Should the Government Bailout the Car Industry?

[Soriak]

Originally Posted by Dumar

lol hilarious. so mom and pop go to the bank for a loan for their new family, dad is a mechanic so he has little knowledge of finance. the snake oil salesman uses magic numbers and kind guarantees that this is the best loan for them, and they trust his advice, because why shouldn't they? this is illegal in most cases, but since it's a bank and has as many lobbyists in washington as your house has cockroaches, it's no problemos and just blame it on irresponsibility of the borrower.

Of course there was also the (common?) practice of misreporting income. Just write down a larger figure, that way you can get the loan! Yes, regulation should demand that this is actually verified... but the people taking the loan must have known this was a bad idea.

There was plenty of greed to go around on both sides. Mortgage lenders wanted the fat commission and borrowers wanted as big a house as they could possibly get, expecting to make a profit when they'd sell it a few years later. If you look at the prices people paid for some houses that look as if they're about to collapse, you realize they didn't intend to live there permanently. They wanted to stay a few years, then sell it to another sucker for a hefty profit. It's like in any other pyramid scheme.

The lure of easy money is strong, but every idiot should know that profit and risk are connected. You don't make a huge profit without assuming a huge risk.

Plus, you have the retards who think "renting is throwing away money" and how they really need to get into a house right this second, while having thousands of dollars in credit card debt. You don't need a PhD to write down your tax savings, your property taxes, expected cost of maintenance and, of course, your mortgage payment (after the teaser rate) to figure out if you can afford it. Considering how a couple percent of borrowers stopped making payments within 3 months of closing the deal, many didn't give the financial implications any thought whatsoever. But I'm sure they were tricked by the mortgage lender and didn't know how to add and subtract...

[Rune]

Originally Posted by Dumar

no, you do not blame your friends for this. why? because you cannot escape it. to do so means you have to be a hermit.

I KNEW I was doing something right!

[Phoenix]

Video

More hard working union workers.

[Soriak]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Video

More hard working union workers.

Prizes, parties as incentives for people who show up to work - hah. I think "not getting fired" is incentive enough. And Grobbee & Co wonder why people don't like unions...

[Astrocreep]

seems like those people should lose their full time status. thats a good start. they lose their retarded benefits and then can hire more people to work the hours the slackers were supposed to or just stay open half the work day. union cant stop them from cutting hours, can they?

[Laven]

Originally Posted by Astrocreep

union cant stop them from cutting hours, can they?

Nope they cant, alot of GM plants and some ford (no clue whats going on with chrysler) have already done it. They havent really cut back hours but on units per hour making the work days more like 5-7hrs a day.

[Tuco]

Originally Posted by Chu

It's unfortunate for you Cad that the rest of us know math at a reasonable level and can see outright when we're being fed shit. Go away.

Originally Posted by Grobbee

What is conveniently left out is that Cad undoubtedly worked a job that is closer to 6 figures than 5. It's a lot easier at the higher end of that spectrum to live like people who used to make $40,000 single worker 30 years ago.

I don't know if you could say that with confidence, chu.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Video

More hard working union workers.

Sorry, I've been sick as shit since my last post in this thread. Haven't even been able to get outta bed. Fucking union laziness probably.

Anyway...

Who's responsible for the laziness of workers at a company? Is it the workers' fault? Or could it be the management that doesn't see any of this going on because they're on the golf course? You can only blame the workers so much for poor supervision. Human beings will do as little as possible to get by if they're left to their own devices.

Go back to that last video you posted. Lunch breaks for 4 hours at the bar? Seriously? That's the worker's fault? Sure, he's a piece of shit, but where is his boss that should be noticing that his workstation is fucking empty for 4 hours?

You can absolutely fire a union worker for productivity quotas or falsifying company documents (like your time card), so don't tell me that's entirely the union's fault.

And just so you don't get the wrong picture, I realize that most of these people are pieces of shit. But don't think for a second that the people in charge at 99% of the corporations around the world aren't just as worthless as the people they're managing.

Here, lemme tell you a true story from my union + company.

So my company tapes some of it's packages together, to help with shipping. The package is unstable when palletized singly, so they tape 2 of them together, which vastly increases it's stability. However, we also need to be able to break said tape quickly, in order for it to be efficient. The companies answer? They buy 2 laser tape nickers, at a cost of $60,000 each, so that after they get taped off the assembly line, the tape gets nicked and they separate easily out in the trade.

So 3M comes walking thru one day for some unrelated circle jerk bullshit and goes "What are those?" Our genius executives tell them "Oh, they're tape nickers, nick the tape on the packages."

"You know we make perforated tape, right?"

"ooooooooooh........"

So now we've got $120,000 of useless fucking hardware sitting in a closet in the warehouse. When the company comes to the union and says they need to cut costs, the union rightly throws this shit right back in their face and tells them to manage the company better. It's not Joe the Plumber's fault that you're not profitable. It's your shitty business decisions and complete ineptitude that is causing massive waste, and then you come to us and want us to take a pay cut? Fuck you.

In a non union environment, that conversation never takes place. Your pay gets cut, your hours get cut, and your friends get laid off.

I understand what the reputation of the unions are. But after being in one for 5 years, working for one of the biggest names in the world that absolutely SHOULDN'T be having financial issues, I understand now why they're necessary.

[Loftish v2]

Up until I read some of the responses by Dumar and others, I really didn't understand how hopelessly inept so many Americans are.

