GM on strike.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/industrials/gm-strike-offer-uaw-workers

Here are the main areas of disagreement:

GM is making big money, $8 billion last year alone, and workers want a bigger slice. The union wants annual pay raises to guard against an economic downturn, but the company wants to pay lump sums tied to earnings. Automakers don’t want higher fixed costs.
The union also wants new products for the four factories slated to close. GM currently has too much U.S. factory capacity, especially to build slower-selling cars.
The companies want to close the labor cost gap with workers at plants run by foreign automakers. GM pays $63 per hour in wages and benefits compared with $50 at the foreign-owned factories. GM's gap is the largest at $13 per hour, according to figures from the Center for Automotive Research.
Union members have great health insurance plans and workers pay about 4 percent of the cost. Employees at large firms nationwide pay about 34 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Automakers would like to cut costs.

Headed right back to where they were.

As much as I hate GM I hate Unions worse. Autoworkers have always been high on the pay scale for blue collar types. Hell yes GM is making money, that’s the point of being in business. You take a non union group and pay them the money the autoworkers are making and they turn around and fight for the company to stay strong.

$63 an hour to add one part to a vehicle? Those boys need to STHU and get back to "work." I can't stand unions.

$63 and hour?
Maybe that's why a new two wheel drive Silverado is 50 grand.

amen brother

I’m not defending any union but they way I understand it is it’s $63 an hour in total compensation

Hourly wage, health ins benefits and retirement all packed into that wage

Still a good blue coller wage but a bit misleading

And they wonder why Toyota picked Alabama as their next site to build a new production plant.

^^^^Truth

Gotta smell the fake news agenda.

"Live better, work union." Detroit is living proof of this wonderful adage.

Take too much from the host, you kill the host, and everyone loses.

Bingo

First of all, GM is not on strike. The American workers looking for more handouts are on strike, again.

$8 Billion is a big nothing burger for a company the size of GM...they should be making 3 times that. They are running at a 5% profit margin with flat or declining revenues. That's terrible. If the business is not growing the workers don't deserve anything.

I wish GM could tell the UAW to piss off, but they've given them too much power over the years.

And $63 an hour in compensation (no matter how you calculate it) for the majority of those workers is crazy. They should be grateful even if they were getting half that.

Yup....F'em

I call it the “ loaded rate”. Pretty high for non-skilled labor. I think the unions have out lived their purpose. Those folks just need to get back to work, or get on down the road.

Over 6 figures to work at a factory making cars where robotics does most of the work and the worker just supervises a robot. Unreal. I don't like GM because they took govt money back when the 2007-08 crisis hit and couldn't stay afloat, exactly for the reasons these folks are going on strike, they capitulate to the unions too much and have too much outstanding liabilities in retirement packages. Screw GM, haven't bought a GM car and never will.

Still ridiculous, most normal companies excluding bonuses are 17% or less for benefits, including the ones that rank extremely high like USAA.

End of the day they got offered a company performance based bonus. Fire every one of them. This is the exact reason NAFTA got passed and why up until last year we still produced less cars in the US then before NAFTA.

You are describing unicorns. What makes you think GM would pay these wages to anyone without collective bargaining? The UAW and the taxpayers did fight to keep GM in business.

Here is a link to the KFF Summary of findings, probably better to go to the source

https://www.kff.org/report-section/2018-employer-health-benefits-survey-summary-of-findings/

I guess me and my guys are unicorns then. Guess it helps that everyone started somewhere else.

Exactly, particularly your last point about total compensation.

Let them suck on 250 a week. Wait until no pensions are paid to anyone. It's coming soon. Thank gawd.

It would be interesting to have a representative group of auto workers come on down to Midland-Odessa and spend a few months working... asking about mandated break times, I don't do that task, not in our contract, we have set hours, etc. Generations of folks up north have depended on the union for their livelihood. In the south, we've never needed them as we got the same through good, hard work.

I don't think the possibility of letting GM fail in '08 was an option. Not something I studied, but consider how interconnected ALL of the GM employees, dealerships, suppliers, transportation, etc. is and the effect of all of those people and businesses suddenly out of work, that would be a pretty big shock to "the system". It wasn't like others had the money to come in and buy/rescue sizable chunks of it. It was a very difficult time in our country, I'm glad it wasn't worse and if bailing out GM was necessary, so be it. If we had held on to our stock a little longer, maybe it would have turned a profit too, but it was govt deal, so it lost money.

Charlie

I'd be willing to be they would say the same thing about the money we make (regardless of what that number is). It's always easy to minimize what to pay someone when you aren't the person having to replace them.

I'm not defending the union but if you wanna bitch about a salary...doesn't the new CEO make 22 + million? Shouldn't that be where you'd start? If that the case we're sitting here telling a factory worker they shouldn't make 131k (total package) when the person running the company is making 22+ million and who know what other perks they get. Stuff is out of whack, no arguments from me.

Fire them all! You don't want to work...F em! Im lucky to get a 1% pay raise in any given year and haven't gotten that most years lately. But I aint bichen because I chose to stay there. Try to find another $63 an hour job in the real world with little experience or education. Just STFU and go back to putting in 1 screw an hour!

Who care what the ceo makes?

It is their business.

Go to work or gtfo.

Corporation wise it should be reduced at both ends. Should be based upon the ebb and flow of profits. Incentive for all. Even the so called robber baron's in the late 19th century did not pay their management what these modern day MBA execs. command, that have only a history of raidership and stripping a once proud company of it's assets and moving on. Labor on the other hand when unionized these days is also making outrageous demands. When the taxpayer bails out a business I get a bit P.O.ed although it happens frequently. Just not as visibly as G.M.

