$14B Auto Bailout Dies in Senate Thursday Night

[Kevin]

Bad news for the auto industry and ugly news for the stock market.

Tomorrow may go down as BLACK FRIDAY of all Friday's in the market.

[FlyersFan]

**** the Unions.

Im so sick of the UAW and their bull**** where they basically hold the car companies hostage for out of line wages for employees who are way overcompenstated for what they do and their skillset in life.......this aint the old days of sweating on an assembly line with back breaking hard hard day labor.....everything is automated in a lot of areas and half these people do nothing but hold up walls in the plants anyway.

If they aren't going to retool the model then screw them. What we don't need is to dump 14 billion dollars as a band aid and then have them back for more in another 6 months. One of the main problems are Union Wages and if you aren't going to fix that then fk the UAW and all their overpaid employees.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit's beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.


If the UAW isn't willing to do what is necessary in taking steps to fix the problem then why should we give them money.

[FlyersFan]

Just thought about it some more and im even more fired up the senate told the UAW to go pound salt.

That's all we need is to give these auto companies money. They will be right back asking for more because the current model doesn't work. They haven't produced a car that's worth a **** in probably 50 years for the most part. Taurus was a great car from Ford, but you can ask larry about that one. They ****canned it. Go figure. Lets ****can our best selling and probably only decent car.


We are at a real cross roads with a lot of things in our economy pertaining to the way things are done and there are some changes that need to be made. Giving the car companies money and then sending them back to make the same ****ty cars at the same overblown rediculous wages.....can't do it.

I know the flip side about the market tanking, but if we want to get out of this mess we need to fix the mess.

I think the auto workers need to take a long hard look at things and take a wage cut. It beats being on the street with no job. I honestly think the government is fed up with the car industry and they are going to play hard ball. I don't blame them one bit and hopefully it can get worked out with a bail out and the proper concessions to sending the auto industry into prosperity.

[Kevin]

Financial people are predicting a 4% drop today.

[homedawg]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Financial people are predicting a 4% drop today.

Minimum, the Asian markets got hammered today, we're next.

There is still a whole lotta tasty stocks out there that's gonna get flipped today!

[FlyersFan]

not off that bad.......not nearly as bad as how far off the car makers are from being a worthy viable sect that we would want to chase money after

[homedawg]

12 Dec 2008 | 12:46 PM ET

The Bush administration, worried about a further blow to the US economy, said it was ready to step in and prevent the auto industry from collapsing, likely using the $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund.

The White House warned of the severe impact on a weakened US economy if the auto makers collapsed, and in a reversal of its previous position, said it would consider dipping into a financial bailout fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

"Given the current weakened state of the U.S. economy, we will consider other options, if necessary including use of the TARP program, to prevent a collapse of troubled auto makers," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

President Bush had originally refused to use the bailout fund to help the auto makers, insisting that aid come from Congress. But the White House said it must reconsider after the Senate failed to agree on a $14 billion rescue plan late Thursday night.

Signs that the White House and Treasury Department were prepared to mount a last-ditch effort to help the car makers helped stave off a huge sell-off on Wall Street.

[Larry]

Originally Posted by FlyersFan

**** the Unions.

Im so sick of the UAW and their bull**** where they basically hold the car companies hostage for out of line wages for employees who are way overcompenstated for what they do and their skillset in life.......this aint the old days of sweating on an assembly line with back breaking hard hard day labor.....everything is automated in a lot of areas and half these people do nothing but hold up walls in the plants anyway.

If they aren't going to retool the model then screw them. What we don't need is to dump 14 billion dollars as a band aid and then have them back for more in another 6 months. One of the main problems are Union Wages and if you aren't going to fix that then fk the UAW and all their overpaid employees.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit's beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.


If the UAW isn't willing to do what is necessary in taking steps to fix the problem then why should we give them money.

You are 100% wrong about assembly lines. Go work on one and tell me it's all automated and easy.

UAW employees make $6 more an hour than the rice burning plants of the south. With the difference in the cost of living it's about the same.

The total cost of labor built into the price of an american automobile is 10%.

And how much of the tax payers money did the state of Alabama give to Mercedes, and how many cars did they agree to buy from Mercedes with tax payers money just to put their plant there?

The credit crunch, and to a lesser extent gas prices have done a lot of the damage to the big three. The UAW has given concessions in 2005(opened the contract in the middle of a 4yr agreement), 2007 when the new contract was settled and most recently when they agreed to give up the job bank. UAW employees haven't had a raise in 5 years. All copays have gone up and retirees are paying more for their insurance than they ever have.

Im in the UAW, I am not a gung ho union guy. But to blame this **** on the UAW is just completley unfair. The plant I work in has so many ****en supervisors and superintendants its ridiculous. Here's an example, the trim department has 36 hourly, 4 supervisors, a super, and a manager. WTF! But the UAW makes too much.

