Re: Jobs going to Mexico?

Posted by Spook on February 13, 2016 at 09:31:59 from (104.63.94.65):

In Reply to: Jobs going to Mexico? posted by Spook on February 11, 2016 at 07:55:44:

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Yup, Retiree health care was a huge problem for all the big 3. Just prior to the crash, GM off loaded the retirees, present and future, to a trust, for all our retiree health care. My deductibles have gone up, copays up, so that is how that works.

My dad has been retired almost 30 years. And he might have another 20 in him.

One thing about downsizing, it leaves fewer folks to pay into these systems, back in the 50's, GM had over 1 million employees, like wallmart does now. GM now has less than 50K in the US. So they now have 5% of the contributors into a system, originally designed for much larger populations. On the other hand, the union has always been pretty diligent about making sure the company funded the pension. So our funding is not that bad. And we never got as big as pension as the teamster's got either. My FIL gets a larger pension than I do, even though he made a lot less than I did, and retired 20 years ago. He is gonna see that cut quite a bit in the near future.

I think at the end of the day, pension costs were predictable and sustainable. Health care costs weren't.

I look back, I worked in 4 shops in Detroit. The first was pretty small, maybe 50 guys building tooling for the big 3. Then a Chrysler plant with 6K workers, a GM plant with 15K workers, and a GM stamping plant with 1400 workers. All were old plants, 2 dating back to 1903 - 1908. They were all surrounded by commercial and residential buildings. When they needed to expand, and get more efficient buildings, they had to leave Detroit - no room. In the years after ww2, there were over 30 Big 3 plants built in SE Michigan, all outside of Detroit. So when the need to be more efficient got going, the least efficient plants were the oldest, in Detroit. 2 plants I worked in had 5 stories, one had 8! No clear spans, either, there was a 3 ft pillar every 20 feet in the lower levels, forcing machinery to wind around the pillars. In the summers, it would get as hot as 130F, and in the winter, you could see your breath in some areas. When we went to a new plant in the burbs, we thought it was like heaven.

When those old plants closed, whole neighborhoods went downhill. No jobs, no money in the community, everything went south at once.

I don't know anybody here who thinks that any political party is gonna bring those jobs back. It's over. Done.

Have a good one!

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