GM is now the #2 automaker.....

rskarvan

So let’s get to the matter at hand: our perspective on the important issue of global trade and U.S. manufacturing.

I can think of no more compelling example of the impact of global trade practices on U.S. manufacturing than that of Swedish-owned Electrolux, once the largest employer in Greenville, Mich. The Greenville community and the UAW welcomed the investment and commitment to U.S. production by this European-based corporation.

Indeed, for years, Electrolux appeared to have a stronger commitment to the U.S. economy than did traditional American appliance manufacturers who long ago made a conscious decision to source products by searching the globe for low-wage, union-free workforces.

Twenty seven hundred workers built refrigerators at the Greenville plant – 2,500 were UAW members.

It was a profitable plant with good productivity and high quality. Workers’ pay averaged around $15 an hour, or approximately $30,000 per year – hardly excessive.

Yet, the plant shut its doors last year because the company said they weren’t making enough profit.

The UAW offered to reopen the contract and was willing to make contract changes that would save Electrolux $31.6 million a year. Governor Granholm offered incentives and tax credits worth $120 million over 20 years.

And, the city of Greenville came forward with a proposal for new land and a new building, worth $30 million.

Electrolux didn’t respond to any of the offers. They simply said no. They wanted more.

Today, the company is building those refrigerators in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The company says that wages in Mexico are 10 times less expensive than the $13 to $15 hourly wage earned in Michigan.

An economist at Calvin College in Grand Rapids estimated that another 3,000 Greenville-area workers would also lose their jobs due to the multiplier effect of Electrolux closing.

Greenville has a population of 8,000.

To bring home the ripple effect of these plant closings, we can recall the testimony of David Doolittle, a member of UAW Local 137’s bargaining committee to a Senate Democratic Policy Committee in March of 2004.

At the end of his testimony, he talked about his daughter in college and two more kids who will be going in the next couple of years. He said he did not know where he would find another good-paying job.

David Doolittle described his worry about his future and his children’s future this way: “It’s like a stomach ache that won’t go away.”

The story of Electrolux sums up the horrific impact that global trade practices have on America’s industrial workers and their communities. And, it also exposes the broken promises of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 1994. Those who supported NAFTA in Congress – both Republicans and Democrats – said the agreement would create jobs in the United States and would raise the living standard for Mexico’s workers.

But, that has not happened.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that NAFTA alone has resulted in a loss of over one million U.S. jobs.

And, since NAFTA, real wages in Mexico have been falling. And, to escape their country’s poverty, workers from Mexico continue to come North looking for jobs to support their families.

Numerous economic studies have demonstrated that real Mexican wages – wages adjusted for inflation and the peso devaluation – are just half of what they were two decades ago.

The extreme poverty rate for the Mexican people, which was unacceptably high before NAFTA, is now astronomical.

NAFTA, in other words, has had an adverse effect on both Mexican and U.S. workers.

But, for some global companies, the wages in Mexico are not low enough. Many multinational producers are shutting their plants in Mexico and moving them to other countries in Central America as in the case of apparel, or, China and Southeast Asia which is especially true in electronics.

This has expanded the pool of Mexican workers desperate for viable employment opportunities. Thousands of workers have flooded into the expanding auto parts sector in Mexico, putting further downward pressure on wages and living standards in this important industry.

But, even this is not enough for some auto supplier companies. Professor Harley Shaiken of the University of California at Berkeley tells of meeting two young women who worked at an automotive parts plant.

Their plant was relatively new with up-to-date technology and equipment. Productivity and quality were high. Labor-management relations were good.

One morning the workers were brought together and were told they had priced themselves out of the market, and their jobs were moving to China.

This plant was in Tijuana and these women and the workers there were making $1 an hour.

As Professor Shaiken noted, globalization is creating a new reality for workers: instead of high productivity prosperity, the race to the bottom is creating high productivity poverty.

The question becomes: Is globalization an irresistible force of nature beyond our power to shape and control?

It is not. It is the result of conscious choices by government and corporate policymakers around the world.

And, in our view, U.S. policymakers have made a number of wrong choices: NAFTA, CAFTA, the U.S.- China PNTR agreement, and now, the proposed South Korea Free Trade Agreement.

Fundamental worker rights violations in Korea are not adequately addressed in the proposed FTA with Korea. The UAW is calling on Congress to oppose this one-sided deal negotiated by the administration.

