Further Layoffs Announced from Detroit Big Three Automaker Due to Poor Earnings

Further Layoffs Announced from Detroit Big Three Automaker Due to Poor Earnings​

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...S&cvid=5b0b982c6d324a438d77bec6580076da&ei=12

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[tjfdesmo]

Probably a perfect time to demand another huge raise with a shorter work week...

 

[Zoe Saldana]

This is what the Federal Reserve wants to slow inflation.

Unemployment, usually goes up as the Fed lowers rates.

 

[rzr6-4]

"counterposing workers' right to employment and a decent standard of living against management's so-called 'right' to profits."

Show me one document, legal, historical, or otherwise, that says you have a "right to employment."

Situation: My company employs 20 people, we can no longer afford all 20 so we try to lay off 5 of them. The union fights back and says those 5 people hAvE a RiGhT tO eMpLoYmEnt, and thus I still have to pay 20 people. 6 months later, we run out of money and I have to close the doors. Now all 20 people are unemployed.

Words cannot express how much I hate unions (they can, but I'd get my account banned), all they do is make a difficult situation even more difficult with added costs and legal red tape. 100 years ago, sure. But today, if I ran a business, anyone who tried to unionize would immediately be fired. He'll no.

 

[urbex]

sure. But today, if I ran a business, anyone who tried to unionize would immediately be fired. He'll no.

Good thing you don't, as that would get you in to legal hot water. Its considered workplace retaliation, and employees do have a legal right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act.

 

[Docwagon1776]

"counterposing workers' right to employment and a decent standard of living against management's so-called 'right' to profits."

Show me one document, legal, historical, or otherwise, that says you have a "right to employment."

Situation: My company employs 20 people, we can no longer afford all 20 so we try to lay off 5 of them. The union fights back and says those 5 people hAvE a RiGhT tO eMpLoYmEnt, and thus I still have to pay 20 people. 6 months later, we run out of money and I have to close the doors. Now all 20 people are unemployed.

Words cannot express how much I hate unions (they can, but I'd get my account banned), all they do is make a difficult situation even more difficult with added costs and legal red tape. 100 years ago, sure. But today, if I ran a business, anyone who tried to unionize would immediately be fired. He'll no.

Stellantis doubled their CEO's salary recently. They raised dividend payments to shareholders by 21% over 5 years. It's not a question of if they go under if they don't do layoffs, it's a question of where the profit goes.

God forbid the blue collar workers get a bigger slice of they pie. As the American blue collar middle class continues to erode, you think it's not a time for unions. Got it. Real quick, what's housing prices, vehicle prices, grocery prices, etc. doing vs median wages in the US compared to, I don't know, any post-WW2 decade to present?

 

[nlambert182]

My issue is this...

For the smaller business owner, strikes can be catastrophic. In general, unionizing can be catastrophic.

So Joe has 200 employees and they decide to unionize. Joe loses a contract and in turn has to lay off 10 people to keep the business afloat. Alas, the union tells Joe that he can't lay off those 10 people, and actually, they're going to strike for better pay.

The union strikes and the only way Joe can keep the business open short term while he tries to come up with a solution is to agree to increase the union employee wages. So he does and now that closure forecast of 14 months has been cut down to 3.

It isn't just the big businesses that this mentality hurts. I agree wholeheartedly that we need to figure out a better solution to stop some of these CEOs, etc... from draining a company, but I don't agree that the union is it.

There was a place for unions back in older times but just like everything else, people figured out how to capitalize on it. Union bosses make a profit off the backs of workers, but they don't seem to have an issue with it because they see temporary benefits until nobody sees them. I don't see what they offer as being any different than a CEO draining a company of it's assets. They just do it under the guise of "good".


There's a local business here that did what I am about to explain.

A union tried to come in and convince everyone to unionize. About 25 employees began picketing out front because the company did not want a union. After trying to negotiate with the employees with no success, they sent a letter to the employees and told them they were closing this location and moving all work to another location they had in PA.

Every employee was offered the opportunity to keep their job, but moving was on their dime. Within a week all of the protesting employees quit. Loyal employees stayed, the company ended up staying, and an agreement was reached between the company and the employees where they were given a reasonable wage increase, guaranteed x% increases per year with 2 conditions: 1), production numbers stayed above a certain threshold and 2) no unionization.

Worked like a charm.

 

[rzr6-4]

God forbid the blue collar workers get a bigger slice of they pie. As the American blue collar middle class continues to erode,

Is the CEO getting a big raise a bit scummy? Sure, but what he makes isn't my concern as long as I believe I get paid what I'm worth. I'm in the process of changing jobs, for a pretty penny increase, because I negotiated that better position using my work experience and skillset. Using a union to do your bidding is no different than having the cartels or the mobsters throwing their weight around to get what they want.

