Foo - Fire 30,000, close 12 plants, retire in style !

http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/28/102638.shtml

cool. Wish I could do that. I could use an extra 4.6 million dollaers. Heck i could use an extra 25k :-/
Too bad i dont haev 12 plants to close or 30k employees to lay off.

Looks like you got a double post too :p

So you say you will only buy American made products eh???.... Nothing is "American" when it comes to vehicles anymore. The world is headed to hell in a flowered bicycle basket and I'm pedling at 600 watts! LOL

Very sad.... :-(

What's fascinating is studying the history of all this. The founder of the UAW was a die-hard Marxist who wanted to form a socialist society. As can be seen from other economic/political systems that have tried Marxist philosophies, they have failed miserably. A good read on the inside workings of the auto-industry can be found in "Rivethead" by Ben Hamper... I went out and tightened all the bolts and nuts I could reach on my Ford truck after that book...

http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/28/102638.shtml

When KMart was going through bankruptcy, their executives were flying back and forth from home to court in private, leased airplanes. It was sickening.

These big corporations wouldn't be so hasy to close everything down if they had to give up all their stock options, money earned, retirement funds, payouts, etc. They'd probably put in a good day's work for a change.

Koffee

4.6 million PER YEAR!!! .... i'm suprised a hit ain't been put out on these freaks.

That's crazy talk, Merton.... now if the guy turns up mysteriously missing or dead, we know who to blame. ;)

Koffee

That situation is just sickening.

Have there been situations where greedy CEO's of bicycle manufacturers swindled their way into big time money at the expense of their workforce?

First time I read that, I thought it said $4.6 million total, but as Merton noted, it's per year!. It doesn't really seem appropriate that a pension should be twice as big as your annual salary, especially if the company is going down the tubes.

Incredible. According to the article, GM has shrunk to half it's size when he took control, and now they're rewarding him? Whether you can pin the blame on him or not, I can't believe that it's in any way good for the company of the shareholders to fill his pockets. That's the disturbing part. It's not like he saw a bag full of money in an unlucked safe and ran off with it. Somebody else, probably several somebody elses, approved this for him!

That's like $2,200.00 per hour for not working! And GM is blaming their woes on health care costs for their blue collar retirees??!! And this guy is getting rewarded for making a whole lot of bad management decisions resulting in an ever-increasing loss of market share? :eek: :mad:

how do you get one of them CEO jobs anyway? what type of degree does it require? can it be any old degree or does it have to be business?

I think for a company like that, you need to know someone.

But if you are really interested I can ask my dad...

(He's a management consultant)

yeah! ask him! i can write myself checks while doing a poor job! i can do that all day and night!

whats new?


DOH! :D

Blame the CEO's all you want. It's a broken business model with a 50 year life cycle. Much the same for airlines, only shorter.

Yeah, this problem is multi-faceted and there's no one part that's the problem. There are multitudes of problems:

- executive greed, Wagoner's not the only one getting hefty retirements (practice of phantom years rampant)
- GM goesn't make cars people want to buy
- their cars aren't good values, comparable dollars buys you more in other makes
- UAW strangling them for increasing wages and benefits as earns goes down
- blue-collar high-school drop-outs making $27/hr to $45/hr for bolting on hub-caps
- worker absentee rates 4x higher than other industries (they get paid regardless if they show up or not)
- rising healthcare costs in US, costs GM more to maintain same coverage
- competition's innovating & building faster (US Toyota, Nissan, Honda, MB, BMW plants are non-union)
- etc..


The problem with cutting $7-billion in expenses by firing all those people and closing down the plants is that it's not being re-invested in future development. This has happened numerous times in the past with each downsizing from 750,000 workers a decade ago down to the current 325,000 or so. Each and every single time, nothing has changed in the company, they still do the same operation running in the red over and over again. The extra money saved goes into raises for the executives and then the UAW gets up in arms and forces raises for the workers as well. Productivity doesn't increase, costs don't decrease, profit-margins don't improve, yet expenses rises. This makes the red-tape bleed even worse... yet nothing else's changed...

The writing's been on the wall for a LONG time...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_19/b3932001_mz001.htm
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0506/08/A01-208646.htm (wishful thinking)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aXnobXpl9EGE&refer=home
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=566&fArticleId=2451311

Forbes - US auto-sales Nov.2005 (http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/ap/2005/12/01/ap2364676.html)

how do you get one of them CEO jobs anyway? what type of degree does it require? can it be any old degree or does it have to be business?

