[member12]

Thats also why you see record high gas prices, a strain on natural resources - stone, steel, cement, etc. Keep sending our jobs overseas America and keep buying all that cheap Chinese crap! Your only shooting yourself in the foot. Why in the world would we want to boost the chinese economy even further??? I'd rather know my neighbor down the street has a good job at an American factory making jeans for $50 a pair and can send his kids to college, etc. than what we have now. Buying jeans for $12.99 and seeing that same neighbor who now works at walmart is practically starving.

Is walmart's stock price worth the death of a nation?

Well, I am not complaining about record high gas prices because we just signed another lease with BP on my family's land in Louisiana. High gas prices mean that people along the gulf coast, particularly Louisiana and Texas, make more money. I am glad that they are finally building refineries and LNG facilities in this country, but a little upset that it took $3.40 a gallon for that to happen.

You still have my vote.

The problem is that people try to save money where they can. We must react to the change in the global economy better than we are. Instead of complaining, we need to do something about it. The problem is that people like don't care as long as I have a job. I tried to buy American durable goods (American trucks too, even though I have real problems with the UAW), but there simply isn't many visible alternatives out there for the type of things that Wal Mart sells.

Example: I just bought a complete hair cut kit for $14. It was a Remington brand and it was made in China. It saves me money and time because I can shave my head and trim my beard the way that I want to without waiting in line or paying $15 for someone else to do it.
I just cost the girl who cuts my hair business....and I just contributed to the trade deficit and cost whoever makes a similar product in America (all on the shelf at Kroger were made in China). I feel guilty, but the reality is that there were no alternatives on the shelf that were made in America or even Mexico.

 

[CharlotteFirebird]

It is amazing how little most of you actually know about GM and the UAW. Most that I read in here is bashing. Trouble is, the bashers are ignorant of the facts.
I did my 30 yrs at 5 GM plants and think I have a pretty good understanding of how things work concerning GM/UAW.
The bashers strike me as McDonalds bottom level "managers". Just enough education to express themself, but with zero knowledge of what they speak of.
Ted

I don't feel like I need to know much about the situation. The UAW has pulled this how many times in the last few months? As others have mentioned, the rest of us would be out the door if we did the same thing.

I want things made in this country, but this just gives GM a reason to make them somewhere else...or has the UAW not noticed their declining membership?

 

[nascarnate326]

It is amazing how little most of you actually know about GM and the UAW. Most that I read in here is bashing. Trouble is, the bashers are ignorant of the facts.
I did my 30 yrs at 5 GM plants and think I have a pretty good understanding of how things work concerning GM/UAW.
The bashers strike me as McDonalds bottom level "managers". Just enough education to express themself, but with zero knowledge of what they speak of.
Ted

The facts are that GM fixed their quality issues, yet the UAW hasn't fixed their extremely high wage issue. My grandparents/parents worked/work for GM, I have a 4 year degree and work for a university, hardly the McDonalds bottom level manager you speak of. I have enough education to express myself and knowledge of what I speak of. There are many of us here that don't work for GM, but still know more about GM and the cars it makes then the people who build our cars. Ive been rooting for GM since day one, its in my blood but comments like that really make me want to go out and buy a 350Z or M3 instead of a Camaro.

 

[drew770]

The bottom line is most peope do not hate the unions, they just feel that the timing is piss poor.
GM finally has a great vehicle to compete with the Camcords of the world and NOW the union wants to strike at the plant.
Is it over parking spots or seniority?
Where is the loyality and the pride of building the Malibu? Do the UAW not have good feelings to read all the praise that the new Malibu is getting?

Trust me I am no union hater but GM is on the ropes along with the US economy and the UAW picked the wrong time to stand their ground for parking spots and senority.

 

[jkr2106]

I don't understand the hysteria about a strike call at Fairfax. Do any of you know the issues? Nobody here has listed any of them but they sure as heck are painting the UAW in a bad light. Sure wish I knew why. The national agreement was negotiated how many months ago? Local issues can be as simple as parking spots or resolution of open greivances.

Let me preface this by saying that I am VERY pro-union; my Mom's a teacher and unions are great for them.