Hundreds of Korean union leaders and members are arrested and jailed each year for exercising basic labor rights such as demonstrating and striking.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has found that Korea violates the internationally recognized right to freedom of association. Further, Korean employers take advantage of temporary workers, contract workers and other forms of non-traditional labor to prevent workers from forming unions.

In fact, Korea’s labor laws were recently amended to expand the use of non-traditional workers, which already make up more than half of the workforce in many industrial firms.

What all of these trade pacts share in common is that they do not contain enforcement mechanisms to ensure workers’ rights and other measurers, such as environmental protections.

In some countries, such as China, it’s difficult to even determine the average wage – but it’s been estimated at anywhere from 24 cents to a little more than a dollar an hour.

And it is illegal for Chinese workers to form an independent union. When workers in China do band together to protest unpaid wages or other abuses, they are routinely arrested and jailed.

Today, Yao Fuxin is in prison for the crime of leading a protest over unpaid wages and benefits at his closed workplace, a Ferroalloy factory. He was sentenced to seven years in 2002 and another worker, Xiao Yunliang, who also led the protest, was released last year after being imprisoned for four years.

Despite pleas from his family and from other groups, including the UAW, for an early release due to his extremely poor and declining health, the Chinese government refuses to release Yao Fuxin. Yao Fuxin is not alone. There are more labor activists imprisoned in China than in any other country.

Yet, the U.S. trade agreement with China has no teeth when it comes to workers rights in China.

Of course, China is not the only country that violates workers’ rights. Countries, like Nicaragua and Honduras, that are signatories to CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, have also been found to use child labor, particularly in the clothing and textile industries.

CAFTA, like NAFTA, has not lived up to the promise that it would lift up Central America’s workers. At a garment factory in Guatemala that makes clothing for an American retailer, nine workers took the first steps to organize a union after being forced to work overtime without pay and being locked in the factory until late at night.

The workers protested the dirty drinking water and no soap and water in the bathrooms.

These nine workers presented a petition to set up a labor committee, according to Guatemala’s labor law.

The next day, all nine were fired.

The bottom line is that American workers, despite being among the most productive and efficient in the world, cannot compete against such abuses.

No country should have a trade advantage over another country because it uses child labor or forced labor.

rskarvan

No country should have a trade advantage over another country because it forces workers to work 14 hours a day, six days a week.

No country should have a trade advantage over another country because its workers have little, if any, safety protection on the job.

And, no country should have a trade advantage over another because its’ companies are free to pollute the environment.

As long as trade agreements are silent on these type of issues they are not fair – to workers in other countries and to workers in the U.S. This is why organized labor advocates fair trade, not free trade.

Now, there is also another grave concern about these global trade agreements. And, as a country, we have to ask ourselves: How can anyone reasonably claim that U.S. trade policy is working when it has produced year-after-year of record trade deficits?

The U.S. trade deficit for 2006 was a staggering $763.4 billion. That’s a deficit of more than $2 billion a day. Topping the list in 2006 for the largest trade deficit with the U.S. was China with a whopping $232.5 billion deficit.

That’s a growth of $31 billion from the previous year. The U.S. trade deficit with our NAFTA partners – Canada and Mexico – was $137 billion last year.

And, these record-breaking U.S. trade deficits have contributed to our country’s cumulative debt which makes us more vulnerable to financial crises.

It seems that U.S. trade negotiators regularly agree to trade provisions that benefit American financial institutions, but these provisions come at the expense of American workers and farmers. Clearly, something is wrong with U.S. trade agreements that produce year-after-year of record breaking trade deficits.

Along with the climbing trade deficits, the impact of these global trade practices has been dramatic on U.S. manufacturing. Since 2002, the U.S. has lost 3 million manufacturing jobs.

These jobs -- that most likely will never come back -- were most often off-shored to low wage countries. From 2002 to 2004, the U.S. lost 440,000 manufacturing jobs due to soaring U.S. trade deficits with China alone.

In the last six months of 2006, we had an average loss of 18,800 manufacturing jobs per month.

And, between 2001 and 2005, 40,000 manufacturing plants have closed. During those years, we lost more than 153,000 auto supplier jobs, 58,500 furniture workers and 159,000 in the printing industry, to name only a few.

These job losses can be devastating for workers and their families as we saw in Greenville and overwhelming for communities and states.

The loss of the tax base can mean cutbacks in public services and less local and state money for education.

But, these closed factories also pose a serious threat to both our nation’s economic and national security.

In the last several decades, we’ve seen the rapid exodus of industries leaving the United States… from clothing and shoes to computers, cameras and… refrigerators.

