Saving the US Auto Industry

[TheMercenary]

How do you feel about sending taxpayer money to save any one or all of the Big Three?

[Trilby]

Against.

I worked as a nurse for GM (Truck and Bus division) back in '97. I came home one night after working and said, "This company won't last ten more years." Workers would clock in then come to medical and say, "I"m sick, send me home." If the company nurse sent them home, they got no demerit points and were paid.

They'd come to work whacked out or drunk and the union rules were that we were to "sober up" the asshat (in medical, no less) and periodically give the person sobriety tests. If they ever passed the test, they could go to work. Many of them just slept in medical for 8 hours, collected their pay and went home. I had asthmatics smoke cigs until they went into an attack and had to be transported via bus to the hospital, diabetics who would let their sugar drop to get out of work, and one woman came to medical one hour after her shift had started to announce that she thought she had a tampon stuck. Unwilling and unable to do the honors, we sent her to an Urgent Care. No tampon, but she was paid for all the time she was gone, as were the others. Never, ever have I witness such gaming in my life. The auto workers, those proud All-Americans, put the nails in their own coffin. Every single car or truck ever bought included the price of elbow, wrist, hand, shoulder surgery paid for by GM. And once Mama and Papa knew the tricks, they passed them down like precious recipes to Jo jr. and Dolores Dre. Entire families gaming.

They got what they deserved.

[TheMercenary]

Interesting insight. But I have to say, I see a lot of that behavior in other industry as well. It use to be worse in the DOD than it is now, but they have their fair share of slackers as well.

[Trilby]

I also worked for AK Steel in medical dept. They were nothing like the doodie heads at GM. In contrast to Generous Motors, they had maybe one bad apple to 9 good ones, where gm had 10 bad apples to 9.

There was a deer in the parking lot: Joe Asshattery ran it down with his truck, killed it and was going to take it home (mmmm, truck killed baby deer!) when he got arrested.

Another proud GM worker, pissed at a security guard, brought the severed head of a PIG to work and set it in a place where he knew security guard woud see it.

Guy came to work, shot his woman in the face in the parking lot.

Because union rules said they didn't have to tie back their hair, woman on line was scalped. YOU paid for that if you bought a car, truck....

Dude arrested and jailed for dealing weapons (GUNS) at work was released after a year and got his job back. YAY UNION!

the monthly union letter, written by their "president" read like the ramblings of a drunk maniac.

Yeah. I've a grudge, but so what? They BEGGED to be shut down.

[TheMercenary]

The problem is I don't think Pelosi and Reid have the balls to do it. Shut it that is. Most of the rational economists I have heard on NPR say let it fail or at least go to Chapter 13 and reorganize. It would be painful for many people but something has to give. We can't just keep handing out Billions to these failing corps.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And how many of the 266,000 GM employees did you see gaming the system?

Read "Life on the line", by Solange De Santis.

As a veteran business reporter, Solange De Santis covered her fair share of layoff announcements and plant closings, but almost always from Management's point of view. That is, until this mid-career, mid-thirties, Ivy League-educated journalist quit her job to become an assembly-line auto worker.She was hired at a doomed General Motors plant, and quickly learned... More about the bone-crushing realities and elusive rewards of hard, physical work. In Life on the Line, DeSantis offers a glimpse into a world that too many of us shy away from acknowledging, even as we accept the keys to our new cars. Completely candid, and as unexpectedly poignant as it is funny, Life on the Line will change the way you view blue-collar work and the cars on which we all depend.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

And how many of the 266,000 GM employees did you see gaming the system?

All of them. Just extrapolate: 10 out of 9 apples at my GM plant were bad.
90,000 dollars a year for a janitor, who still lives in a trailor on the wrong side of the tracks? Full medical? Gramma's and Grappy's putting grandchildren on their insurance coz mom and pop are meth addicts? Yeah. And there's so much more.

Read Rivet Head: Tales from the Assembly Line by Ben Hamper.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Bullshit.

[Trilby]

For the RECORD, bruce, I worked with steel workers,too, who were pretty much the salt of the earth. Good men and women. Mostly ex-military. A lot of Vietnam Vets. Lot of Gulf War vets. They were NOTHING LIKE the GM babies I saw.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Bullshit.

Oh, you worked at GM? then you know.

ETA: when they got "laid off" they collected their pay. Getting "laid off" was a wet dream for them. They went practically berserk with happiness.

[xoxoxoBruce]

If "10 out of 9" were gaming the system and reporting to medical to get out of work every day, how the hell did any thing get built? That's impossible and union or not, the plant would close very quickly. Since you are saying all 266,000 GM employees fall in this catagory, then GM never built any cars/trucks. Bullshit.

[Pico and ME]

I didn't vote because I haven't a clue what is really needed to save this situation. And my family's livelihood depends on Chrysler staying in the business.

Bri, I worked in a couple of transmission plants and I saw all kinds of people who came to work everyday and do their jobs. Everyone I know who works there works hard.

And most of these jobs aren't kind to the body. Neck and back problems end up plaguing a lot of these people. After a year of it I had to have two herniated discs (that caused me severe pain for 6 months) removed. The repetition of my job aggravated a problem that normally wouldn't have surfaced for another ten years or more.

[SteveDallas]

I didn't vote because I don't fit any of the above.... I buy to a certain extent the argument that a total shutdown will lead to too much job loss, etc.

However I just don't see what good it is to give bales of cash to owners and management that have, by definition, screwed up. Who really thinks that a large influx of cash will suddenly enable the same people to run at a profit? In the case of the post-9/11 airline industry, it seems to have delayed the inevitable, and I see the same here.

[Griff]

Picture this, GM sold off piece by piece and busted into half a dozen small innovative car companies building the cars people want and need. Let it fail.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I wonder how much job loss really would occur under reorganization? And for how long, before they got their shit together under new management, and started rehiring again?