Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The guys working at the Toyota plant in Cambridge Ontario make 93% of what the CAW guys get down the road...but they don't have union dues and union BS to deal with.
AND they can move up in the ranks if they excell, and can get fired if they do poor (UAW) quality work. They are craftsmen considered assets by their employers instead of liabilities.
How is reeducating sewing machine operators going to get them a job?
We have college grads working retail because the big companies can get foreigners to work for cheap.
My buddies employer is laying off 100K workers because they can get Asians to do the same work for 10K
If the industry those people are employed/skilled in no longer exists, then they need to change industries. We shouldn't force a business to employ people simply because they exist.
I'm not saying that the economy isn't screwed up. I also believe that US companies should be incentified to hire US workers and produce products here. However, there are myriad reasons why companies outsource and it's not always simply tied to salary. My whole point was that you are making a case that is often shouted but based on flimsy data. The economy is changing, we need to change with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PDD
The only difference between union and non union built cars is the the union workers can afford to buy those same cars.
A guy making $30 an hour can buy a Ford
A guy making $15 an hour can buy a Kia (used)
Well, a guy who starts at GM or Ford today is only making $12-$15 an hour. It's the legacy employees that are still making the high wages. For the most part though, the non-union shops pay very similar wages to the UAW shops and when adjusted for cost of living, some of them pay even more than there UAW counterparts. A big difference though is the lack of "Cadillac" healthcare, massive pensions, etc.
Wages are only a small portion of the total labor cost. I've seen figures that have stated that the guy making $30 an hour at a GM plant used to cost GM closer to $70. These are people who bolt things together on an assembly line, there is no reason they should be making that kind of salary. This was one of the major contributing factors to the decline of the American manufacturers. If you have to build a car to hit a $20k price point and your total labor costs (salary, healthcare, pension, retirees, furloughs, etc.) are double what your competitors are, where do you think they save the money to hit the price point?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
It is not just about the hourly wages of employees. It is the regulation. Requirements that a certain number of people have to be on the payroll and siting around doing nothing. Prohibitions agaisnt firing inefficient or incompetent workers. Jurisdictional battles where a line has to shut down if someone spills a coke until the guy from the janitor union decides to show up and clean it up. Anyone on the line who cleans it up will be reprimanded or fired, even the guy who spilled it. If you do fire someone, you are probably going to end up paying them anyway. The unions cannot stop fighting amongst themselves and employers are often the victims of these fights. Pay one union and another sues you claiming that the workers were really in their sphere of influence. It is a union fight, but the employer gets caught in the middle and pays for everything. Employers have to pay for absurd union administration and for lobbying and political pandering. On top of official fees, they have to pay bribes to individual union representatives. Then you add in medical and retirement requirements and you have a very difficult atmosphere to make a profit. The purpose of a corporation is to make a profit. That is why they exist. They are not employment agencies. Even if their goal was to eschew profits and employ as many uneducated American workers as possible, they still woudl have problems competing.
If it was just about wages, the companies could probably pay the same wages and keep the work here. However it is not just about wages.
Excellent point building on what I was saying earlier. There are a myriad of reasons why companies outsource. Regulations, unions, taxes, etc. are all much higher up the reason list than worker salary, but no one wants to talk about those points, they just want to rail about how wages are lower in other countries.
My Tacoma was made in America by none union employees as was my previous Nissan Hardbody. The Nissan served me well for 15 years and my Tacoma has for 6 years now. Despite the big 3 fans boys on here, I am proud to own 2 American made vehicles.
Canada is lumped in with the U.S., Mexico is not. Parts origin stickers on current Fords and GMs at least list U.S.+Canadian parts content and the country that has the next-highest parts content and the percentage. It then lists the location of assembly of the vehicle and the location of assembly of the engine. Mexico is not lumped in with the U.S. for parts content as some vehicles I was looking at very recently had Mexico listed as the "country with the highest non-U.S./Canadian parts percentage;" it was not lumped in with the U.S. and Canada.
Most vehicles on the road, especially vehicles classified as trucks, are assembled in the U.S. even if the parts are all/mostly foreign. There is a 20+% tariff on imported trucks but not on auto parts, so it is usually less expensive to ship the parts to South Carolina or Alabama and have the locals bolt it together than to import a finished vehicle. Or you can do what Ford initially did with the Transit Connect. That was a European-market vehicle Ford wanted to bring over to the U.S. before a domestic assembly plant was set up. The Transit Connect as it is sold in the U.S. is a commercial light truck as it is a panel van, and would be subject to the tariff. Ford assembled the vehicle in Europe but put seats in it so it was classified as a passenger vehicle. The seats were then removed in the U.S. and shipped back to Europe so they could be reinstalled in the next batch of U.S.-bound vehicles. Ford now assembles the vehicle in the U.S. from what I have heard.
I switched to nissan and bmw 30 years ago after getting tired of the crap the american auto industry dumped on me for decades.
It took 30 years for me to come back and buy an american vehicle which i did 2 months ago.
I bought a jeep.
Funny you mention BMW, as BMW has been definitely near the bottom of the quality heap recently, along with most of the rest of the German automakers. You also chose a product from the ONE domestic maker with horrible reliability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hoffdano
Posts like this are so tiresome. You think consumers should buy an inferior product because it was made in the USA? I am not saying US brands are inferior now. But for about twenty years, beginning in the 1970s, American cars stagnated while imports, mostly Japanese, rapidly improved in quality and durability.