We are losing our capability to supply our military with ammunition, uniforms and other essential equipment quickly and efficiently. Steel and auto jobs are being outsourced.

We are losing not only the skill; but the technology. And, we are losing future investments in technology and research. Manufacturing matters – not just because it’s a source of good-paying, family-supporting jobs; but because those jobs create a ladder to the middle class.

And, because manufacturing jobs create other support jobs, they provide a stable tax base that contributes to stronger communities. Some have argued that the only way to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States is to slash the wages of American workers to near poverty levels.

They say we must cut benefits and forget about secure pensions. In other words, take the low road.

The UAW rejects that strategy because no matter how low you go, some other country will go lower – not only in wages, but in safety conditions, human rights and environmental standards.

Again, if companies are relocating their production facilities from Mexico to China and elsewhere so they can more profitably compete in the global economy, how can we reasonably expect to preserve decent paying jobs in the U.S.?

Rather than glorify this economic phenomena, as some economists do, we ought to pursue economic policies that raise global living standards instead of undermining them. As Governor Jennifer Granholm has eloquently stated, we need to level the playing field “up”, not down.

There are also those who say that manufacturing jobs don’t matter because the high tech jobs, not assembly lines, are the wave of the future.

But, it’s not just industrial jobs that are being impacted by global trade policies and are vulnerable to outsourcing. Professional and service jobs, in particular those in the information sector, are being outsourced in growing numbers.

Forrester Research predicts that U.S. employers will move 3.4 million white-collar jobs overseas by 2015.

A survey by Deloitte Research found the world’s 100 largest financial services firms expect to outsource two million jobs to low-wage countries over the next five years.

Employees in the U.S., like x-ray technicians and engineers, are watching their jobs off-shored to India where the work is performed for much lower pay.

There is another global practice that has affected both our trade deficits directly and the loss of manufacturing jobs indirectly: unfair currency manipulation by Japan and China.

It is estimated that these currencies are undervalued by as much as 40 percent.

This currency intervention translates into a price advantage of thousands of dollars for these countries.

China has been able to use its undervalued currency to dramatically expand auto parts exports and to begin preparations for vehicle exports to the U.S.

The UAW and all of organized labor believes it is time for Congress and the administration to pursue policies that establish a level playing field for America’s workers – blue collar and white collar. This includes policies that:

• Require other countries to honor internationally recognized human and worker rights in trade agreements;

• Put an end to unfair currency manipulation by other countries;

• Require other countries to dismantle their tariff and non-tariff barriers that, for example, effectively keep their auto markets closed to U.S. built products;

• Implement a manufacturing policy for the U.S. that ensures support for the factories, machinery, technology and skill level for the manufacturing of essential products.

Global trade policies should strengthen international protections for workers rights – not create a race to the bottom for the lowest wages.

And, our government’s policies should strengthen U.S. manufacturing, not stand idly by as corporations shut down factories. These are the policies that would lead to high productivity prosperity and end the high productivity poverty that Professor Shaiken describes.

With a level playing field, global trade can and will benefit workers in all countries.

And, with a level playing field, American workers can compete and win in our global economy.

Thank you.

Ron Gettelfinger
UAW President

The above is a speech on "Global Trading Practices and the Impact on American Industry” by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. It was given on April 10, 2007 at Michigan State University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations in East Lansing, Mich.

jdhdiggs

Yup, we should just starve those **** Mexicans instead of giving them jobs so our guys can keep on making $15/hr for pushing a button. Damn them!!! :rolleyes:

You SERIOUSLY need to go read "Atlas Shrugged" as it describes the world that you're prescribing.

TroyD

Ron,

We are the most advanced country on the planet. If you are telling me that there is no way that we can compete, get the **** off my planet. WE can do anything if we WANT to. The question boils down to what we are WILLING to do.

I can speak intelligently about Korea, I've been there. This BS about the oppresive Korean gov't is a crock of ****. What IS true is that the Korean gov't believes that if it can compete globally, it's better for ALL Koreans and that's a fact, jack.

This pantload about greedy corporations, to an extent true but, ultimately the corporation has to be responsible to the market and the stockholders (which in many cases are union pension funds, but that's another discussion).

So, what's the solution? Infect other countries with Union labor? Pfffffffft. Whatever.

Here's what I see, ok boys, we need to ratchet up production and increase quality. UNION: Nuh, uh...my contract says I only have to do X. If you want me to do Y you have to hire someone else.

