GM To Cut 30,000 Jobs and Close 12 Plants

General Motors will be closing about a dozen automobile and parts factories and distribution centers as well as eliminating 30,000 jobs in an effort to keep their losses down and their shares up.



30,000 jobs is about 25% of GM's current work force. Additionally, five automobile assembly plants in Oklahoma City, Oklahome; Lansing, Michigan; Spring Hill, Tennessee; Doraville, Ga.; and Oshawa, Ontario along with seven parts factories and distribution centers will be closed.

That's another 30,000 people to add to the number of jobless in America. And, with car sales down, I seriously doubt that any other car manufacturer will be able to employ these people.

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[edit on 21-11-2005 by asala]

[edit on 11/26/05 by FredT]

Add to that the location of these plants.
for instance:
Oklahoma city will be a very bad place to be soon...
with unemployment up already (all the good non-trained jobs are immigrant) and a huge influx of out of work soldiers coming back this year...
there wont be a job within these state borders...

it would be a great place to open a manufacturing plant. Please oh please, someone open a manufacturing plant...

Originally posted by elderban


That's another 30,000 people to add to the number of jobless in America. And, with car sales down, I seriously doubt that any other car manufacturer will be able to employ these people.

i do feel for these people
.............but.............
unless they all had their heads in the sand,
at least some of them should of been
aware that auto sales were artifically high to begin with...
the auto makers had been for years, profiting less-&-less,
and even losing monies on that 0% financing and other creative schemes.

i seen on some news site (Times? Post? ?) that the industry avg.
was presently @ $36.00 hour !, plus the benefits package.

the wise person might have salted away much more than the average
savings rate, he/she might have earmarked 10-15% of their takehome
to go into a Private IRA or ROTH acct.

i gotta think that Industry is much more cavalier about employees and their
long-term service & commitment to the Corporation...
the corp treats labor way different than when Henry Ford got the ball rollin'

i expect the fed. will sooner-than-later, have to bale out the GM pension
plan and the GM health insurance plans which will unfortunately evaporate,
[into the (well disguised) continued bonuses for the executive class]

how do they say it....Bourgeois?...or is it, Bogus

Make it big, thirsty, tweaked with bells and whistles nobody really needs, styled like a Las Vegas cowboy-boot box, and paste on a sticker price that would have bought your Dad a house.

Then whine when nobody buys it.

If all American workers made as much money and had as many benefits as GM workers, maybe we could afford to buy these pop-art monstrosities disguised as Cars.

But we don't, so we can't- and if I had the money I'd buy Japanese (I hate visiting Mr. Goodwrench).

Originally posted by St Udio
i do feel for these people
.............but.............
unless they all had their heads in the sand,
at least some of them should of been
aware that auto sales were artifically high to begin with...
the auto makers had been for years, profiting less-&-less,
and even losing monies on that 0% financing and other creative schemes.

i seen on some news site (Times? Post? ?) that the industry avg.
was presently @ $36.00 hour !, plus the benefits package.

the wise person might have salted away much more than the average
savings rate, he/she might have earmarked 10-15% of their takehome
to go into a Private IRA or ROTH acct.

i gotta think that Industry is much more cavalier about employees and their
long-term service & commitment to the Corporation...
the corp treats labor way different than when Henry Ford got the ball rollin'

i expect the fed. will sooner-than-later, have to bale out the GM pension
plan and the GM health insurance plans which will unfortunately evaporate,
[into the (well disguised) continued bonuses for the executive class]

Well said & I agree. While I don't like to see people lose their jobs anyone who can write their own name saw this coming. What kills me is the guy they interviewed coming out of the plant (can't recall which one) stating this was a big surprise. Unbelievable. I worked in a plant in my younger days, the majority were people without a clue and content with complacency.

brill

The stockholders will receive larger dividens, the exec's will get a monster bonus. Mexico will get a new plant but the American worker will get the shaft.

Manufacturing in the United States us toast. We used to make steel in this country, now we make happy meals.

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house.

The latest is that the GM auto Unions have said they wont allow the plants to close...
one question...

What are they gonna do? STRIKE???

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
I think the auto unions have lost touch with their purpose... it isn't so that they can bend the companies over the barrel, but to insure fair employment practice... and it stopped doing that long ago.

[edit on 22-11-2005 by LazarusTheLong]

You have made a verybad error by saying "the unions".
To what union do you belong?
I was a Teamster, I am now a member of the International Association of Machinists.

