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Why Rick Wagoner GM CEO is worst among all?

By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:December 13, 2008

My heart goes out to all the workers who will be impacted by this. But I’ve got a lump of goal for management’s stocking. HQ dropped the ball big time and they, not the worker, should suffer the consequence.

This brings back the image of the 1970s UAW member taking a sledgehammer to a Datsun. That’s just jingoist, ignorant and petty. No one has to buy US-made cars. Engaging in such behavior only makes the basher look stupid.

General Motors Corp. said Friday that it will temporarily idle about 30 percent of its assembly plant volume during the first quarter of 2009.

“Basically anything we’re doing now is unprecedented,” Lee said. “The market has tanked.”

The GM workers affected by the moves are eligible to receive up to 72 percent of their gross pay covered by state unemployment compensation and supplemental unemployment benefits paid by the automaker.

“I’m in awe. I’m shocked right now,” said GM subcontractor Donnie Smith, 36, after hearing the news Friday during shift change at Pontiac Assembly. “The economy is already at an all-time low. I don’t know how much more people can take.”

The General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kan., was one of 14 U.S. plants affected by the announcement. The goal is to remove about 250,000 units from production, the company said in a release.

The action is the result of dismal sales numbers for GM (NYSE: GM), which were down 41 percent in November compared with the same month last year.

GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said in an interview that the Fairfax plant already was scheduled for a holiday shutdown from Dec. 24 to Jan. 4. He said Friday’s announcement means the plant will be shut down for the rest of January. The plant also already had scheduled a shutdown for the week of Feb. 2, so Sapienza said production won’t come back online at Fairfax until Feb. 9.

Or moved out of country as Chrysler is doing now. India is going to pick up the 250,000 drop in production, and thier plants are expanding, the writing is on the wall.
UAW workers, you have my sympathy, it is not your fault that you are in the position you are in. You are just pawns in a much larger game of who can make the most money for the shareholders. Yup, the only thing keeping the ceo’s in a job is making the shareholders happy.
What we in Michigan aren’t doing is putting ourselves in the shoes of people in the rest of the country. If we did, we’d see that bailouts, especially without strings that will ensure success, are highly unpopular, and for good reason. If we were viewing it like outsiders, we would think of American cars as companies who have been getting their butt kicked by the Japanese, and others, in terms of quality, profitability and recently in design. People blame both the executives and the UAW.

To convince them, something has to be done about the retiree problem. Why can they take health care away from white collar, but not the UAW? Or are there other places where cuts could be agreed to.

There is a $2,000 differential in car costs with the Japanese because of retirees. These people were paid excellent money all their lives, and most UAW members working now will admit that many of them are a big part of the reason for the current horrible reputation of the Detroit Three.

Make that coal, not goal. It was my goal to write it.

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Tagged with: G.M, General Motors, Rick Wagoner

Bernard C.

Organized labor is choking the US auto industry to death. Bloated pay, sub standard labor and a profound sense of entitlement to their paycheck and benefits is their legacy. The UAW is a throwback to a bygone era, a dinosaur. The only thing they've successfully done is poorly fabricate cars and crush GM and other auto manufacturers with their wholly unreasonable contract demands. I say outsource all of it and let the UAW reap what it sowed when all their former members are seeing the true value of their skill set when they are payed $7.75 an hour working DQ.