Trade defecits. Good topic. Answer? Who gives a ****. WE consume more than WE can produce. The goods have to come from someplace. Plus, high trade deficits indicate a strong dollar abroad (which punctures a huge hole in the currency fixing scheme), that means a dollar buys more **** than a yen does.

****, we CAN compete. How badly do we want it.

We are Americans, we improvise, we adapt, we overcome.

What we DON'T do is sit and whine and make excuses with our thumbs up our ****. Pussies and Frenchmen (and I'll include Union members) do that. Losers always whine, Winners go home and pork the prom queen (Sean Connery, paraphrased).

BDT

Demiurge

Maybe Ron Gettelfinger should run his own business if he's got it all worked out. ****' dicks like that are what have run this country's manufacturing sector into the ****.

If you want a higher paying job, go to college or specialize in the trades.

Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com made 1.2 billion in one day. Just ridiculously unfair, huh? Did his workers take a paycut when the pendulem swung the other direction and he lost 8 billion? :rolleyes:

The workers assume no risk, thus the pay is less. No owner(s), no business. Unless of course, you want the government to run it all. Good luck with that, Uncle Joe.

American Small Business Owner - Non-Union Manufacturing

jdhdiggs

I do love the logic of "we need to raise all of the third world's population out of poverty before any jobs should be available in that country"... What? And how are you going to give these people that standard of living if they don't have jobs. What a crock of bullhonkey.

TroyD

No country should have a trade advantage over another country because it forces workers to work 14 hours a day, six days a week

The spirit of this one REALLY hackles me.

I work 12-13 hours a day five, sometimes six days a week. Sometimes I've done it 7. Why? Because, we do what we have to do to get the job done. PERIOD. That's what we do.

Want me to feel bad about some poor **** that feels that it's unfair that he has to put in some OT (at time and a half)

Not in my lifetime, comrade.

BDT

rskarvan

Just for the record...

I own a UAW built Chevy Silverado and a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Both vehicles are built by the UAW and I have experienced ZERO DEFECTS on either vehicle. The Chevy is 5 years old and the Jeep is 10 years old. The only things that I have replaced on the Jeep are the brake pads and the muffler (thanks to Indiana winter salt). They Chevy was preventatively recalled for a fuel filter and a tail-gate cable - though, I experienced nothing breaking.

I buy UAW built vehicles because the UAW has earned my trust by building very high quality products at reasonable prices.

Finally... I have read Atlas Shrugged.... interesting book. Ayn Rand goes a little flakey in the last few chapters. Other than that... it was a very good read. (PS Ayn Rand has all the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder - but, that's another topic).

jdhdiggs

rskarvan wrote: »

Just for the record...

I own a UAW built Chevy Silverado and a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Both vehicles are built by the UAW and I have experienced ZERO DEFECTS on either vehicle. The Chevy is 5 years old and the Jeep is 10 years old. The only things that I have replaced on the Jeep are the brake pads and the muffler (thanks to Indiana winter salt). They Chevy was preventatively recalled for a fuel filter and a tail-gate cable - though, I experienced nothing breaking.

I buy UAW built vehicles because the UAW has earned my trust by building very high quality products at reasonable prices.

Want my '91 Cherokee? I'll give you a GREAT price for that POS since you love the UAW cars so much.

Jstas

TroyD wrote: »

I believe we, the US, CAN compete and kick everyones **** doing it. Now, the question is, WILL, we do it? Not if we want to sit around and whine and piss and moan about it. Changes are required. Premium prices for mediocre products ain't cutting it.

BDT

This is a point that sums up the feelings I have seen on both sides in this thread.

Fundamentally, I think the issue is not WILL the U.S. automakers do it but rather, they ARE doing it and when are people going to leave the past in the past and see that? Granted, it's not all rosy and peachy-keen just yet but there have been big steps taken by the U.S. automakers to change things and other countries are taking notice just not the U.S. Those required changes are happening but they don't happen over night. Corporations as big and as far reaching as GM and Ford don't easily change direction and it takes some time for those changes to trickle down through the whole organization. It's a shame really because the Big 3 really are putting out some nice rides.

TroyD

Anecdotal evidence at best. (speaking to Ron not Napolean)

If you want to compare a TRUE statistical representation of how it really is, be my guest.

Mine is this:

I own a 99 Dodge Ram, I bought brand new in 1999. It has 113K. I've gone through one transmission, working on #2, the finish sucks, the whole exhaust system has been replaced after three years, plus all kinds of little ****. A/C compressors etc etc...