We are selling my wife's Buick. We had to drive without a turbo for 5 weeks waiting on the parts. 3 hour job took 3 days at James Woods.

We will not be returning to the GM line any time soon.

I do understand dealers, parts suppliers, and manufacturing are all different cogs in the wheel, but all the cogs suck.

No kidding, they could of chose Nuevo Leon...or Japan

We had one union vote. ('Been so long, I can't even remember, but I assume UAW 'cause we were a truck equipment installation shop.) The whole thing was started by a couple of young white kids that had just started and they wanted to know why they weren't paid more than the Mexican-Americans that had been working for us for 20+ (a couple of 30+ too) years. No, they didn't come out and state that, but that was the gist of their grievance. We got a lawyer and lined the main hall with blown-up pictures of the Lone Star Beer plant with the doors chained and pad locked, thanks to unions. (Hell, the place stands vacant to this day!) We followed the rules by the book. Our employees voted overwhelmingly "No". I had to fire the two white kids a little while later for stealing. Scummy little thugs.

And that's not my only run in with Union pukes.

Seems no different than burger flippers wanting $15/hr.....just like McDonald’s these DA’s will be our of a job and a robot will be doing it soon. Best McDonald’s I’ve been to is in Junction. I order at a kiosk and never have to speak with an employee or wait in a line.

That 22million is more proportional to the 8 billion he was at the helm of and helped make compared to 100k assembly line guy proportion input. Infact I bet the union guys wouldn’t take his current salary/performance bonus percentage, oh wait they already turned it down and want guaranteed lol

Move the plants to non- Unionized states.

Like Nuevo Leon?

CEO makes $22 million? Head of a company of 180,000 employees. What’s that $122 per employee?

I really like Bobo’s response to this.

So the UAW wants GM to share more of the profits with the workers.
Isn't the UAW one of the largest shareholders of GM stock (same with Ford, Chrystler, etc)? And individual employees personal shares.
So isn't GM already sharing the profits with the employees?

My simpleton view, no I don't have the brain power to intelligently argue the finer points with you, nobody or the job they do is worth 22 million.

Consumers paying ridiculous prices for anything and everything are responsible for making it what it is.

I hate unions.

This^^^^^ Every time I see people complaining about CEO's making millions and how they should give those millions back to the workers and only make something like 1M per year, I know they haven't bothered to do the math.

Anyone remember what happened when Ben and Jerry's tried the whole our CEO can't make more than 8x or 10x the lowest paid employee? They couldn't find a CEO and had to get rid of the policy.

Lol those 180,000 employees are less than a line on a spreadsheet to them.

Oh man I would fire them all first day. Every one of them

While we are justifying or un-justifying the hourly rate of the union workers and what they do/don't do to deserve what they get... what does the CEO do exactly to justify his $10,500 hourly rate? In one days time, he probably spent 1/2 of in the crapper and a 2 hour lunch and left early to go to the golf course or his mistress, he makes more than the majority of the nation (annually).

Oh I would hang him too.

clearly you've never been a CEO.

Dads company bought out all the long term employees for early retirement. He had been there 49 years so he went. Then they simply shut the company down on December 31st. Anyone wanting to work for the new company on January 1st could put in an application with the new company ahead of time. The new company was non union and it was made clear it would stay that way. The employees were sandbagging all week, then skipping Saturday and working Sundays for double time to get the job done. Union rules did not even allow the company to keep them from doing it. He hated the union he was a part of the last 20 years he worked there. Unfortunately most people only worry about self, and not keeping the company that feeds them strong.

Yes very clearly.

Unions WERE a good thing. I say again, were.

Making GM and its stockholders (employees, investors/US 401k’s etc) $3 million an hourly rate and continued building a company that continues to employ people at an exponential rate.

Being that they where broke a few years back, I’d vote under paid, someone will offer 30 mil here shortly to fix their company

Never what someone makes it’s what returns they provide.

Just think of that idiot running back for Dallas Cowboys... apparently the CEO of GM is a bargain.

The CEO did that? He must have been busy down there on that assembly line and in the planning and development of their products, and conducted all the performance evals on the 180k employees etc.

No doubt he did it all single handedly.

You wouldn’t want to be a fortune 20 CEO, you value your family time to much. I personally know few CEO’s of billion $ companies, one just made a bad decision to help out his kid, he did it trying to make up for the fact he was never home, and not there for his son. Ironic you make excellent business decisions doubling stock prices and making employee equity a priority with huge returns, and one thing you screw up on is for love and guilt of not being more then just a provider

They where bankrupt and everyone essentially lost their job... so yes he did that

By your thinking The previous CEO didn’t bankrupt the company then(sell of GM financial, etc) the employees solely did...... or the CEO allowed the employees to bankrupt the company

I’m back to mule deer hunting. If you don’t see the value of true leadership and forecasting I can’t help you.

I wish you good luck on your hunt!

Your right not a job for me. I doubt the former ceo and the next we’re faced with all the same problems info etc.

I would hang those football players and ticket buyers too

They just want to put anything good into writing so when the government has to bail out GM again (soon), the union can get what GM promised from taxpayers instead.

Your 401k and bank acct has been promised this time.

Yep. A few bad business decisions costs the company hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions.....Smart CEO's who make their employees and shareholders money are worth every dime they make.

Think of it this way...the company made $8 Billion and he made $22 Million. That's 0.28% of profit. They probably spend $22 Mil a year on toilet paper and coffee cups.