Is General Motors going bankrupt?

Cash is better. Where did you get this report. I don't doubt ya I just like to reasd all I can about GM. Truthfully if managment doesn't get thier act together no amount of concessions is going to save them.

 

Scott people with 5 years or more can choose between Blue Cross and other providers. New hires have to take PPO's or HAP. September is the time you are allowed to enroll in another plan if desired or you just stay on the one you have.

As to the 40-50% cut in pay I say bring it on. Lets start with managment. Let them lead. They want to compete with Japan lets lower the employment for managment and pay which is much higher in the states. When you bring that up all of a sudden you hear things like "you have to pay to get good people" or "this is not Japan" it is crazy.
Also GM and Chevy trucks run the on the same line. Although they may have different interiors or bumpers, hoods etc the same person puts the part on so you won't save much there. In other words the guy who puts the hoood on or the emblems even just puts the chevy hoood on the chevy truck and if the next one is a GM then he grabs a GM hood. However you would'nt have to have to different stamps.

 

There is frenzy out there, I'm sorry but its true. A lot of people hoping for GM's demize because of envy and coveting. Its just sad too see such attitudes in people. It will affect way more then just the automakers. So many other jobs depend on it. So Let em leave we will all be in the same boat.

 

Tim, (that happens to be my real name as well), here's a couple of links for you --

CNNMoney-GM

Marketwatch-GM

GM's Investor Relations

Hope you can read financials -- they have their own flavor.

The strange thing IMO is that GM sales are increasing worldwide, but not here in North America. That, to me, suggests a possible remedy in splitting GM's worldwide and domestic components into two different companies. That would eat up more cash in restructuring, but it could at least allow the strengths of one to settle at a higher P/E, and then plunge the domestic component into bankruptcy. It would minimize the impact. Again, I'm not sure GM has that kind of time.

I truly hope GM recovers. What's happening is not good for anyone -- labor, management, creditors, shareholders, or consumers. I just can't see how, without MASSIVE concessions, and soon.

[ January 27, 2006, 09:01 AM: Message edited by: elijah_lives ]

 

I agree... and if I were you guys, I would tie avg management pay to avg employee pay by a percentage- maybe say the avg mgt pay cannot exceed 140% of the avg employee pay. GM needs leadership and you're absolutely on the right track by expecting those guys to take the lead on pay cuts.

I think high performers should by compensated well... but maybe bonuses should be based on the composite performance over 3 or 5 years. Maybe execs' contracts should be written so that they can't get any bonus until year 3 or 4... Their decisions usually take that long to become fully effectual. From experience, I know that there are guys who know how to cut a company to the bone, suck its blood for 3-5 years, then move on for someone else to fix the long term damage of such selfish, greedy, short term solutions.

I am with you on high management and especially exec pay at companies like GM.

Preach it! Just from the little you have said and I have read... GM needs to do something about like Ford just did.

Yes... and it is only partially true. "Good people" do their job because they have a moral imperative and deep conviction for it... not because they sit around and count their money.

I knew that part. But there is still money to be saved in distribution, accounting, marketing, advertising, and perhaps other areas.

Maybe it isn't that much... but GM needs to look for low hanging fruit and I think that's one. Management salaries, especially execs, are another... and also a potential marketing plus. You might even make me reconsider GM if I heard both labor and management saying that they are going to accept pay cuts to save the auto industry in America... one or the other wouldn't do it though.

 

Thanks Tim, appreciate you giving me those links. I really could have googled them maybe but being union I didn't want to take the effort.
I wouild love to try the job as a PR man for the company towards thier workers. I believe I could bring the relationshop back to at least a reasonable respect for each other. I have watch the line between worker and mgt. grow worse and worse. I think the first and biggest step towards qauiity is employee's attitudes, They, GM, taught me that in one of thier own qaulity control classes that I took.
And all the cuts, 30,000 I think, will do nothing because they will not cut cost per vehicle. Just people.

 

Cutting workers is usually an indication that their labor is not needed because the production is not needed. Ever notice who gets cut first? The worker.

