re: #365 Sharmuta

It ain’t management, it’s labor.

I don’t entirely agree. Historic labor costs are certainly a problem, especially when it comes to pensions. But current costs have achieved near equity with competitor’s costs. The resulting two-tiered workforce has created it’s own problems, with new hires making roughly half what they would have just a few years ago and working side-by-side with people only slightly more senior who have a much sweeter life.

And it really does seem to be management. Ford isn’t having similar problems, despite the UAW using agreements struck with GM as their template for negotiations with other auto makers. GM is a lumbering slug, staffed with small-brained, small-minded management whose only concern is it’s own short-term gratification with no thought at all for the good of the company.

Chrysler is even worse, having been gutted by a professional leech to the point where there is little left but a husk that may attract a buyer close to it’s own merit - Fiat - but has long since passed the point of being able to function on it’s own. Daimler started the bleeding, and Nardelli finished the company off. I don’t think there’s a single engineer left working there.

I’m no fan of the unions, but their power has lessened dramatically over the last couple of decades, and they have been in sharp decline for the last ten years in terms of the wages they command and the power they wield. Their past excesses certainly haven’t helped anyone, but their responsibility for the current fiasco at select companies seems greatly overstated.