Posted by Buzzman72 on May 04, 2009 at 09:54:26 from (74.129.192.160):
In Reply to: Re: Pure hogwash posted by Spook on May 04, 2009 at 08:42:59:
I'm a former UAW member who worked in a plant that built frames for Ford Explorers. The high hourly pay for plant workers, excluding maintenance and other "skilled trades," was $16.29 an hour, NOT $80. We didn't get the supplemental unemployment benefits (SUB) that the Ford workers got. While our insurance was decent, it wasn't as good as what the Ford workers got. We didn't have a company funded pension; we had a 401(k) plan like many other non-union Americans. We didn't have a "jobs bank" that kept workers on the payroll for doing nothing; in fact, layoffs happened a lot after the 2002 Explorers went into production. I know some folks who were laid off and called back 3 times in the 5 years I was at the plant.
You wanna know what closed our plant and put 800 people out of work? Management rolled the dice and lost. Between 2002-2005, China started buying up lots of American steel, and steel prices went crazy...while our company was under a contract as to how much we were paid for each frame. As Ford ot ready to change the frames for the 2005--which got pushed back to 2006--model year, and ask for bids on the new frame contract, Ford decided that they wanted to pay LESS per frame, even though raw materials costs had gone through the roof.
So our company decided they were going to call Ford's bluff,and refused to bid on building frames on which they were sure to lose money. Dana Corp. also refused to bid, because they did the math and realized they'd lose their butts building them for the price Ford wanted to pay as well. To hedge their bets, in the unlikely event that somebody,somewhere, bid on building those frames for Ford, our company took the accounting procedure of taking the entire asset value of our plant off their books...thereby showin a paper "loss," and further "justifying" the idea that our company couldn't afford to build those frames for less.
But then a wild card was dealt. Canada's Frank Stronach and his MAGNA Corp. not only bid on the contract to build the frames for Ford, but offered to build an all-new facility at Bowling Green, to do the work. And, as the sole bidder, MAGNA got the contract.
So our company closed the plant. Nothing the UAW local could do to keep the doors open...we offered to cut waes and benefits, but the company had no product to build there. Company officials told us that steel prices, not labor costs, were the problem.
In 2001, Ford was selling as many as 40,000 Explorers A MONTH; last sales report I read, that figure was currently under 4,000 a month. At that volume, I'm not sure how MAGNA has been able to keep their doors open, much less pay for the fixtures and equipment required to build the frames...because higher volume usually translates to less per-unit costs.
But the UAW didn't cause the closing of the frame plant where I worked...high raw materials costs and management gambling did. So I resent the blanket accusation that the UAW is solely, or even primarily, responsible for the sad shape of the US automotive industry...because it's pure bu11shit.
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