General Motors bankruptcy

For those pondering the decline and fall of GM, consider the comment below to this article:

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/09/16/obama-risks-trade-war-to-help-union-allies/

September 16th, 2009

11:45 am GMT

Dear USA

A Flint area resident for over 50 years, born in a house just down the street from the Buick plant, I, like many of you, have seen the rise and fall of General Motors in Flint. As a 12-year old, I remember so well touring the plants and seeing the parade with Dinah Shore. What a thrilling time! GM and Flint: bonded forever, it seemed.

In my early college days I knew many guys that worked at GM. One was proud of putting his cigarette out on the hood of freshly painted Buick from time to time; another carried out a set of valve lifters every day in the false bottom of his lunch box, and still another routinely took sets of engine bearings by taping them to his legs. Some played an assembly line game where they tossed nuts and bolts into the tops of carburetors as cars moved down the assembly line. They routinely bragged about how little work they did. A frequently heard comment was, “I wouldn’t buy a GM car; I see how they are made.” I wonder what a Toyota worker says about their cars?

During the glory years each labor contract meant big pay increases, thanks to the Union. Over time, however, prices rose, diminishing the gains. My mother learned quickly that the price of milk went up overnight at contract time. Unions continued to get the power they wished for from Democratic law makers that passed rules making it almost impossible for GM not to give into Union demands. Today $300 a month is good money in China; it’s hardly enough to buy cigarettes and beer in Flint. Perhaps if in those negotiations with the auto makers the Unions were not given the upper hand, US workers could buy more with less money, and US labor costs would not be so high compared to the rest of the world now.

In the 1980’s a GM training director told me that about 45% of hourly workers did not have high school diplomas. At this same time the Japanese were importing very high quality cars that were manufactured using Statistical Process Control. This is a quality-assuring manufacturing method requiring some fairly sophisticated math skills, techniques most GM hourly workers weren’t educated well enough to use. The Japanese also employed teamwork methods with their workers. When GM tried to apply teamwork methods, the Union successfully blocked their use, claiming that teamwork would weaken the Union.

The Union over the years has lobbied against employment tests, educational requirements, teamwork, and other worker standards. The Union has lobbied for workers rights, civil rights, chemical Right-to-know laws, and labor laws. These ideas have added burdensome restrictions and huge costs to GM for recordkeeping, employee training, legal fees, and allocations of people and time that have nothing directly to do with the manufacturing of cars. Imagine trying to manage the building of a high quality automobile and at the same time having to spend time and money handling the thousands of grievances and production slow-downs created by the Union each year.

One of my friends, a GM line supervisor, complained regularly about struggling to find enough workers to start the assembly line, especially on hangover Mondays. Everyone knew not to buy a car built on a Monday. A good friend and a skilled trade worker at GM said the first thing they did each day was to get a cup coffee and do the crossword puzzle in the Detroit News. In contrast to this, a GM executive told me that at a plant in Poland, the workers, on their own time, arrived early to clean, service, and paint their machines, a practice that would not be allowed in the USA. Needless to say, those workers are ready to work when the starting alarm rings.

In Detroit, I once had a chance to observe an assembly line in operation. Two people sat across from each other listening to the radio, drinking coffee, and reading the newspaper. As the cars neared, each one got up and installed a windshield wiper and then returned to the paper, radio, and coffee. I wondered how a company can pay someone so much money for such little work. The answer, that plant has been leveled to the ground with many jobs lost.

Another nail in the coffin for Vauxhall.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8172233.stm

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you (cue drumroll)……..

GM’s new Chairman of the Board (“I don’t know anything about cars”):

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQ._YJhEj_Jo

and……

The White House official who is the de facto boss of GM – a 31-year old law school dropout with no experience in any business:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese.html

No wonder I keep hearing moans from my Chevy Malibu.

I’ve been keeping an eye out all week for a Vauxhall sold within the last 3 years, i.e. one that would make them money from sales (initial and second-hand) and also servicing. My journey is half-motorway and half rural via a market town. So a mixed-bag. I’ve come to the conclusion that Vauxhall have barely sold a car in that period so must have lost massive market share, hence my question do they make products people want to buy? No wonder GM are in trouble…

The deal has effectively been done with Magna International/Russian banks, and this has been approved by the German government (who are providing a significant portion of the funds, in return for a promise that no German factories will be closed).