[FlyersFan]

im not blaming the union soley....but it's just another problem and they refused to give concessions.

personally, the whole model is one of the worst around. you have workers whose wages aren't in line with other facilities in this country run by Toyota etc....they have 4 million managers and CEO's and CFO's who are grossly overpaid. The WHOLE THING needs to change.

i can't thing of a more mismanaged, piss poorly run industry than the american auto industry from the products they put out, to the wages they pay comparable to other worldwide auto makers in the states, to the amount of supervisors to the packages these losers get who call themselves COO's and CFO's who do nothing.


and my appologies if i was wrong, but aren't supervisors part of the union?? aren't they represtented by the UAW?

[Larry]

Supervisors are NOT part of the union.

When you take into account cost of living between the north and the south, wages are comparable.

And the UAW has made many concessions over the last few years.

[FlyersFan]

Originally Posted by Larry

Supervisors are NOT part of the union.

When you take into account cost of living between the north and the south, wages are comparable.

And the UAW has made many concessions over the last few years.

well then my bad on part of that. in every other plant i work with supervisors are part of the unions. it's not until you move into "office management" that people are non-union. in fact i just sat through an arbitration board hearing last week for some clown who hit another employee.


i would say 80% of my beef is as i said with the people who are holding the plant walls up (ie doing nothing) and most of those people are supervisors etc....and as i said, they are union members in every plant i work with (non auto) so i figured it was the same.

those people have to go...period and end of story if you want a competitive industry. the fat has to be trimmed period.

so if the UAW isn't responsible for giving concessions for those waste of space supervisors...whose job is it to get rid of those people?

[FlyersFan]

doesn't matter anyway.

Bush will give them the 14B and then they will piss it away and be back for more under the same structure.

I did see, which is sad, that GM is shutting down i believe 30 plants for periods of up to a month and slashing production of their cars nobody wants. States like Ohio and Michigan which are already hurt by the auto industry may be in serious peril if that industry can't restructure itself and become profitable and a viable industry. There are a lot of small towns in the midwest that are tied solely to auto related industries and would literally vanish if these companies went away.

But that still isn't a reason to chase good money after bad with them if they are going to insist on the same model they have been operating under.

[Larry]

Big 3 rescue wins rivals' support
Foreign-based carmakers fear backlash collapse of Detroit's auto industry would have on supply chain.
Christine Tierney / The Detroit News
WASHINGTON -- They may be unrelenting rivals of Detroit's Big Three, but foreign-based automakers don't relish the prospect that one or more of Detroit's automakers might go under.

On the contrary, the risk that one of the U.S. car companies could collapse deeply worries Asian and German manufacturers with U.S. factories.

As the industry's outlook has deteriorated in recent months, executives at foreign car companies have said they want to see Detroit's cash-strapped automakers get through the crisis, noting that they all share the same network of suppliers.

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"We're joined at the hip with our Detroit brethren in manufacturing," said Irv Miller, group vice president and chief spokesman at Toyota Motor Corp.'s U.S. sales subsidiary. Whatever the U.S. government proposes to keep the U.S. automakers afloat, "we support it," Miller said.

On Friday the Bush administration signaled that it would extend a financial lifeline to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC after a bailout bill died Thursday night in the Senate, where it ran into fierce opposition from Republicans. Some of the bill's most vocal critics, such as Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, represent southern states that have successfully courted investment from foreign automakers.

In the past few weeks, as senators from states with foreign transplants have grown more strident in their criticism of Detroit's top managers and the United Auto Workers union, executives from Japanese and German companies have tried to distance themselves from those sentiments.

Honda executives made it clear last month that they didn't share the views expressed by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., who said during the opening of Honda Motor Co.'s new assembly plant in Greensburg, Ind., that he would rather see the U.S. automakers file for bankruptcy than receive taxpayer money.

Jeffrey Smith, assistant vice president for corporate affairs at American Honda, told reporters, "Honda supports measures that would maintain the short- and long-term viability and stability of the auto industry."

Like his colleagues at Toyota, Smith noted that all automakers that have U.S. production facilities are "deeply and closely integrated at the supply base."

Some executives at foreign automakers are being tactful to prevent a resurgence of the kind of protectionism and backlash that flared in the 1970s and 1980s. But those sentiments have subsided, particularly in regions where German automakers BMW AG and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz and the Japanese and Koreans have built factories.

Executives at the Japanese manufacturers have been surprised to hear lawmakers assert that their workers earn far less than workers employed by Detroit's automakers. One executive who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed UAW President Ron Gettelfinger's remarks Friday that team members, or line workers, at Toyota's largest North American assembly plant in Georgetown, Ky., earned more than the average UAW worker.

According to Gettelfinger, a UAW worker earns wages of just over $28 an hour, on average, compared with $30.45 an hour for Georgetown's non-union workers. That includes profit-sharing bonuses that are likely to decline for the current year.

Wages at Nissan Motor Co. and Honda sites average between $25 and $29 an hour and tend to rise faster than pay at UAW plants.

Including benefits and other compensation, the gap widens, with UAW workers costing $55 an hour on average, compared with an hourly cost of around $45 at the transplants. But concessions made in the last UAW contract in 2007, including lower starting wages for new hires, are expected to close that gap by 2012.

In recent months, foreign automakers and parts suppliers have tried to work out contingency plans in the event of a collapse of one of Detroit's Big Three. But executives say they would not be able to shield themselves from the impact of an automaker's collapse because the number of distressed suppliers in North America already is in the hundreds.