My problem is specifically with the UAW for the reasons stated above. Why is it is not at all inconceivable that the UAW would hault production of one of GM's (a company that posted a $39 billion loss) hottest cars over some parking spaces? Why--because the UAW is notorious for decisions like this. I don't understand why everyone in the media, Wall Street, and on GMI can see that GM is up against the ropes financially, and yet the UAW threatens some -ish like this. We're talking about the 2008 Malibu here, this isn't the G6. Heck, if the UAW wanted to strike at a G6 plant, I might not say anything. But I feel like at some point they need to buck up and take one for the team.

Striking is cool (when necessary), but I think the circumstances require that they think twice before striking when that can bankrupt a company and allow them to sever ALL ties with the UAW and send production abroad.

 

[MaxLegroom]

I'm sorry, but I would also have to conclude that UAW is at fault here. It seems to me that when GM comes up with something with so much as a whiff of hot to it (actually, in this case, more than that), they decide to strike the plant and sabotage the success of the model involved.

Similarly, often dealers, seeing that same model, add a market adjustment markup to it. Fortunately, I haven't seen that where I've looked at GM's latest and greatest (meaning I've stayed away from the wrong dealers in this area).

I find it improbable that GM management failed to pay attention to the detail of local contracts in Kansas City.

As for this Wal-Mart issue that's been debated here, and the trade deficit issues, how does this look for a perspective on it. We, the American people, through our leadership, decided we want a clean environment. We, the American people also decided we wanted workers to get a wage that allowed people to live with at least a modicum of dignity. We, the American people, as consumers, have decided that we cannot afford the prices of items where environmental regulations or paying a decent wage are part of the bargain, and thus have sent large chunks of our manufacturing needs to a country or countries that work people 19 hours a day for virtually nothing, or where the air pollution will pose a potential threat to the performance and/or health of the world's best athletes.

 

[vam29]

Eventually jobs will return to the US because international trade is mostly a zero sum game and wealthier countries having reduced their manufacturing bases by sending jobs to lower cost countries to increase productivity and profits during the inital stages of globalization will repatriot jobs for the well-being of their citizens.

 

[ByTheLake]

somebody please wake me when the UAW finally loses and goes under. i'm so sick of this crap. once again they make the "genius" decision to shut down the plant that makes vehicles that people are actually buying. i know they want to be noticed, but crippling the company that they depend on to pay them is just stupid.

attention UAW: if the U.S. auto industry goes under because of your endless leeching, you won't get any pay, any benefits, or any sympathy.

I couldn't agree more. I'm so tired of UAW stupidity it makes me sick to my stomach.

I've tried being being patient, but this is pure entitlement-minded greed.

 

[NfamousZ24]

I can't belive the stupidity on this board that doesn't realize or can't comprehend how much the UAW has allready gave up. I know it isn't going to stop here. Just wait till next contract when they will have to give up more.

I really don't think the whole UAW Fairfax is that big of a deal. Especially when compared to the UAW / AAM thing.

 

[D C]

Appaently they want their fair piece of the pie that is the billions upon billions of profit that GM is making these days. Oh wait...GM isn't making money, they're losing market share, yet these morons think it's a good idea to strike the very plants that have the most significant impact on their collective well being. Sheer brilliance.

 

[marinerbc]

I can't belive the stupidity on this board that doesn't realize or can't comprehend how much the UAW has allready gave up. I know it isn't going to stop here. Just wait till next contract when they will have to give up more.

I really don't think the whole UAW Fairfax is that big of a deal. Especially when compared to the UAW / AAM thing.

It just seems to some of us that sometimes, the UAW can't see the forest for the trees. They don't get the big picture idea.

If GM succeeds, the UAW has more members working. How is that a bad thing for both or either?

As stated above, take one for the team just once on this hot Malibu commodity. Serve yourselves as well as your employers, you won't regret it.