One of my neighbors owns a 1994 Nissan. Changed the oil, brakes. He's got 275K.

If you are going for the reliability angle, Ron, that's not going to work out for you.
BDT

rskarvan

jdhdiggs wrote: »

Want my '91 Cherokee? I'll give you a GREAT price for that POS since you love the UAW cars so much.

The vehicle is nearly SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD. That alone speaks for itself. Many of the Honda's and Toyota's of the 80's didn't make it 10 years before they fell apart due to rust.

jdhdiggs

Yup and it also probably has 1.5X it's original purchase price in parts that have been needed to keep it running.

PhantomOG

rskarvan wrote: »

No country should have a trade advantage over another country because it forces workers to work 14 hours a day, six days a week.

Yeah... see the problem here is no one is forcing anyone. These are developing countries with poor uneducated masses who are willing to work 80 hours a week for a standard of living comparable to someone who lives in the US on welfare.

Instead of bitching to Uncle Sam about all this, why isn't the lazy union worker asking himself "Why am I so content to work a job that an uneducated worker overseas can do just as well, if not better than me, for 1/10 of the pay that I demand?" "Why don't I educate myself and do something that CAN'T be done by someone who is illiterate and requires more than just manual labor?"

AsSiMiLaTeD

Jstas wrote: »

Fundamentally, I think the issue is not WILL the U.S. automakers do it but rather, they ARE doing it and when are people going to leave the past in the past and see that? Granted, it's not all rosy and peachy-keen just yet but there have been big steps taken by the U.S. automakers to change things and other countries are taking notice just not the U.S. Those required changes are happening but they don't happen over night. Corporations as big and as far reaching as GM and Ford don't easily change direction and it takes some time for those changes to trickle down through the whole organization. It's a shame really because the Big 3 really are putting out some nice rides.

Maybe that'll happen eventually, but right now 'the past' isn't so much really the past as it is 'just recently'.

I'm sure things are getting better, but I doubt the new Grand Cherokee is THAT much better than my 03 Limited that had so many problems. The 'Big 3' got their chance with me, on 3 different occasions in just a few years, and they blew it and lost my trust (not only because of their bad product but also because of their unwillingness to support it). They're going to have to prove themselves to me before I buy from them again.

I know it's a catch 22 for them (how can they prove themselves if no one buys them?), but you know what that's not my problem...they had their chance with me and blew it.

Ultimately, I had to bear the financial responsibility for their business decisions, that's what I've had to do several times in the form of trading in upside-down (In the third year of my 4Runner note, I'm just now to the point where I'm out of the accrued negative equity from those three vehicles. It's going to take a lot to get me to take that leap and financial risk again.

Jstas

Polkmaniac wrote: »

They're going to have to prove themselves to me before I buy from them again.

I know it's a catch 22 for them (how can they prove themselves if no one buys them?), but you know what that's not my problem...they had their chance with me and blew it.

No, actually, the "Catch-22" is just as much your problem as it is thiers. Only because your decision to refuse considration has made it that way. That doesn't make your reasons for doing so invalid. It just means that you have taken them out of the process. So it isn't even a Catch-22. You have just decided that American cars are not worth your time. There is no conflict of logic nor is there a paradox. Your decision has a finite end and it doesn't include American car makers.

What makes no sense is the fact that you had issues with 1 brand of American vehicles and have now chosen to disregard all 15-20 some odd brands of American vehicles because of your singular experience with a singular brand. Then again, your statements did not include information on previous models of vehicle that you owned so I can only assume that you owned 3 previous Jeeps. Even if you had 3 different brands of vehicle, that still leaves 12-17 different brands possibly open for consideration.

I'm not on the "Buy American" bandwagon, I'm just saying that most of this "American cars suck" and even the "Buy American" logic is not based in reality nor does it make any real sense.

TroyD

I don't follow.

If you screw me once....why would I give you the chance to screw me again when I have the opportunity to go someplace else? What's the incentive?

The onus for breaking the cycle is on the screw-er, not the screw-ee. Honestly, John, it's not a huge secret the the Big Three, as a whole, have not exceeded many expectations, especially in terms of quality. The Big Three have to find a way to build A. cars we WANT B. at a competitive price C. prove that they are worth what they charge.

Now, they already are in a hole so just being even, in many cases isn't good enough. They have to exceed....and with the mentality expressed by our UAW rep here, I'm not seeing that it's likely to happen.

BDT

Jstas

TroyD wrote: »

I don't follow.