For most of the 1990s and newer, Japanese cars cost more than the equivalent American car. Consumers paid more for a better product. You couldn't get a discount on an Accord but you could buy an Impala for $5000 off.
For the most part, Toyota and Honda vehicles still cost more than domestic vehicles but are not a better product any more (Chrysler excluded.) The premium is based on many people in your generation's historical aversions to domestic cars because of the problems in the '70s and '80s. The fact that the average age of a Toyota buyer is approximately 50 (which is higher than domestic nameplates) is testament to that fact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PDD
Since most of the fasteners are metric I can only guess they are foreign made.
So nice to have an American made car.
Not necessarily, the U.S. car industry switched to using a lot of metric measurements and parts in the past 20-30 years. Engines haven't been sold sized in cubic inches in a long time. If you look at a lot of measurements in cars, they come out to be an even number in metric but not in inches and feet. Tires have been measured partially in metric for decades. Metric fasteners have replaced SAE fasteners since the mid-1990s. With all of that metric being used and the majority of parts in domestic-branded cars still coming from the U.S., there has to be quite a bit of domestic metric-spec part production.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PDD
Did our country become the big industrial machine it once was by outsourcing it's manufacturing and labor?
Our country became the big industrial machine it once was mostly because we were the only large industrialized country to not be destroyed in WWII. The erosion of our absolute manufacturing dominance is due to the countries demolished in WWII recovering plus the rise of manufacturing in Asian countries that previously were little more than rice paddies. Essentially, the rest of the world has caught up with us. It was bound to happen sooner or later, although I will say there were/are some things the country has done to perhaps hasten that occurrence a little bit...
Oh, and to answer the original question that I have so far neglected to answer- yes, I am happy to own American cars. I do realize that the historically foreign nameplates assemble their cars in the U.S. and use roughly the same mix of U.S./non-U.S. parts as domestic makers. However, the profits the domestic manufacturers make from selling their cars stays in the U.S. I'd rather have the money stay in some suburb of Detroit rather than sending it to Aichi, Japan or some other foreign locale if I have a choice.
So those people who won't buy American because of the cars from the 70s, 80s, and 90s (you need to include those too) won't suddenly swing back to the Big 3 if they are happy with their Japanese cars.
If you choose to favor employees in the Detroit area - that's your choice. But for a long time the Big 3 expected Americans to be "loyal" which led to decades of mediocrity.
Unless a car comes from a country clearly behaves in an anti-American way, I don't care where a car comes from. I buy what I want, and I think it is un-American to reward mediocrity. If you do - you are encouraging complacency.
Funny you mention BMW, as BMW has been definitely near the bottom of the quality heap recently, along with most of the rest of the German automakers. You also chose a product from the ONE domestic maker with horrible reliability.
For the most part, Toyota and Honda vehicles still cost more than domestic vehicles but are not a better product any more (Chrysler excluded.) The premium is based on many people in your generation's historical aversions to domestic cars because of the problems in the '70s and '80s. The fact that the average age of a Toyota buyer is approximately 50 (which is higher than domestic nameplates) is testament to that fact.
Not necessarily, the U.S. car industry switched to using a lot of metric measurements and parts in the past 20-30 years. Engines haven't been sold sized in cubic inches in a long time. If you look at a lot of measurements in cars, they come out to be an even number in metric but not in inches and feet. Tires have been measured partially in metric for decades. Metric fasteners have replaced SAE fasteners since the mid-1990s. With all of that metric being used and the majority of parts in domestic-branded cars still coming from the U.S., there has to be quite a bit of domestic metric-spec part production.
Our country became the big industrial machine it once was mostly because we were the only large industrialized country to not be destroyed in WWII. The erosion of our absolute manufacturing dominance is due to the countries demolished in WWII recovering plus the rise of manufacturing in Asian countries that previously were little more than rice paddies. Essentially, the rest of the world has caught up with us. It was bound to happen sooner or later, although I will say there were/are some things the country has done to perhaps hasten that occurrence a little bit...
Oh, and to answer the original question that I have so far neglected to answer- yes, I am happy to own American cars. I do realize that the historically foreign nameplates assemble their cars in the U.S. and use roughly the same mix of U.S./non-U.S. parts as domestic makers. However, the profits the domestic manufacturers make from selling their cars stays in the U.S. I'd rather have the money stay in some suburb of Detroit rather than sending it to Aichi, Japan or some other foreign locale if I have a choice.
owned 2 bmw's the last almost 7 years. 4 years the x3 ,almost 3 years the 328xi.
they were 2 of the most reliable vehicles i ever owned. not one mecanical issue with either. i can even say that about the nissans i owned
My Dodge Cummins now = Daimler
My MACK (now AB VOLVO) was built in Allentown, PA (RIP), now they are built in SC (lots sourced from non-USA)
My Case trackloader was built in Wichita but is now called CNH (Case / New Holland) & owned by FIAT ...
Anyone see a trend here?
Three (wimpy) cheers for a 'Service economy' ? ps... I don't hear much cheering, but I'm kinda hard of hearing from being a ex-USA Tool and Die Maker... (RIP, but VERY good career while it lasted...) Our USA factories are very silent now too
Now to figure out how to get some healthcare....(and grocery money) (for next 50 yrs). My next car will likely be purchased in a new country that still builds PRODUCTS (like cars) and has accessible / affordable healthcare !! (And hopefully some Tool and Die Maker jobs !)
Last edited by StealthRabbit; 10-24-2011 at 03:00 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