 

gb, kind of like the story of a town that needed a drawbridge. So they built one. then they realized they needed someone to man te bridge. Then decieded they needed a boss for the drawbridge worker. After that they decided they needed a manager for the draw bridge operations. then they realized they didn't have enough money to operate the drawbridge..................................so they laid off the drawbridge operator!

 

My experience hasn't necessarily been that. The first company I worked for won one of the first Malcolm Baldridge awards. They progressively reduced and consolidated management positions until all supervisors were gone and dept managers were responsible for 4 swinging shifts operating 7X24 with somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 employees.

Sometimes though, management is retained since they are considered more difficult to replace. Plus, in non-union plants, mgt can do hourly jobs for the short term... the opposite isn't normally true.

BTW, notice Ford's latest announcement. They are cutting 50% of their white color staff. It isn't the line worker being cut first there.

 

GM just anounced that they are giving 7 mil to beatifacation of Detroit river front. Our local has not had a contract for 28 months. GM says they have no money?!

 

My husband is a retired Gm Employee. He has been retired for 9 years now. I have been so grateful for the pension checks and insurance. We now will be paying part of our insurance and have a deductable. We do have co-pays anyway. I AM NOT GRIPING at all. I have been as I said thankful for all we have had, and we will just buckle down more and pay what we have too. I may be in err here, but when GM allows Gm employees and all family members to buy new cars with discounts, is that not a bit much. We have only bought 2 brand new cars in the 30 years my husband worked. 1 of them after he retired. 3 of our 6 children have purchased several. Anyway do you think that allowing that is a little overboard. Like maybe they should have allowed new cars at discount only every so many years. This is just a question.
Also I remember one year they went on strike and some of the men, not my husband, were asking for b-days off with pay!!!! I am only a homemaker and do not understand all of the ins and outs of this only how it has effected us, and again I AM NOT GRIPING, saw too many older people at the drug store getting scripts that had no insurance or pension having to pay tons of money for scripts.

Have to say this again, I have been thankful for God providing for us, and my husband being a hard worker all those years.

 

Polishing the brass as the ship sinks I guess.

 

Tim, In all seriousness, why doesn't the UAW buy GM or at least part of it?

An ESOP car maker might be just the thing to turn the whole industry on its head.

 

Scott, I am not sure but don't believe the UAW has that much money. We use to be able to buy stocks and GM would match us but rumor was that they were afraid we would get too much power.

 

You may be right... but like anything else, it would probably be bought with credit rather than cash anyway. UAW could just be the representative if the workers would ante up their credit... and probably a nice chunk of pay cut.

On a much smaller scale, Winnebago (I think that's the right RV company) was on the verge of going out of business. The owner's turned to the employees and offered them the options of taking stock in the company in lieu of pay or going out of business. If memory serves me correctly, several of those original employees became millionaires in just a few years.

One of the companies in my current business segment is an ESOP. They are very competitive.

 

Market cap for GM is currently about $13B; 51% ownership (for absolute control) would be roughly $6.5B, not a very large sum these days.

 

LOL, okay but last I looked the International had millions not billions. I wish we could or better yet give us some japanese mangement and watch our product go.

 

I don't know if this is true or not, but I have read that Ford has a parking lot for cars that come off the line with some sort of defect. Toyota, even in the US, has 5 spaces. Image.

BTW, want to see what a Toyota truck will go through? Don't try to download this unless you have broadband: Is a Toyota truck indestructible?

 

Well, Tim, you could always risk a leveraged buyout. What does the UAW have to lose that isn't already on the line?

 

This is another example of poor mangement at GM. We have copied many of thier systems into our own plants. Like the Andon system where you pull the cord and work is fixed in station instead of completely building the car with the defect and tearing it apart later to fix the item missed. After GM got hold of the system it does not resemble the Japanese verison one bit. Pulling that cord and stoping the line means one less car or truck to them. Where as the Japanese are going for the quality of the vehicle as compared to the qaunity by GM.