So, no protectionism there then! :rolleyes:

Goodbye Ellesmere Port. 😡

I love the Opel ‘blitz’ logo. Being a WW2 historical type it is redolent to me of Afrika Korps and Normandy.

For a while the Vauxhall grill with a deep ‘V’ in chrome was an abomination. The Opel versions of the same car looked tons better

I’m an ex-Opel Owner. 2 x Manta’s and they were lovely cars that gave good service at a time when the equivalent Cavalier in the UK looked lumpen had had a bad quality reputation

Being a marketeer I can see the logic of promoting a single brand and I personally (Without the benefit of any panels or focus groups) am guessing that Opel carries more weight than Vauxhall.

Mrs Moggy is looking at buying a Tigra. I doubt I’ll be able to resist re-grilling and badging it if she did.

Moggy

Goverment motors

Hi folks; At least your tax money is not paying
the union’s pensions in which they did not pay
into at all.Hungry,out of work,eat your silverodo.
Can i cash in my ‘shares’.:mad:

No issue with Ellesmere Port. Happy for them to turn out Opel badged cars

Moggy

They already do 😉 Astras built at Ellesmere that are bound for Eire are badged as Opels.

Can’t see how the Opel brand is more stylish either – they are after all the same cars with different badges. (Opel was withdrawn from the UK many years ago because it had very little impact on the market here).

The Vauxhall badge has 14% of the UK market, in no small part because the public perceive it as a British brand. It is also the strongest market for Opel products in Europe. I would think it unlikely that the Vauxhall badge will be dropped anytime soon.

FIAT turned their back on the talks some days ago (due to being required to provide even more funding). The deal has effectively been done with Magna International/Russian banks, and this has been approved by the German government (who are providing a significant portion of the funds, in return for a promise that no German factories will be closed).

Moggy, what’s the difference, we all know Vauxhalls are now Opels (and are/were) GMs…

So why not keep an old name/marque alive, albeit only in name/badge.

If we’re going to replace the Vauxhall name with Opel, why not go the whole hog and simply rebrand Opel, Vauxhall and Saab as “GM Europe” (…or FIAT or whomever eventually acquires the GM europe organisation).

Why is Opel badging preferable, given the build quality and so on is now identical across both brands?

Paul F

-And yes, I am indeed 😮 a driver of a Belgian- (or German-?) assembled vehicle (by circumstance if not by preference) that wears Vauxhall badges, but I’d rather perpetuate a former UK brand on my car than drive a pan-Euro brand badge – if only to remind people that once upon a time the UK did have a number of indigienous manufacturing industries ;). Or, why not use Vauxhall badges on UK-assembeld cars,a nd Opel on European assembeld cars? I’m happy to maintain a (very tenuous) link back to a former British brand. The Saab brand identity survived rather than simply disappearing into the Opel brand, so why not Vauxhall?

‘Spose I’d better prise the old Griffon badge out of my radiator grille and replace it with a FIAT badge (:eek:) if rumors of a few days ago are to be believed… won’t make my people carrier any faster though, will it:D?

Are Vauxhall-Opel making products people want to buy?

No issue with Ellesmere Port. Happy for them to turn out Opel badged cars

Moggy

…if we lose Vauxhall in the UK to be replaced by the far more stylish Opel brand I can’t say I’ll be sorry.

I wouldn’t take that attitude very close to Ellesmere Port if I were you! :diablo:

The Vauxhall and Opel brands are identical surely; literally, only the badge is different.

Dinosaur companies eventually all die. GM is just another.

It will be sad to lose the Pontiac name, so long associated with muscle-cars (another threatened breed)

But if we lose Vauxhall in the UK to be replaced by the far more stylish Opel brand I can’t say I’ll be sorry.

End of the road for Saab too I wonder?

Moggy

In France, the majority of cars are French. In Germany, the vast majority of cars are German.
UK / USA is a very mixed bag….from junk to class from all corners of da velt.

Like Europe, a large number of “foreign” cars are in fact built in the U.S.
Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Subaru all have North American plants…so a quick look at the roads during a holiday won’t tell you the whole story.

Obama is in a tough spot…yes, the young people (at least some of them) don’t buy American cars, the Democratic party has long been supported/financed/controlled by the unions…and the auto industry is a large part of that.

Certain parts of the West are like that. Buying cheap, not caring for the local economy.

In France, the majority of cars are French. In Germany, the vast majority of cars are German.
UK / USA is a very mixed bag….from junk to class from all corners of da velt.