ESPECIALLY considering, being in manufacturing myself, I can assure you that these unionized employees are working SLOWER, LESS EFFICIENT, and with LOWER QUALITY than we have seen in decades.

You negotiate on merit, of which they have none.

Real quick, what's housing prices, vehicle prices, grocery prices, etc. doing vs median wages in the US compared to, I don't know, any post-WW2 decade to present?

Since ww2: Typical household has two working adults as opposed to one, which is HUGE. More money in the house means businesses can sell more stuff and charge more for it.

Government money has filled every major industry, to where true self regulating capitalism is but an economic theory. Especially after 2008 "too big to fail", poor business practice is the norm with big daddy gov there to save the day.

And of course, as costs have skyrocketed since the post war era, what have the unions been doing? Definitely not helping anything, because they've been right here the hole time. Unions have been one of if not the biggest donation establishments to political movements, for probly the better part of 100 years.

 

[2012RAM1500RT]

I don't have a dog in the fight. I've worked since I was 16 years old, now 65. I'm a high school dropout, my choice. Been married since I was 19, still am. We have 2 kids and have lived off of my one pay check household. I have had 2 jobs in the past 45 years. The one I'm at now is 39 of those years. Neither one of the 2 is unionized and I have made it fine. I work hard and long hrs. and show the business I work for that I earn my money and they need me and they have willingly upped my pay without me having to ask over the years because they need and appreciate hard working employees. Those days are gone, employees mostly run the business now and it's very sad to see. Hiring a person and getting them to show up the first day is a big thing anymore. If they do come to work for you they mostly can't do what they told you they could do, they rarely work a whole week before needing to take off for court ect.... and a lot of times don't even show up or call to let you know they are not coming in. Employers have to deal with it because they are mostly a warm body that does something sometimes and there's no one looking for a job to take their place. Guess I've never worked for the big companies that the big wheels CEO that get a huge amounts of pay raises or bonuses. I feel sorry for the employers of small businesses because that's what I've worked for and trying to watch them trying to survive especially with the lazy work force we have today in the great USA. I only have 2 1/2 more years to be a part of it. I'm ok with it if you don't agree, I will not argue about it. It's just my opinion and what "I" have lived and seen.

 

[Docwagon1776]

Slit your throat as you like. Tech workers thought it was their merit and skillset to until H1B visas showed up and wages plummeted. Then the power imbalance became much more apparent. Simple fact is without a strong blue collar labor force there is no American democracy and there is no long term American economic engine. We are *not* stronger for Walmart taking the lead from GM as a major employer in the US. When economic power and resources are in the hands of fewer and fewer people, when the same people who are paying your wages are buying up all the housing to rent back to you, etc. the absolute top workers will still do fine but there's not enough of those positions to keep a modern economy going.

I'll be dead before we hit Player Piano days, maybe the younger folks will figure it out once the "I got mine so **** off" Boomers and Hippies Turned Yuppies die out. Maybe.

 

[Yardbird]

What gets me is all the younger generation blaming their problems with jobs and money on the boomers....

Most of us went to work every day, and many started their own business and employed others so they could also get ahead.

 

[Docwagon1776]

What gets me is all the younger generation blaming their problems with jobs and money on the boomers....

Most of us went to work every day, and many started their own business and employed others so they could also get ahead.

I blame Boomer policies. NAFTA, which Ross Perot was so prophetic about. Offshoring every job possible. Allowing decades of illegal immigration to flood the job market with a disposable workforce, etc. Telling coal miners "learn to code" while killing off their jobs. Company pensions replaced with 401k funds. All making the workforce more disposable, all killing factory towns and forcing people into larger cities for economic reasons, all the "transition to a service economy" BS while reducing manufacturing here. Who did that? Who was in positions of power politically and in the corporate world?

It's beyond intelligent debate it's harder to start a life in the US now for large swathes of the population, and even more so in rural areas where the factories have all been shipped to Mexico or China, illegals flooded the jobs that used to be entry level into the trades, etc.

I don't have job or money problems in the slightest, but I'm not blind to the issues present for young people starting out that weren't present for my generation or my dad's generation nor am I blind to how much wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Cheering our way to serfdom...