 

[TedReminder]

Auto workers have been "taking one for the team" for years. Since 1982 every contract has been concessionary. The last national contract is a huge insult to retirees.
Some of you talk of loyalty to GM. Lets talk of GM's loyalty to the workers.
I worked hard for 30 years in 5 different plants. Only one of those plants is GM now. I had to move on when plants were sold or spun off. Terex, Detroit Diesel, Saginaw Gear/AAM, Inland/Delphi, then finally did my last 5 years at Metal fab, Parma, Ohio.
After being jacked around that much, I left so fast it looked like lightning hit me in the ass.
I put my time in, looking at retirement. Now GM is working very hard to make retirement difficult. Medical coverage is getting to be a farce. I have to pay 100% of Dr. office visits. That is a joke. HMO and PPO plans were canceled with the 07 contract.
Now we have new workers at $15 per hour with 401 retirement and crappy medical. I wonder how they will vote when GM wants to cut retiree benefits again. I have a bad feeling about that.
Loyalty? I did my time, I buy GM vehicles, I promote GM to family and friends. Yes, I have a bit of loyalty. But it comes with a somewhat bitter taste when that loyalty is not a 2 way thing.
Ted

 

[mustfield]

Are the GLOBAL WARMING people working with the ASIANS who are in cahoots with the UNIONS who work with WASHINGTON on the PLANED DEATH of the U.S. Auto Industry?----------------I wonder sometimes!

Please stop with the STUPIDITY.

This isn't the result of "Asians" planning the death of the American auto industry. You do realise that when you say Asians, you are referring to an entire continent of people.

All this is the result of our FAILED LEADERSHIP. At every level, Bush and his minions have failed us. People who voted for him should hang their heads in shame for basing their decisions on issues of the heart and not the mind. We voted for an idiot and now we have to live with the ramifications of a failed presidency - foreign policy, economic policy at national and international levels, education policy.....NCLB...haha. If you sent your kids at any grade level to India or China, he/she wouldn't even PASS the grade because he/she has never received an education to begin with. Oh yeah, they do fail kids over there.

 

[Neanderthal]

Its called leverage,and the Union has not had much of it lately,so in their minds use it while you can.

It may be leverage, but being a spendthrift is a proven method of disposing of assets.
I recall a certain Yale MBA who bragged of his great stock of "political capital" following his 2004 squeaker election. As of 2006 it was gone and his ship of fools went down.

IMO the UAW is run by fools and thugs, and threatening a strike at the Malibu plant is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Brilliant move, general.

I believe Limbaugh is correct, the most expensive commodity we have in the USA is ignorance.

The greatest deficit that challenges us is the near-complete lack of great, or even merely excellent, leadership. :sad:

 

[psece]

Please stop with the STUPIDITY.

This isn't the result of "Asians" planning the death of the American auto industry. You do realise that when you say Asians, you are referring to an entire continent of people.

All this is the result of our FAILED LEADERSHIP. At every level, Bush and his minions have failed us. People who voted for him should hang their heads in shame for basing their decisions on issues of the heart and not the mind. We voted for an idiot and now we have to live with the ramifications of a failed presidency - foreign policy, economic policy at national and international levels, education policy.....NCLB...haha. If you sent your kids at any grade level to India or China, he/she wouldn't even PASS the grade because he/she has never received an education to begin with. Oh yeah, they do fail kids over there.

I didn't realize that Japan killing us in cars and electronics and China eating our lunch on manufacturing anything happened in the last 8 years. I think you need to start looking at the 70's on for the destruction of our manufacturing base starting with the Steel industry on. If I remember correctly, neither party has served us well. President Clinton(Democrat) and our Republican Congress signed the bill that loosened our credit rules giving us our housing downturn(it was also due for correction) and our credit industry collapse. Our two party system is failing us. Time for a THIRD party.......

Can someone answer me why seniority would be any different at any other plant to need a local contract. Or why the Standard contract couldn't address the special jobs? Just seems goofy to me.

 

[MaxLegroom]

I believe Limbaugh is correct, the most expensive commodity we have in the USA is ignorance.

That is amazing, considering how much greater the supply is than the demand...

 

[samkung]

Thats also why you see record high gas prices, a strain on natural resources - stone, steel, cement, etc. Keep sending our jobs overseas America and keep buying all that cheap Chinese crap! Your only shooting yourself in the foot. Why in the world would we want to boost the chinese economy even further??? I'd rather know my neighbor down the street has a good job at an American factory making jeans for $50 a pair and can send his kids to college, etc. than what we have now. Buying jeans for $12.99 and seeing that same neighbor who now works at walmart is practically starving.

Is walmart's stock price worth the death of a nation?

Because they have and in fact everybody in the World has the right to live the way you live, enjoy the things that you are able to enjoy, and send their kids to college as well. You cant expect them always stay being Poor, can't you?????

