Kiss Half Your Pay Check Goodbye

[Omaha Steve]

http://uniongal.blogspot.com/

Friday, April 25, 2008
Kiss Half Your Pay Check Goodbye

That's what United Steelworkers were told in Van Wert Ohio nearly 5 weeks ago. Give it up or the company would lock them out.

So, guess what happened?

Yep, they locked them out.

A local Van Wert blogger summed it up last week:

A lot of why American companies can’t compete on a global market is because of lazy incompetent company managers from CEO on down. It’s pretty brainless to simply market your product via production by sweat shop laborers. From a market standpoint people will always prefer quality to quantity. I am using China as an example but there are many more foreign companies buying up top of the line U.S. companies that run them into the ground. Look at the stuff we buy in stores today and compare it to stuff we bought 20-30 years ago. From a quality standpoint its probably 50% less then it was back when we bought from our neighbors. Remember the day? I sure do!


It's a pretty good summary, but try this one on for size :

Peter Spencer, the Group Executive and President of the Kongsberg Driveline Systems, sat inside the offices and calmly discussed the labor situation between United Steel Worker employees and Kongsberg Automotive. In a nutshell, he explained the current situation is a confluence of the global economy and the woes of the automotive industry. United States manufacturers are no longer bidding against other United States manufacturers. They are in competition with suppliers from all over the world.

"We're in a situation here with our driveline section, my intention is to make this business profitable and sustainable," Spencer said. "From the business point of view, we're going to stay on the right side of the ethical line and the legal line. That's our commitment to all of our employees and I think that we take that very seriously.

"However, we are where we are and, as of today, we've got a very large opportunity on the table from a global customer, $30 million as it happens, but I need to quote them and the bottom line is the customer has told me very simply that if you quote this at fifteen bucks an hour, you haven't got it. If you quote this at $9 an hour, you've got a good chance."


Hey, but don't worry, Spencer has all the answers:

"So there is only one outcome to this and that's closure (without the wage concessions)," he said. "You have to ask if you want a factory here for the next 12 months or the next ten years."


FULL story at link.

[madrchsod]

1. where my daughter works

they have problems with a certain parts supplier from india. if there is a problem there is`t anyway to know if the part has been"fixed" because there is more on a ship somewhere. instead of buying from a plant in the usa where one could stop production with out making hundreds or thousands of bad parts...no it`s cheaper to buy overseas.

what the hell happened to just in time with american industry? now they buy thousands of parts overseas and store them until needed.......i guess the parts are so cheap they figure that it is cheaper to store those parts till needed.
now they are storing parts longer because no one is buying their product..buying overseas can be such a bitch