 

[Docwagon1776]

Of perhaps some interest, it's not just "the younger generation" that had issues economically due to Boomers. The younger Boomers and older Gen Xers did as well. This is readily apparent in numbers of homeless veterans. This is not a case of "they were lazy and wouldn't work" as much as the challenging economic conditions they faced when exiting the military.

My maternal grandfather exited the military, went to work at the GE appliance park, and worked there until he retired. A very comfortable middle class existence, raised 7 children, had a suburban house and a rural piece of land, had a pension that supported him and then my grandmother once he passed. Younger vets, including me, did not have jobs like that to roll into it. Especially former enlisted without a college degree.

This not controversial in the slightest, nor is it unique to the US post WW2 Baby Boom. See:

"Data from three decennial censuses have revealed that contemporary homelessness among single adults is concentrated among persons born in the latter half of the post-War baby boom (1955-1965) and in the years immediately adjacent to that period...Easterlin hypothesized that individuals born after the peak of a baby boom are more likely to be economically disadvantaged relative to their predecessors due to an excess supply of workers at the time of their labor market entry, among other factors

...adult male shelter users only...The Emerging Crisis of Aged Homelessness Preceded by a surge in the supply of workers and in housing demand, people from the second half of the post-War baby boom faced crowded labor and housing markets with higher competition for employment, downward pressure on wages, and upward pressure on housing prices. Combined with back-to-back recessions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, young adults coming of age in the 1980s faced challenging economic circumstances. This was especially true for those with a high school education or less, as they were the least prepared to compete in these tightened marketplaces. Consider that young black men in their 20s had an unemployment rate of nearly 25% in 1983, a rate unmatched in recent history, and nearly double the rate ten years earlier or ten years later (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019)"

Only through gov't intervention and social programs did the homeless crisis among veterans start to decline significantly. See: https://www.va.gov/HOMELESS/featuredarticles/aging-homeless-veterans.asp

I get it's human nature to think it's all your doing when you succeed and all external forces beyond your control when you fail, but looking at a subset as motivated as veterans and seeing wildly different outcomes based on birth years should tell you maybe the market failed some people and maybe having a social contract with employers not viewing employees as disposable is better for society as a whole and a strong middle class and manufacturing base is important for social, economic, and national security reasons.

 

[jr27236]

A lot of good points made here but the one that I didn't see or may have missed is the GREED of these auto manufacturers. The prices of cars/trucks has soared to levels that are beyond reach for many. Especially with the highest inflation costs we've seen. So people will choose food on the table and bandaid their current vehicle or dropping a rediculous amount of cash on a new vehicle. Also even IF they can afford the cost of a new vehicle, the interest rates will knock them right back out of the market. So that's another reason why they are seeing less and it's there own fault.

 

[Docwagon1776]

A lot of good points made here but the one that I didn't see or may have missed is the GREED of these auto manufacturers. The prices of cars/trucks has soared to levels that are beyond reach for many. Especially with the highest inflation costs we've seen. So people will choose food on the table and bandaid their current vehicle or dropping a rediculous amount of cash on a new vehicle. Also even IF they can afford the cost of a new vehicle, the interest rates will knock them right back out of the market. So that's another reason why they are seeing less and it's there own fault.

Wages haven't kept up with pricing and Stellantis in particular has killed off a lot of their entry level vehicles. Ram Classic is gone now. Lower cost baby Jeeps have been pared down.

Supply & Demand will force down prices, and Stellantis' product mix is (in my opinion) more risky in a recession than Ford or GM's lineups. The Ford Maverick is a compelling vehicle in it's category and price range, for example. $25k-ish starting price, a reasonably capable vehicle with good economy, well suited for a more urban/suburban environment. What's Ram's answer? A $40k 1500 is the floor at the moment.

Jeep has an even bigger issue. They are one of the few brands that skews younger. 25-45 year olds buy way more Jeeps than 45+ year olds do. Yet Stellantis killed off many of the entry level Jeeps and moved the brand up market. The guy who would have bought a new Cherokee and maybe graduated into a Grand Cherokee or Wrangler Rubicon in 10 years is now buying a competitor's product or buying used.

I don't think Stellantis is going to crash and burn just yet, we're a long way from apocalypse territory, but I think they better start getting a more diversified and updated product mix if they want to stay as anything other than an also ran...

 

[nlambert182]

I think the problem is 2 fold and not a single person has touched on this..... I don't put all the blame on the manufacturers for selling what the market is asking for. We, the consumer, are much more to blame with our lack of financial responsibility.

It's not just that companies have decreased their entry level options to move towards more expensive ones... but also that they do this because financial institutions will loan just about anything to anyone regardless if they can pay it back or not. The car companies are leaning into what buyers are buying.

