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The old D-3 are now getting more competitive. Tier 2 has helped greatly, as $73 per hour labor with benes brought them to their knees just a few years ago. The UAW has fallen so far in size, even their members accepted the new $14 an hour payrate in a Michigan Ford plant, as the alternative was for the car to be produced entirely outside America.
I've always wanted to know this. Is it the profit motive?
No. Other manufacturers have profit motive too. A big part of it is legacy costs that foreign automakers just don't have. (Wanna know why many assembly lines high-tailed it to Canada and Mexico? So that the Big Three won't have to pay health care costs for someone for the next 30 years after they retire.) Recent bailouts notwithstanding, other nation's government tend to subsidize their auto industries more than the U.S. does. The Toyota Prius for instance... courtesy of the Japanese government and the R&D bucks they put up for it. And part of it was the U.S. manufacturers just plain got lazy and rested on their laurels while the foreign competition caught up with and surpassed them.
The American companies became stodgy and conservative in their strategies, thinking they had a captive market at one point. There was a "bigger/plusher is better" mindset connected to either faulty market studies or inborn executive thinking (remember how the Thunderbird got bigger and bigger until it lost market). They thought that the "perception" of quality (even if it's a facade) by consumers was good enough.
Henry Ford was an innovator. Sometimes the originator of a company is creative/progressive then ensuing owners are not so, refusing to change in the name of preserving what they have, thereby allowing others to pass them by.
The Japanese were more progressive over certain decades.
So, scrap the Union thus scrap employer provided health insurance? Would the car manufacturer still provide health insurance at a lower rate with out the union? Most likely not. So what you are say is their pay which is in most cases is in the 20-30 dollar an hour range?
I read a stat once that said GM spends more on health insurance for their employees than all the steal purchased for the manufacture of cars. Those insurance costs place the US in a non-competitive disadvantage straight out of the gate hands down. I think many Americans do not realize the cost per employee many companies pay. For example my previous employer paid $1800 per month for my wife and I's coverage using BCBS/PPO.
Why Can't American Automobile Manufacturers Compete With Their Foreign Counterparts?
1. unions
2. health care costs
3. americans more worried about 4x4, cup holders,pimping their ride, and stereo's than milage
4. poor union lazy american workmanship
5. poor idea of luxury...stupid americans think a overpriced toyota with a name like lexus, is more luxury than a cadi...stupid americans think that mercedes is a status symbol, even though its a crappycar
6. overregulation
7. overtaxation (our corporate taxes are the highest in the world)
8. freeetrade agreements that we are getting screwed with
GM, Ford, and Chrysler are competing. GM just took the top spot back.
the only reason gm had the most sales...government purchaces and lease...by the taxpayer
gm is failing again
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