Delphi demands US auto workers accept poverty wages

[Porter 21919]

Rough times for US autoworkers, dont blame any of us for buying rice burners or black forest cars from Germany.

"Delphi Corporation, the largest American automotive parts maker, outlined a series of unprecedented rollbacks in the wages, benefits and working conditions of its 34,000 unionized workers and 12,000 retirees in the US, in a confidential letter sent to the United Auto Workers union on October 21. The proposal, which was posted last week on a web site belonging to UAW Local 292 in Kokomo, Indiana, sets a new benchmark for the drastic lowering of living standards for workers in the auto industry and throughout the US economy."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/delp-n01.shtml TARGET=_blank>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/delp-n01.shtml

Just a website I happened to come across, Im not a socialist , Im a Constitutionalist.

Porter

[Denise 20352]

   Maybe they can quit paying union dues, and theyll have a few more bucks to spend.  Maybe the company will be able to stay open and they wont lose their jobs completely.

  $27 an hour is MUCH too much for laborers.  I make considerably less than that as an integration engineer, and I have to make student loan payments.  I made $9-10.50 as a licensed aviation mechanic before I went back to college.  I made $9 in my first job out of college, got a raise to $9.25 after a few months.

   If companies have to pay American laborers three times what theyre worth, the plant will close, theyll be replaced with robots, or the work goes offshore.  Its going to be worse now that the fuel prices have gone up, and were about to be plunged into a recession.

   This stuff is just simple economics.  Companies are not evil manifestations of the Great Satan, theyre just companies.  If you work for a company, you are a resource.  The unions say that you should be paid well regardless of what that resource is worth.  I disagree...life doesnt work that way.  If you get paid high wages no matter what you do, there is no incentive to do your best.

   We would all have more spending money if we could get rid of the Socialists in this country and get our taxes down.  If the carmakers could pay employees based strictly on what they were worth to the bottom line, and the government would quit micromanaging the auto industry, they might be able to produce something worth buying instead of the garbage that is on the market now.

-denise

[Daniel]

well said, Denise.
I happen to work at a plant run with UAW workers. it is insane to think that a person sweeping the floors is making more than a person with a graduate degree!!!!  
It really is simple economics, and it is no wonder that there are many other companies making better product for a lot less $$.  
The problem I have seen first hand is that the union workers have the attitude built by generations of union workers that they are actually ENTITLED to those sorts of wages.  

Time for a wake up call.  

[Dave Smith #17592]

I understand that Delphi and other large corporations are losing money and need to cut costs to avoid going under.  

But I get sick when companies cry poor, like Mobile Exxon after the Katrina hurricane and then report record profits in that quarter!    

Visteon (similar to Delphi) is also losing money and looking to cut wages.   But I read that their chief legal aid left after a year or two with a multi million dollar separtion package and is still kept on as a consultant at $40,000 a year!

If these companies want to save money, start at the Top!  Why do hundreds of hourly employees need to get canned when the Top execs take home hundreds of Millions?    

[Denise]

   Im curious to know what you mean about Exxon/Mobil "crying poor".  I dont pay attention to the news much, so I miss a lot of these things.

  Im just sorry that I missed the opportunity to get in on the money...always, always buy oil company stock when the price of gas goes up!

https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/quotesandresearch?etstyle=1y&size=t&sym=XOM&prod=XOM:NYSE:EQ

    Along comes a hurricane, and, surfs up!  Look at those outrageous peaks!  Tube city.

   I have a feeling that theyre going to have to quit fooling around, though, or the government is going to socialize gasoline.  Its one thing to rake the consumers over the coals, but $3 a gallon diesel fuel is going to send us back into the Great Depression.  It will be interesting to see EOMs profits next year.

   Good news, Tony told me about this yesteday, Bush has signed an executive order and we now have three gasolines, three different grades of unleaded.  No more of these ridiculous regional concoctions.

   More news, theyre building a refinery near Yuma.  The greenie weenies are already suing trying to get it shut down...yes, oil companies make big profits, but these people have every bit as much to do with your gas prices.  Maybe we should get together and start suing them back.

-denise

[Eric Maypother CLC #15104]

Hi,
Yes it is hard to stay competitive when you have to pay someone $27 an hour plus bennys when other companies in some countries can pay wages of $5 a day, but to go from $27 to $9 is a drastic change, it should be fased in over a number of years, the company should have seen it comming sooner, some people live paycheck to paycheck weather they make $10,000 a year or $100,000 a year, people will have to make drastic life style changes, sell houses, cars, etc. You realy cant blame some companies for moving south of the boarder.
Eric

[Dave Smith #17592]

NPR just did a story on government socialized gasoline in China.