Thus.... when 21 year old Jimmy can get an auto loan for $80k when he brings home $40k/yr, he isn't looking for a Corolla when he can step into a brand new Limited truck. Nevermind that it's an 8 yr loan at 9% interest. So Jimmy buys the truck, the mfg gets paid, and then within a year he gets the truck repo'd. Not the car mfg problem at that point.

Jimmy buys a $200k house at 7% interest with 0 down, then gets a couple lines of credit, and buys the truck on an 8 year note with 0 down and 9% interest. Financial institutions have sold people on payments and have made things look affordable on paper when they're really not.

Every business in existence is selling what the people are buying.

 

[rule18]

^ This (and Doc's post above it as well). Folks can blame corporate greed all they want but at the end of the day, personal financial illiteracy combined with an inability to control the inner "gotta have" is what leads a person down a path that's hard to come back from.

 

[Scottly]

I think the problem is 2 fold and not a single person has touched on this..... I don't put all the blame on the manufacturers for selling what the market is asking for. We, the consumer, are much more to blame with our lack of financial responsibility.

Same applies to housing. After WWII, all that was built was 3bd, 1ba, 1200SqFr homes. I grew up in one, with a brother and 2 sisters. I survived.
In the last 20 years, the only thing the developers could sell (not produce, SELL) are 1800SqFt++, 3bd, 2ba, 2car garage with pool...homes. It's still true today. And yet all you hear is, "We can't afford a house" while simultaneously listening to the excuse, "We need the space".

I worked at a car dealer once...Married couple looking for a new vehicle. Man worked at post office, wife served at a restaurant, they had a 2yo in a stroller. I showed them every Ford Excursion on the lot until they bought one, because they stated, "We need the space". I about puked...After I cashed my commission check, of course.

Some people...an entire generation...need to look in the mirror, and it isn't me and mine.

 

[Scottly]

Stellantis doubled their CEO's salary recently. They raised dividend payments to shareholders by 21% over 5 years. It's not a question of if they go under if they don't do layoffs, it's a question of where the profit goes.

God forbid the blue collar workers get a bigger slice of they pie. As the American blue collar middle class continues to erode, you think it's not a time for unions. Got it. Real quick, what's housing prices, vehicle prices, grocery prices, etc. doing vs median wages in the US compared to, I don't know, any post-WW2 decade to present?

God forbid the blue collar worker invest capital in a business so that maybe they can understand the need for a return. They can earn dividends, too...But they choose not too. Oh yea...the profit share payments to their 401K doesn't count, nor do the dividends they earn in the mutual funds in those accounts....But those evil dividends....

 

[Scottly]

I blame Boomer policies. NAFTA, which Ross Perot was so prophetic about. Offshoring every job possible. Allowing decades of illegal immigration to flood the job market with a disposable workforce, etc. Telling coal miners "learn to code" while killing off their jobs. Company pensions replaced with 401k funds. All making the workforce more disposable, all killing factory towns and forcing people into larger cities for economic reasons, all the "transition to a service economy" BS while reducing manufacturing here. Who did that? Who was in positions of power politically and in the corporate world?

It's beyond intelligent debate it's harder to start a life in the US now for large swathes of the population, and even more so in rural areas where the factories have all been shipped to Mexico or China, illegals flooded the jobs that used to be entry level into the trades, etc.

I don't have job or money problems in the slightest, but I'm not blind to the issues present for young people starting out that weren't present for my generation or my dad's generation nor am I blind to how much wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Cheering our way to serfdom...

1) NAFTA was bad. I agree. 2) Illegals have been picking produce since the 70's...Becaue no one else would do it. 3) Blacksmiths learned to change tires when the horse went away...Coal usage was going away, being replaced with natural gas...So, yes, a new job skill was suggested. 3) Company pensions were being raided and stolen by corporate raiders. Protections were put into place and those protections were literally bankrupting companies, so pensions went away. 401Ks are very effective...If people participate. They don't...They'd rather spend thier extra money on beer and cigs. 4) Illegals flooded entry level trade jobs because the entitled kids no longer wanted them. Need proof? Look at the labor-starved, low-paying industries and tell me how many young people are working those jobs...restaurants, lawn care, tire shops, etc....They can't hire people. Can't. People aren't applying and the $15hr wage didn't chnge any of that. To your point, I'm not blind to the polarization of wealth, but I'm also not blind to the lazy, entitled, spoiled brats of this younger generation. Maybe....just maybe....They should cut out the excuses and find a way to make a way, instead of standing back and waiting for the government to do it for them.