So thank you Dumar for clearing this up for me!

[Eomer]

@TheCutlery: And you've obviously been buying in to the indoctrination that nothing is the worker's fault, and it's always "management" that is the problem. And that word is spoken like a slur. "Oh, you're in management?" That's one of the biggest problems I have with unions, is that they create an us vs them mentality in the work place that can often turn poisonous.

You can absolutely fire a union worker for productivity quotas or falsifying company documents (like your time card), so don't tell me that's entirely the union's fault.

Yeah, cause it's not like they won't grieve it and make the whole process a nightmare to get rid of a single useless worker. Let me tell YOU a little story that was related to me by my relatives. About half a dozen of them work for Labatt's, which is of course a union brewery. My sister worked there one summer as well. There's actually dozens of stories I could tell you (that I'm sure are all management's fault, because they're always on the golf course), but this one is quick and easy and demonstrates the stupidity that is often endemic in union workplaces.

There was a forklift driver that had been cited numerous times for showing up to work intoxicated. You see, they had a hospitality room at the brewery, and workers were provided with as much beer as they could possibly drink. Many workers would get off shit, go get hammered, pass out on the couch, and wake up for their next shift without having left the brewery. That shit was discontinued, but not in the distant past, sometime in the 90's I believe. So this one forklift driver had been showing up to work blitzed repeatedly and had been warned several times. One day he knocked over a very large stack of kegs, we're talking hundreds of them. Thankfully no one was hurt. He was fired on the spot.

The union grieved it, and through some technicality, he got his job back.

Shit like that is not the exception. It is the norm when you have virtually guaranteed job security. Look at teachers, or what total cunts most nurses are. Why treat people with respect or put some effort in to your job when it means precisely zero in terms of your pay, benefits, job security or perks?

I readily admit that there is a place for unions in large corporations and government agencies. It's not reasonable for a company with thousands of employees to negotiate wages etc individually with each employee, and the unions do provide many services that companies would otherwise not be interested in doing. There's no question that at the dawn of the 20th century there was a lot of awful shit going on, and that unions and the labor movement were a good thing to improve conditions and protect people from capitalism run rampant.

But in some cases, and I'm not saying all unions or union workers are a problem, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. In some cases, way the fuck too far. The UAW/CAW are a prime example of this.

[TheCutlery]

First of all, Eomer, like I've said in every post so far, yes, unions have a reputation for being fucking lazy pieces of shit, and yes, they deserve it. But, I'm sorry, if your management can't fire someone for showing up to work drunk, then they're fucking inept. The "technicalities" that let the union get people off are 99% of the time mismanagement and if you don't learn from that shit after once or twice, then you deserve to have the fucking idiots working for you and wasting your money.

There are set, defined ways to get rid of anyone. Yes, there are hoops to jump thru, but if you do it correctly, you can walk anyone out the door. Just dot your I's and cross your T's.

Guys get fired for stealing all the time. First offense, gone. Guys get fired for time theft all the time (punching out on their cell phones, etc). First offense, gone. A guy was cutting rewards points off of packages, he got shitcanned the day after management found out. There are things you can get people for and the union has nothing to do but stand there and shrug. If showing up to work drunk isn't one of them, then that's not anyone's fault but the shitty management running the show.

Look, lets get back to the car industry. Is it really the 4 hour lunch breaks by a handful of employees that shouldn't be employed there in the first place that are ruining these companies? It has nothing to do with management deciding the the direction to move their ENTIRE company towards, was the 1 product that could be completely ruined if gas prices suddenly became too much to bear? That's really the worker's fault? We're talking about comparing a 4 hour lunch break to a business model that amounts to billions of dollars here. Trying to blame that shit on the workers is just more scapegoating by the top 1%. "Well shit, it can't be my fault, I've got a degree from Yale and my father ran this company before I did." Oh, you mean like our president? Come on. Bad business decisions = failure. Bad business decisions does not mean "Fucking workers, if they were less lazy, we'd have made profit this year."

[Tuco]

Cutlery, I don't think a single person is arguing that the blame isn't largely on the management. There is no one defending them.

I don't know why you're bringing them up in an effort to defend the union.

[Scientologist]

I find it hard to blame a guy for taking a four hour lunch break from his shitty menial job and collecting a big pay check for it. What one of us wouldn't do the same damn thing given half the chance? How many of you would really go back from lunch 3 and half hours before you had to turn more bolts? Some of you guys calling these guys pieces of shit, wastes of life, and that the need to be killed(REALLY?) are fucking lunatics. Before someone jumps down my throat, yes I understand the problems this causes but fuck it. Life's all about grabbing as much as you can while you can and I don't think we need to be calling for the deaths of people who take a long lunch.

[Eomer]

Originally Posted by Tuco

Cutlery, I don't think a single person is arguing that the blame isn't largely on the management. There is no one defending them.

I don't know why you're bringing them up in an effort to defend the union.

Because he's a brother, and in the eyes of a brother, everything is management's fault no matter what.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Tuco

Cutlery, I don't think a single person is arguing that the blame isn't largely on the management. There is no one defending them.

I don't know why you're bringing them up in an effort to defend the union.

Because people like Phoenix keep posting videos of "hard working union workers" at all these failing plants that are siphoning your tax dollars? Sure looks to me like he's trying to place the blame on blue collar, when that sure as fuck ain't the case. The blue collar sure as shit is not getting a fucking bailout here, and that's what this thread is about.

That shit irritates me.