Big 3 blows it again, Japs eating their lunch

Aren't you in the kill-file, too?

 

Excellent post.

Best of luck on your new business venture.

 

These three BIG losers are for sale.
Please someone relieve Ford of the bleeding here.

Soon to drop these two losers.

These two are rays of hope for Ford. Smart designers.

 

There was a reply to a post the other day, so maybe I've been downgraded
to "non-kill-filed". It doesn't matter.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

When Boob puts you in his "killfile", what that means is, he ignores
one post, then he actually reads every single one of your following
posts, and replies twice to each one. The signs of a true obsessive
compulsive disorder on his part.

 

Volvo had a lot of reliability problems back in the '70s, from which
they seem to have recovered. It seems that Ford is using Volvo as a
"brain bank," since Ford seems to not have any engineering talent of
its own anymore.

Mazda and Ford have been allied for a long time, from the days when
Toyo-Kogo and Ford teamed up on the Courier/B1600 mini truck project.
Mazda has managed to come up with a new "crossover" SUV that seems to
be selling very well, which is good for Ford, since they can't seem to
design one of their own.

 

i agree totally with your comments with the exception of one jarring
point...you say a Neon is "a piece of crap"...firstly i don't completely
agree with you but my main concern is that you state it as a fact rather
than opinion and don't support it with any evidence.

you may have very good reason for your view but i find that one comment bugs
me for some reason.

 

i'm new here Bill but have observed you are a prolific and informed poster
but i think you've got it wrong with this one...Toyota in particular are
known to be a brutal employer, driving their employees to exhaustion with
forced overtime and restrictive practices. there are dozens of suicides in
which employment at Toyota is implicated.

not only that, they are systematically reducing the "unseen" quality in
their vehicles to maximize profits.

i suppose you can argue that all of that is just smart business but if you
make your living as an auto worker i suspect you wouldn't agree.

 

You're equating two things that are not equivalent. I don't know if
what you said about Toyota is true or not (sounds like union mentality
propaganda) - first I've heard of that. But let's assume it is true for
a moment. What does that have to do with GM allowing themselves to be
boxed in to where they can't exercise good business practices in that if
they find a more efficient way to do a process, they can take one or
more workers off that less efficient old process and put them to new
tasks that help productivity - helps the company and helps long-term job
stability.

I don't see re-assigning workers to more productive jobs as
suicide-inducing practices. I see companies not being able to compete
by exercising good business practices as being suicidal for the company.
Ultimately - yeah that is cruel to the employee when he loses his job
because the company is going bankrupt - except the employee forced them
to go to that.

OK - so you just showed up here. Great - but why are you picking up on
old discussions that stopped months ago and carrying on as if they are
current discussions. One of your recent posts starts off "lol...beat me
to it..." in response to a post in a thread that dropped off the radar
screen several months ago. Are you a troll?

 

Bill,

no, i'm not a troll. i actually didn't notice how old the threads were that
i was replying to and have already posted an apology for that.

as for your specific arguments below, i don't have time to respond fully
right now but my general concern is that there seems to be a general mindset
developing that auto manufacturing in the "western" world can only be
sustained by returning employees to "third world" levels of compensation and
working conditions. and before you ask, i am not a production worker nor a
union member, i own my own business, and i own two older Dodge vans, so i
have no vested interest whatsoever in the welfare of blue-collar workers.

so my question to Americans (just for the record I am British but live in
Canada) is; do you want your auto industry to survive by creating difficult
or impossible working conditions for the employees? do you want more
Wal-Mart level of employment in your country?

at the end of the day there may not be much choice but i just get the sense
that there is a bit of an "i'm all right jack, i'm a white-collar guy" kind
of mentality developing where people want "somebody else" to do all the hard
work and live in ghettos for their trouble while they (we) carry on serenely
in our suburbs.

now, i am not a "leftie" and i know society will always be somewhat
stratified but i am just concerned that we shouldn't be taking deliberate
steps to make things worse than they are.

well, that is a very simplified version of my viewpoint. it is a complex
issue for sure and the greatest minds on the planet may well not solve the
conundrum.

Have a nice day.

Simon.

 

I understand now.

Under existing union rules, their jobs will not survive. If you
maintain the existing rules, they will be worse off than if they had to
work under *reasonable* conditions like everybody else. I'm not
proposing coal mine working conditions - just some reasonable rules, not
elitist union rules.

So you think a company ought not to be allowed to move its people around
within a factory for the most efficient operation, profitability, and
protection of jobs? That's all I was pointing out, yet you seem to be
taking issue with that. A strange philosophy for anyone who understands
economics to even a basic level, especially someone who owns their own
business.

If you think the typical U.S. auto worker has been living a ghetto
lifestyle, then you are ignorant of what you are discussing.

I disagree. I think some intelligent and honest economists *could*
solve it, but, unfortunately we have some of the biggest idiots in the
world working on it in Washington as we speak and doing everything they
can to make it worse.

 

Hmm... I must not be expressing myself very well because your accusations
against me are totally off what I actually think. Maybe I'll come back to
this and try again later. Or not. Really, sometimes internet discussions are
depressingly futile as they actually achieve the square root of **** all.
LOL