A lot of the most successful CEO's got their first degree in something other than business and made their way up the ladder by learning their stuff and working long hours, maybe picking up an MBA along the way. In contrast, a lot of the most famous did it by having a talent for finding the right person to suck up to. Either way, you don't just get an "MBCEO" or something like that. You've got be around for a while.

Danno, I'd say that's a pretty fair read on the overall problem. The way I see it though, every Detroit car that no one buys is one more strike against the recent trend of hideous travesties they've been producing lately, like the Avalanche, Hummers, Dodge Magnum, the new Durango, etc.

http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/28/102638.shtml
I hope that everyone just says "no" to GM's newly designed vehicles next year.

Those 30,000 aren't being fired, they get to sit around drawing a salary and wait for a new job at GM to open up for them. That's part of their contract. GM will lose people through retirement and attrition but if you get paid to do nothing, would you be looking for another job?

Same for the CEO. His severence/retirement package is negotiated in his contract. Quite common for these guys to have "golden parachute" clauses that mean they get paid mucho dinero if they are fired.

Blame the shareholders for allowing this to go on.

GM has put themselves in this mess and it's going to take years for them to get out of it. I'd shut down Pontiac, Saturn and Buick right now, focus on Chevy and trucks. The UAW better hope GM doesn't declare bankruptcy and should be willing to make concessions to avoid that.

Meanwhile, Alabama picks up another car manufacturing plant; Hyundai in Montgomery. The UAW has tried for years to unionize the Mercedes plant in Vance and all they've got to show for their efforts is a billboard sign near the plant.

Looks like Ford is getting in on the action too: Ford to close more than 8 plants (http://money.excite.com/ht/nw/bus/20051205/hle_bus-for532958.html)

Latest news on Ford. Looks like they're planning to cut 25-30,000 workers and close down 10 plants in the next 5 years: Ford plans deep job cuts: report (http://money.excite.com/ht/nw/bus/20051207/hle_bus-yue750669.html).

Question is... will the CEO of Ford get a better retirement package than GM?

They'd probably put in a good day's work for a change.

Koffee

You're kidding right?

I "retired" from industry, I was CFO of a heavy machinery manufacturer, we did business through 8 plants on 4 continents.

I worked 14 to 16 hour days 6 days per week. I was lucky to get 2 to 3 weeks of vacation time per year and even then I spent half of each "vacation" day on the telephone with home office.

I flew over 200,000 miles per year, every year and those "private" planes are there onlt to allow you to work enroute and maybe get some sleep.

Meals are usually cardboard sandwiches eaten while in a limo, or on the plane. You get up in the morning, work your ass off all day dancing to the tuen called by bankers, analysts, etc and hopefully get to bed around 10 so you can do it all over again.

I got out before most of my colleagues - I decided my family was worth more to me and rather than lose them I left.

I left with my pockets full but I earned every freaking dollar I have, including the time spent staring at the ceiling in the hospital wondering if this was it.

You are way off base saying these people don't work hard.

You're kidding right?

I "retired" from industry, I was CFO of a heavy machinery manufacturer, we did business through 8 plants on 4 continents.

I worked 14 to 16 hour days 6 days per week. I was lucky to get 2 to 3 weeks of vacation time per year and even then I spent half of each "vacation" day on the telephone with home office.

I flew over 200,000 miles per year, every year and those "private" planes are there onlt to allow you to work enroute and maybe get some sleep.

Meals are usually cardboard sandwiches eaten while in a limo, or on the plane. You get up in the morning, work your ass off all day dancing to the tuen called by bankers, analysts, etc and hopefully get to bed around 10 so you can do it all over again.

I got out before most of my colleagues - I decided my family was worth more to me and rather than lose them I left.

I left with my pockets full but I earned every freaking dollar I have, including the time spent staring at the ceiling in the hospital wondering if this was it.

You are way off base saying these people don't work hard.

Who will protect the poor overworked executive?! I think they need a union.

Union dues cost too much

Union dues cost too much

...and provide too little for the money. Unions aren't about their membership anymore, rather politics.

Union dues cost too much
...and provide too little for the money. Unions aren't about their membership anymore, rather politics.One of my friends who went through hell with the grocery-workers strike last year just quit after 8-years in the biz. She lost over 6-months wages due to the strike and afterwards, she ended up with an employment package that was worse off than what the company offered before the strike (they just wanted employes to chip in $16/week for health-care coverage). After the strike, they still got all healthcare costs covered, but union-dues went up an additional $100/month, supposedly to pay for the cost of the strike. Then the store went and hired a new manager with no experience from the outside and bypassed promotion for anyone who've been there for ages... All calls to the union haven't been answered... so much for worker-protection. I suspect a lot of others will be quitting as well...