Quote:
Originally Posted by Gung_Ho
If Toyota paid their employees what you call "real" wages, then they'd be where GM is today.
Toyota does pay high wages for assembly-line work, but they don't have to considering that any uneducated drop-out could do assembly-line work for any automaker.
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From my understanding they pay their Japanese workers about what GM pays its American workers, the difference in pay comes from health care cost at GM which we all know have been increasing greatly over the past few years. In Japan they have universal health care and it doesn't matter if you agree with the idea or not you have to accept the fact that this gives Toyota a edge when it comes to cost. Not only do they not have to worry about the costs of its current employees but it also doesn't have to worry about the cost of retirees as well.
Another thing that GM has making things worse for it is the fact that its so old, it was big infact its been the biggest automaker in the world for around 70 years. It was building cars in massive numbers back when it took a lot more people to do so and as technology has improved they have needed less and less workers to get the job done. This has lead to retirement and early retirement in many cases as they no longer need that many workers to do the same job. I believe that GM once had about 600,000 workers building its cars and trucks in America and today thats down to what 75,000?.
However we have to note that this is partly because GM was closing plants in America and opening plants in other nations. We shouldn't accept slave wages in America and as a result we should not bend to the demands of a automaker who moves plants to countries that has exactly that.
This isn't just about GM, Ford, and Chrysler though as they all use parts suppliers to supply them with many parts instead of doing those in house. The auto makers have been squeezing their suppliers to give them ever lower prices or there is a risk they may go with another supplier instead. And with reduced orders for parts for many suppliers a ton of them have gone under as a result of this.