[jfelbab]

Originally Posted by Len_A

I'm sorry to say this, but "today's news" has been full of inaccuracies.

Last year, Toyota factory employees made more money than their UAW counterparts, link here. Honda, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes employees are comparable to the Detroit 3. Their benefits are also comparable, except for the retirement programs, which any new UAW represented employees, as new ones come in to replace the retiring workers, are no longer eligible for. New contract with the Detroit 3 and the UAW eliminated al the non-manufacturing jobs, and they are now outsourced to lower cost vendors. This includes all shipping and receiving, material handling - including all forklift operations and overhead crane operation, janitorial, exterior building maintenance and landscaping, and the spare machine parts/nonproduction crib. All of those jobs are now in the hands of temp agencies and contractors at Ford and Chrysler, and in the hands of half-pay employees at GM. Plus there are whole manufacturing operations located in the assembly plants that are in the hands of low cost contractors. Link Here and link here

All the transplant automakers in the USA pay everyone, including their execs, comparable to the Detroit automakers.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler fought the regulations alone? And everyone embraced them? Baloney. On emission, safety, and fuel economy, Toyota and Nissan were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Detroit opposing them, especially the fuel economy increases that were passed last year.Link Here. Honda was lobbying separately, and fighting much of them as well. All you armchair quarterback critics act like the Detroit automakers march in lockstep together opposing the regulations and the non-Detroit automakers happily accept them, and nothing could be further from the truth. First company to file written objections to this years increase in fuel economy standards, filed on record in the Federal Registry, was BMW. See Link for article

Got news for you - the same thing is happening in Europe. European union has sharply increased emission standards, and every European automaker, led by Daimler and BMW, are complaining up a storm, fighting them tooth and nail. Link Here

Don't want to get into a pissing contest, but is there any other misconceptions on the auto industry that people need updating on??

Sure, this one was posted on Sunday:


What do you account to the clear failure of the big three to make money on their vehicles?

I also read that Rick Wagoner of GM got a 64% salary increase for GM's great 2007 performance of a $39 Billion loss.

Here it is:

Wagoner's compensation rose from about $9.57 million in 2006 to $15.7 million in 2007, a 64% increase.

Fritz Henderson, who was promoted to president and chief operating officer in March, received compensation of about $9.3 million in 2007, up from about $5.1 million in 2006.

Vice Chairman Bob Lutz's compensation rose to about $9 million in 2007, from about $5.1 million in 2006.

Not just sour grapes at GM as Ford carries a bag of suck too.

Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally had earned more than $22 million in 2007, drew a sharp rebuke from the UAW as excessive, given concessions UAW members had agreed to in the 2007 contract. This from Ford, which posted a $2.7 billion loss in 2007.

Hard to understand that companies who are performing poorly give their chiefs exorbitant salaries.

Now I didn't bring up any of that baggage you posted about about the UAW and the CAFE standards. My point was simply that the big three are losing money on every car and their Asian big three competitors are clearly not. These are published and verifiable numbers. I could find no more current numbers for profitability available. If profit formula have changed I'd be anxious to see them but looking at the last few months it is clear that sales of the big three have suffered a much greater loss than the Asian big three so I tend to think that profitability has not changed much.

To check on just how well managed GM has been I went and looked back at GM's stock performance over the past 5 years and compared it to Toyota and the DOW.

So why do GM and Ford chiefs seem to get outrageous salary increases while they seemingly run the companies into the ground then ask for bailouts?