If you screw me once....why would I give you the chance to screw me again when I have the opportunity to go someplace else? What's the incentive?

The onus for breaking the cycle is on the screw-er, not the screw-ee. Honestly, John, it's not a huge secret the the Big Three, as a whole, have not exceeded many expectations, especially in terms of quality. The Big Three have to find a way to build A. cars we WANT B. at a competitive price C. prove that they are worth what they charge.

Now, they already are in a hole so just being even, in many cases isn't good enough. They have to exceed....and with the mentality expressed by our UAW rep here, I'm not seeing that it's likely to happen.

BDT

You are reading too much in to it. If you have a bad experience with Jeep and that makes you not want to go back to Jeep then fine, that's all well and good and completely understandable. What doesn't makes sense is why should you not consider say a Chevrolet because Jeep screwed you? Why is it that it's OK to blame Jeep and punish GM while you are at it? That doesn't make sense. That is essentially A = B = C but in reality A != C. It's contradictory logic. It's flawed logic.

Now, as for the rest of your post, I don't disagree. I haven't ruled them out. I have had some issues in the past with American car company cars but for the most part, I am very satisfied with my experiences and the Big 3 offer stuff in cars that appeal to me that I haven't found in many foreign cars at all. Also, I have a family bias towards Ford because several members of my family have worked for Ford in one respect or another. I also get a discount at the Big 3 that the other companies don't offer. These are all valid reasons also. However, they have afforded me a different perspective because I would be stupid to rule out choices in vehicles that offer me a discount. So I have seen the quality and workmanship change and I've seen the strides, because I've been looking where as others maybe haven't.

All I'm trying to say is that don't rule them out because of bad experiences in the past. Shop them like you would any other brand because you are needlessly limiting yourself and the more information you have to make your decisions, the better decision you can make. Saying all American cars suck and then eliminating them from your decision making process is self-defeating and you are honestly short-changing yourself.




Oh an I get the discount because my American company employs American workers to build high quality electronics on American soil for those American car manufacturers to help keep American lives safe. The discount is offered because there are parts from my company in every Ford, GM and Chrysler vehicle on the road today. The discount is recognition for a contribution that my company as a whole makes to the bottom line of the Big 3. It is a show of respect and support that I return the favor and purchase a vehicle from one of the Big 3. It's a loyalty thing and a self-preservation thing. I buy a Ford, Ford ends up needing to buy more electronics from my company to replace the stock it sold. Ford sells cars, they profit. We sell parts, we profit. Ford buys more parts to replace sold parts, we profit some more as well as Ford. The cycle goes on, we all stay employed and I can afford more stereo equipment. It doesn't make me better than anyone else, it just means I am in a different position and I have different motivation than others. Mainly because technically, I am one of those Americans affected by over-seas manufacturing and outsourcing. Oh and we're a heavily Union house with at least 20 different Unions with any number of chapters across the country.

And it's certainly not a "napoleon complex".

venomclan

rskarvan wrote: »

The vehicle is nearly SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD. That alone speaks for itself. Many of the Honda's and Toyota's of the 80's didn't make it 10 years before they fell apart due to rust.

There is no contest between the 80's Honda's,Toyota's vs. the big 3. The big 3 do not want to even remember that decade, actually from 1975-2005. My 1986 Honda, with minor body rust, needed an alternator change in 2003. That is it, in its entire life.I drove the piss out of it.

My 5 big 3 cars owned from that era, never made it 3 years without major work. I drive Honda's today.
v

aaharvel

TroyD wrote: »

I'd like for Ron to expound on the unfair currency manipulations because that's absolute HOGWASH. The dollar/yen fluctuates, it always has.

As far as the big three supporting retirees, sounds like the big three **** themselves while the UAW was applying the astroglide.



Well, at least they are building plants HERE as opposed to, say, China. See, this is what REALLY pisses me off. You've got people bitching because jobs move overseas. OK, we've got someone building plants HERE and bitching because we had to lure them with tax incentives (do we REALLY want to start a discussion for the dickings the American taxpayer has taken over the years for the big three? Chrysler bailout??)....ok, then we **** because they don't like it that they aren't paying what they should. Sounds like the UAW is just PISSED because an auto manufacturer isn't bowing down and sucking thier wood.



Maybe people in the south think that an employer is entitled to pay what the market will allow. Maybe people in the south don't completely buy into the entitlement mentality.



That's pure **** as well.