Your statement is generalized and not across the board correct.
We aren't all making $36/hr for repetitive assemby work

I have corrected my statement... and not all unions are bad...
the issue is the union that negotiated the retirement/benefits contract... I am unsure which one...

but the bottom line... they have caused the crash of GM, by holding them hostage on too many demands... so that now, the little piggy cant handle any more pulls...

maybe some unions haven't gotten their workers 25-36 dollar an hour jobs... they are probably doing their job, which is a delicate balance of wants vs needs...to keep the workers happy, and the company profitable.
the auto unions seem to have forgotten that last crucial part of the formula...

but hey, at least they wont have to pay all the guys who work weekends double time, or half time for the days they are sent home and dont work...(some get full pay). it is these kind of goofy incentives that slowly drain an otherwise worthy giant like GM...

let me put it another way... I would much rather have seen GM pay 100,000 people $17hr, than 50,000 $36hr... they might have been able to save the system if they had.

Well it never ever helped business by designing crappy cars. Build quality is up, I'm sure their efficiency is up (debatable), but let's face it, their styling just blows. They have a South Korean design firm currently doing some of their cars. I'm sorry, but we have plenty of cool designers here thank you, they just won't hire them. Heck if design firms in California are good enough for Toyota and Nissan for instance, then why aren't they good enough for GM? Instead they pull a Pontiac Aztek out of their butts, and seriously, very seriously, think that people are going to buy that thing.
They admitted it was a mistake shortly after the reviews came out, but they kept building for a few years. What an absolute waste. Let's kill the Camaro and Firebird, which are overpriced at $30,000+, and give them the Aztek which we'll charge $20,000+ for. Rip off. Oh that SSR is no substitute either.

And why do they have so many redundant brand names? I can basically get the same mid-SUV in a Equinox, Torrent, Saturn, and soon a Saab.
Ooooo at least the 6 cylinder Saturn Vue has a Honda engine of all things.
How lame. They just need a truck division and a car division for one brand only. They need to ditch all the meaningless names.

Its just poor vision, and I hope they pay dearly for it. Serves them right.

Closing these plants couldn't have been helped along by lagging sales due to the high price of gas over the past few months, could it?

I've heard somwhere...radio, I suppose...that people are resorting to torching their SUVs because they can't resell them. I don't know the validity of that, but it did make me wonder what people are going to do if gas prices go up again. The days of the midsized cars and monster trucks are gone...hello puddle jumpers.

I went from SUV to midsize to economy (4 cyl.) class over the last 4 years. I just didn't like paying $60 a week to fill up any more. Now $30 does us more than a week, on average.

It certainly was pleasant going from a $45,000 SUV to a $23,000 economy car too.

Annyone see a pattern here?
Chrysler was in the same position not long ago and Iococa struck a deal with the govt. and all the govt. cars were Kcars for a couple of years.

Stupid designs, poor management, huge bonuses for the top management, inefficency and blame it on the unions and ship it overseas thanks to nafta and cafta and let the feds bail out the big boys with govt. contracts.

Who makes hummers anyway? want to see a Chevy Hummer? Coming soon to a war near you. 8 to 5 anyone?

In the future, some may mark this as the first foreshadowings of what is going to become the death of the pension concept throughout the US.

All of these big companies have their pensions insured by the US Government. Well, the US Taxpayer pays for everything else, why not this too? Great. Not only do I have to pay to send someone elses kids to school, now I'm going to have to pay for their parent's pensions too.

Lets talk quality...
GM has a policy (seen it time and again) of engineering defects into the autos...
I would speculate that all the big three do it.

To be specific... look up MK7 transmission on the net... it is the common 5 speed transmission in Chevy cavalier/sunfire.
it is the same transmission offered in some isuzu cars...
they last quite a bit longer in isuzus... why?

you will find studies have been done on the metal hardness in each unit...
by these studies, the gears in the isuzu versions were harder...

Is that engineered failure? that is for the lawyers to decide... but it stinks to high heaven...
BTW... they dont usually fail before the warranty expires...

Hummm... I wonder if part of the problem isn't that the unions have guaranteed a certain number of units of a part will be made, so they insure that they will have so many units sold as replacements as the years go by...

building a vehicle with an eye towards selling "out of warranty" replacement parts later on, is a conspiracy if there ever was one...