The price there is $2.50 a gallon.  Pretty steep when you consider that the average working wage is $1000.00 a year.   But the poor get a gasoline credit from the Government too.

They are facing shortages there.  Since the Government sets the price, the privately owned refineries have to sell it at a loss or minumum profits.  So they increase the gas that they export to keep their stockholders happy.  This reduces the amount sold to the public, thus a shortage.  

No easy answer to the problem, even globally.

[denise 20352]

> but to go from $27 to $9 is a drastic change

   Maybe not, for the janitor who has only been there two weeks.  The article says that pay was cut to as low as $9, which means that some people could still be making $26.95.

-denise

[Porter 21919]

It is a real mess, I had a union shop for 12 years, Architectural woodworking, Carpenters & Wood Joiners of America union labor.

As if the union wasnt bad enough the government will hand you your head with socialist taxation costs.

I had some control over my cabinetmakers ( $ 25 an hour wages and benefits cost, full zero deductible health care and other benefits: holidays, two weeks vacation and pension )  but the carpenters we had to use for installations cost $ 45 an hour back in 1996 (wages & benefits) and they were unskilled and had bad attitudes. I never marked up their labor costs for a profit, it was impossible.

At least I have only ever owned or bought five new GM vehicles, three used ones and two used Ford trucks, I wouldnt own or drive a foreign ride if you gave it to me, I would sell it, they are no bargain to own or repair.

We can only count our blessing that we still have some old Detroit Iron real cars around that we can buy cheap and work on ourselves.

The entire automotive industry has become a real burden on all of us, cars that are too expensive, too complicated and overburdened with government mandated socialism and safety air bag features. Not too mention the coming black boxes for the insurance companies crash analysis, etc. More big brother socialist cr*p.

Throwaway cars, just like a computer with a dedicated lifespan.

Anybody that wants to give me a flame job here no prob.

Persevere,

Porter

[jeff]

Yes their salaries are not in keeping with the work they do. But theres more to it than that, you reported only half of it. The chairman of Delphi also wants to reneg on its pension fund committments. They made a promise to their workers and they should damn well keep it!

[densie]

  The black boxes are already here.  My Mercury has one.  Of course it doesnt do any tattling while the car sits in the back yard under a cover.  

  It is great that we can still run these old American cars.  Theyre simple to repair for the most part, and parts are almost free, so the cost of the gas is more than made up for by the low cost of ownership.  Besides, theyre fun to play with.

-d

[denise]

  I surely do agree with you on that.

[John Tozer #7946]

Denise/Porter etc.,

When I was a teenager growing up in Australia, surrounded by six cylinder Holdens and four cylinder English "bog", I used to dribble down my chin at American cars. I spent my allowance on Car & Driver (always 2 months behind) and my first experience of high finance was a lay-by on a plastic model of a 63 split window Corvette coupe. It subsequently became the greatest "mongrel" slot car in the neighbourhood!

I couldnt believe how cheap the US cars were compared to cars in Australia.

In those days (early sixties) it was still possible for me to go to my GM Holden dealer, if I had the $$$$, and get him to order me a Chevrolet Impala, or my Chrysler dealer and order one of those horrendously ugly 60/61 Dodges.

40 years on and it hasnt been possible for me to order a Cadillac, a Chevrolet or a Buick through my local GM Holden dealer for 40 years. I cant get my Ford dealer to order me a Lincoln or a Mercury either.

Chrysler Australia has been sold to Mitsubishi and they export cars to the US. So does GM Holden.

It seems to me that the US car companies invented the term "world car" then left it to everyone else to build it. The problem, as I see it now, is that US car manufacturers only make cars that Americans, in the main, will buy. Your present vehicle export record, not just to my country, would I believe be fairly woeful.

So you had better not knock those wages around too much beause you are relying on the workers that receive them to buy your cars!

I notice also that Delphi and Ford partitioned Congress back in February to lower the US import duties on steel from Brazil (50percent) and Japan (29percent) so it is not just the labour that they want to buy cheaper. I dont know whether or not they were successful but the same article said the Brazilians probably wouldnt sell it to you anyway - they were selling everything they could get their hands on to China.

Its not just you guys who suffer for want of a decent alternative - our "world car", like yours, is also a Honda Civic!!!

Thought you might appreciate this reflective view from abroad....


Regards,


John Tozer