MAYBE the world leader are trying to lower the living standard of the developed world, so the developing world wont have to set its target too high, so its like we are going down, and they are moving up, and we all meet at the middle, happy ending:lmao:

 

[marinerbc]

I didn't realize that Japan killing us in cars and electronics and China eating our lunch on manufacturing anything happened in the last 8 years. I think you need to start looking at the 70's on for the destruction of our manufacturing base starting with the Steel industry on. If I remember correctly, neither party has served us well. President Clinton(Democrat) and our Republican Congress signed the bill that loosened our credit rules giving us our housing downturn(it was also due for correction) and our credit industry collapse. Our two party system is failing us. Time for a THIRD party.......

Can someone answer me why seniority would be any different at any other plant to need a local contract. Or why the Standard contract couldn't address the special jobs? Just seems goofy to me.

Bravo.

This is why somebody smart should start a "Posts of the Year" thread. Posts such as these should be saved and savoured by all.

 

[samkung]

Please stop with the STUPIDITY.

This isn't the result of "Asians" planning the death of the American auto industry. You do realise that when you say Asians, you are referring to an entire continent of people.

All this is the result of our FAILED LEADERSHIP. At every level, Bush and his minions have failed us. People who voted for him should hang their heads in shame for basing their decisions on issues of the heart and not the mind. We voted for an idiot and now we have to live with the ramifications of a failed presidency - foreign policy, economic policy at national and international levels, education policy.....NCLB...haha. If you sent your kids at any grade level to India or China, he/she wouldn't even PASS the grade because he/she has never received an education to begin with. Oh yeah, they do fail kids over there.

Yeah education is the biggie here, imagine if both India and China each produce more College graduate than America

China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was supposed to improve the U.S. trade deficit with China and create good jobs in the United States. But those promises have gone unfulfilled: the total U.S. trade deficit with China reached $235 billion in 2006. Between 2001 and 2006, this growing deficit eliminated 1.8 million U.S. jobs (Scott 2007). The world’s biggest retailer, U.S.-based Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion in U.S. imports from China in 2006 and 11% of the growth of the total U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2006. Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period.

The manufacturing sector and its workers were hardest hit by the growth of Wal-Mart’s imports. Wal-Mart’s increased trade deficit with China eliminated 133,000 manufacturing jobs, 68% of those jobs lost from Wal-Mart’s imports. Jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education.

Guys sometimes you have to ask yourselves and your fellow countrymen, you want Cheap goods, and at the same time, complaining about too much deficit. In a global economy, job will always flow from places with higher wages into places with lower wages, dont you know that some of the factories in China are closing down and move to Vietnam and Africa for even Cheaper labour cost. There is just no way to maintain low tech labour work "Jobs that everyone can do" in America, they just cant compete in the world.

China has achieved its rapidly growing trade surpluses by purchasing more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills and other government securities over the past few years in order to artificially and illegally reduce the value of its currency and thereby lower the cost of its exports to the United States and other countries. It has also repressed the labor rights of its workers and suppressed their wages, making its products artificially cheap and further subsidizing its exports. Wal-Mart has aided China’s abuse of labor rights and its violations of internally recognized norms of fair trade behavior by providing a vast and growing conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States.

source

Well arent the Japanese doing the same thing

I seriously think that the US should instead of promote free trade they should promote fair trade.

The cost of free trade is our middle class, I guess if we are ok with loosing that then lets continue the way we have been going.

There will never be fair trade, simple as that, the world is always unfair, this is why we got pay 40 bucks an hour for pushing buttons, while across the sea people work the whole day for a dollar income

Because China's currency is pegged to the dollar, there are very few environmental or labor laws that are enforced in China, Chinese factories do not have to pay $8,000 a year for health insurance, they don't have to pay 7.5% for social security, they don't have to pay unemployment benefits or worker comp insurance, and China does not have any ever increasing minimum wage.

That's why.

I sense a long standing issue with China:yup::yup: Dude, China is still a developing country, you cant just compare it like that, Why dont you compare the living standard of America and China

 

[mpsrent]

Meanwhile Honda and Toyota keep pumping out product. What an intelligent union move for job protection. Just when you have something the consumer might want........shut down the plant to a strike. Go figure?