I boycotted GM ever since I found deeply embedded engineering of defects into the 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. That car had all kinds of problems all the time and, when the engine freezed at 95,000 miles, when I got the engine rebuilt at the station, they said "Don't you know? These cars (plural) leak like a sieve (sp?)?" This is a systematic problem. When they gas station rebuilt the engine, it ran much better than the new one had and for much longer. From then on, I knew this company was dead on its feet. It was just a matter of time before corrupt engineering and design would lose to foreign competition. You cannot keep pushing poor products on the American public in the face of formidable and reliable competition.

From what I understand, of the big three american automakers, Ford has been the one to embrace quality control issues most. It's just what I've heard. I try to buy Honda, Nissan, and Toyota now. Although consumer reports have put some Buicks farther up on the reliability list lately.

they all have gotten better ever since the cat clawed its way out of the bag...

Ford used to be the worst... they appear to be the best of the 3 right now.
for instance:
the 5 speed transmission in the 90's ford ranger and F150 pickups has an engineered defect, that can be fixed using a part that costs about 85cents...
the problem is, it costs about $300 bucks to take the transmission out to install it.
You can count on your transmission going out 60,000-120,000 miles...
almost universally... the exceptions would be if you didn't really drive very often, or for very long...
the new units are so bulletproof, that no one is even making parts for them...

the automatics are the same way (but not as bad)... they were bad in the 90's, but got better about 96-98, and now since they haven't sold enough parts... they are going to a sealed NON rebuildable unit... that supposidly never needs service (becuase it is sealed)
rather... it will go out in about 200,000miles, and can only be replaced, not rebuilt... so the only supplier of repair parts will be FORD.

in my opinion, this new ford angle seems to be the least evil of the options...
they insure the sales of replacement parts for the unions... but dont engineer failure... they just make it so that the aftermarket can't take the business away...
it is probably illegal, but decent solution to a major problem...

as to the imports... they always are engineered a little better with the idea, that it is easier to make a good product and not have to support a foreign parts network... it costs alot to maintain a parts supply.

honda is awful!... great quality to begin with, but they do break, and they cost a first born to fix... and you cant really buy them used, without knowing the previous owner.

Toyota is great, but also costs alot to fix... but damn they take abuse well...

mitsubishi/kia/hyundai are all essentially the same... and they are OK, across the board... they have problems, but dont we all... they are a little cheaper to fix usually than hondas...

Suzuki: not enough history to know, but good warranty, and good price.

Subaru: the secret of the industry... ssssshhhhh... everyone will want one... OK transmissions though...(they dont make them- ford does)

and just for the record VW is now one of the worst for quality...they have suffered from a lot of outsourcing to China (now are we worried about the $5000 pocket cars that are coming?...not so much)

Just a little FYI to compare quality and reasons for quality...
we now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Originally posted by Chakotay
Make it big, thirsty, tweaked with bells and whistles nobody really needs, styled like a Las Vegas cowboy-boot box, and paste on a sticker price that would have bought your Dad a house.

Then whine when nobody buys it.

If all American workers made as much money and had as many benefits as GM workers, maybe we could afford to buy these pop-art monstrosities disguised as Cars.

But we don't, so we can't- and if I had the money I'd buy Japanese (I hate visiting Mr. Goodwrench).

The unions faught hard to get the GM workers what they deserve. I suppose you think walmart treats thier employes more fair. Walmarts profits were bigger than any of the auto companys and they pay thier employees $8 an hour. In the 1950's when your dad probobly bought his house 38% of america was unionized now its 8%. That 8% are mostly auto workers and auto workers are middle class. So you go ahead and work at walmart and you save your Pennies for your japaneese car and thank the GM worker working next to you.

Originally posted by whaaa
Annyone see a pattern here?
Chrysler was in the same position not long ago and Iococa struck a deal with the govt. and all the govt. cars were Kcars for a couple of years.



and directly after iococa gave himself a $5.1 million raise. hope he didn't hurt his arm patting himself on the back. as i've said in other posts on the subject. if the company is in such financial trouble doesn't that fall on the shoulders of the ceo's and cfo's and such and such. being its thier responsibility to keep the company profitable they failed at thier jobs to do so and therefore should be fired. where is it besides being a weatherman that you can be a failure at your job and still have it.

















[edit on 27-11-2005 by ministock]