So did my grandfather. However, I don't believe he fought for the right for American companies to be insulated from competitive pressures (that, in my book, is Marxism). I also don't believe he fought so that American workers could be guaranteed 80K a year for menial tasks with full benefits for life.

It's a crock of ****. The entitlement mentality that seems to prevail, really makes me wonder.

The American auto industry has screwed itself through incompetence. YEARS of ****, unreliable cars at exorbitant prices.......Don't wave a flag in my face saying that buying a Toyota is breaking allegiance with American industry or un-American. The American auto industry broke that trust YEARS ago, we owe them NOTHING.

BDT

fn' great post Troy.

PhantomOG

Jstas wrote: »

You are reading too much in to it. If you have a bad experience with Jeep and that makes you not want to go back to Jeep then fine, that's all well and good and completely understandable. What doesn't makes sense is why should you not consider say a Chevrolet because Jeep screwed you? Why is it that it's OK to blame Jeep and punish GM while you are at it? That doesn't make sense. That is essentially A = B = C but in reality A != C. It's contradictory logic. It's flawed logic.

But you are missing the fact that while A != C, they do share common characteristics. Deserved or not, for a long period of time American cars (all brands) were deemed by many as unreliable compared to Japanese cars. If someone got burned on a car that was American made, along with anecdotal evidence of others buying different American brands, how is flawed logic for someone to want to buy a foreign car as a result?

PolkThug

TroyD wrote: »

A. cars we WANT

ding! ding! ding!

rskarvan

I guess I have a loyalty complex to american cars.
Very nearly every meal that I've eaten my entire life has been paid for by the sale of a car/truck from the Big 3. The big 3 paid for my diapers. The big 3 put me through college. The big three employee me today.

Toyota has done nothing for me my entire life. GM & Ford have provided me the opportunity to do what I absolutely love doing - Automotive Engineering. I don't blame the UAW. I don't blame management. I do place considerable blame on the our elected representatives for implementing very poor foreign trade/investment policies.

Demiurge

The UAW, like it or not, is one of the biggest reasons why these companies are going down the ****. You can only make so many promises before they'll catch up to you. They got these companies by the nuts early on and they're paying for it now.

Unions today suck the life out of businesses. May be great for you and yours now, but it won't be in the long run, and it certainly isn't good for the country as a whole.

Sami

venomclan wrote: »

There is no contest between the 80's Honda's,Toyota's vs. the big 3. The big 3 do not want to even remember that decade, actually from 1975-2005. My 1986 Honda, with minor body rust, needed an alternator change in 2003. That is it, in its entire life.I drove the piss out of it.

My 5 big 3 cars owned from that era, never made it 3 years without major work. I drive Honda's today.
v

Actually early 80's was time when Honda was the unreliable but posh Japanese brand. Nice cars but expensive to repair, and much less reliable than Nissan or Toyota. I had a '82 Accord, nice car with lots of luxuries (at the time) but sometimes I wished I had a base model Nissan or Toyota for all the headache it caused me. I finally ended up with a decent (German) GM model after that, an Opel Vectra.

Nissan made the mistake of trying to compete with Toyota by making cheap, bland vehicles that sold in masses. Nearly bankrupt them until Ghosn turned them around and they are getting back to their roots now, sporty vehicles.

I had a '92 Nissan with nearly 400k on it. Muffler and brake pads, oil, that's about it. It was still going strong until some gluesniffers stole it and tried to break a safe with it. But that's another story.

TroyD

rskarvan wrote: »

I guess I have a loyalty complex to american cars.
Very nearly every meal that I've eaten my entire life has been paid for by the sale of a car/truck from the Big 3. The big 3 paid for my diapers. The big 3 put me through college. The big three employee me today.

Toyota has done nothing for me my entire life. GM & Ford have provided me the opportunity to do what I absolutely love doing - Automotive Engineering. I don't blame the UAW. I don't blame management. I do place considerable blame on the our elected representatives for implementing very poor foreign trade/investment policies.

Sure, if you are sucking the teat, why question it?

The REAL question is why should the consumer be loyal to the big three?

THAT is the real question. Sorry, companies don't truly exist for thier employees, when they do, see USSR and the collapse of the big three as prime examples.

Blame it on whatever makes you feel better though.

BDT

Jstas

PhantomOG wrote: »

But you are missing the fact that while A != C, they do share common characteristics. Deserved or not, for a long period of time American cars (all brands) were deemed by many as unreliable compared to Japanese cars. If someone got burned on a car that was American made, along with anecdotal evidence of others buying different American brands, how is flawed logic for someone to want to buy a foreign car as a result?

