. When will we wake up to this?

Toyota's marketing certainly underscores GM's lack thereof. GM needs to sharpen the message. Why should I buy GM? There's so many choices out there. Play up the American aspect of buying GM but stay on message. And on a side note they need to bump up their warranty. 3/36 is silly in today's market and they should not have any trouble meeting a longer period.