While yes, they DID share common characteristics, those commonalities are over a decade old now, almost two decades old. It's not 1987 anymore. The issue here is you are exhibiting the same mentality that I just posted about. Your statement "Deserved or not, for a long period of time American cars (all brands) were deemed by many as unreliable compared to Japanese cars." only solidifes that fact.

I'm not arguing popular opinion, as misguided as it may be. What I'm saying is that time and time again, the popular opinion is held up in this thread as logical proof. The issue with that is that the popular opinion in this case is based on flawed logic yet it is heralded as "perfectly logical".

You wouldn't want your brother to screw up your mom's favorite lamp and then argue to have you punished also merely because you have the same mother, would you? It doesn't make sense, especially when you are innocent.

The same thing goes for car companies. If you had a bad experience with Jeep and Chevy said "Hey, why not try one of our cars?" Your negative response is essntially saying that just because Chevies are an American brand, like Jeep, they suck. Although, in reality, they have no common aspects other than the American moniker. That ends up looking like more of an American dig than a shot at Chevy who now lost your business for an illogical reason that they had no control over. On top of that, they are innocent of causing you harm. Jeep is the culprit and should be justifiably punished by losing your business. Don't throw Chevy under the bus too just because they are American. It's discrimanatory.

It's a simple logic problem. It's got nothing to do with the right or wrongness of popular opinion. The argument is being proported as being logical and it clearly isn't.

venomclan

Sami wrote: »

Actually early 80's was time when Honda was the unreliable but posh Japanese brand. Nice cars but expensive to repair, and much less reliable than Nissan or Toyota. I had a '82 Accord, nice car with lots of luxuries (at the time) but sometimes I wished I had a base model Nissan or Toyota for all the headache it caused me. I finally ended up with a decent (German) GM model after that, an Opel Vectra.

Nissan made the mistake of trying to compete with Toyota by making cheap, bland vehicles that sold in masses. Nearly bankrupt them until Ghosn turned them around and they are getting back to their roots now, sporty vehicles.

I had a '92 Nissan with nearly 400k on it. Muffler and brake pads, oil, that's about it. It was still going strong until some gluesniffers stole it and tried to break a safe with it. But that's another story.

I found both Toyota and Honda to be bullit proof in the 80's- on. All my parents Gm's, Fords and Chryslers were heaps of crap. Always breaking down. We had an 82' corolla, 85' Tercel with no problems at all. My first car, Oldsmobile, broke down all the time, as did our Mercury, Volkswagon, dodge minivan etc. At 20 I bought a Monte S.S. a year later I bought a Corvette that I still have. No domestic can touch my experiences with Toy and Honda. My in laws work for Chrysler and Ford. They know I will not buy from them. It is not like I did not try...after 6 domestics, I learned my lesson.
V

rskarvan

Lets say (hypothetically) that the world was composed of 5 car companies: Chevy, Hyundai, Toyota, Volkswagon, and Renault.

I would drive a Chevy because it is made in the USA and this helps to support my fellow americans.
I would drive a Volkswagon because of fine German Engineering.
I would drive a Renault because its economical and well engineered... but, I'd have some serious reluctance because France didn't support the war in Iraq with ground troops. If they aren't going to support the USA... why would I support France?
I would drive a Toyota exclusively because they embraced Deming and his quality concepts and as a result, they have very good quality.
I wouldn't drive a Hyundai because the Korean culture is disgusting.

Sami

venomclan wrote: »

I found both Toyota and Honda to be bullit proof in the 80's- on. All my parents Gm's, Fords and Chryslers were heaps of crap.

Compared to American cars, yes, but not on par with Toyota and Nissan. They did quickly catch up. Honda, Nissan, BMW; I crossed VAG's out of my short list due to very bad experience with Audi's and their CS. Toyota's, I might be tempted to look at their Lexus's if I'm in the market but most likely not their Toyota lineup.

As far as reliability, everyone has their story. My family has had a very good history with Nissan's, all their cars have been bullet-proof (but not safe box proof) in our family. Others say their have given them trouble. Some might have good history with Audi's but most of the time it only takes one lemon to abandon the brand as the money lost on cars isn't pocket chance. $3600 on new head when a timing belt pops 15k miles before scheduled replacement (w/o a warning when checked on), would you look elsewhere next time? Maybe the QC has gotten better but the taste in your mouth takes a long time to go away when it hits your wallet hard.