this from
www.thosebastards.com (and apparently msnbc.com, too
all legal notices, blah blah blah, apply:
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"GM slashing 30,000 jobs because their cars suck
By King Bastard | Monday, November 21, 2005 1:09 PM
From MSNBC.com:
General Motors Corp. will eliminate 30,000 jobs and close nine North American assembly, stamping and powertrain plants by 2008 as part of an effort to get production in line with demand and position the world’s biggest automaker to start making money again after absorbing nearly $4 billion in losses so far this year.
The announcement Monday by Rick Wagoner, GM’s chairman and CEO, represents 5,000 more job cuts than the 25,000 that the automaker had previously indicated it planned to cut. United Auto Workers union leaders called the cuts “extremely disappointing, unfair and unfortunate.”
It's not a big surprise that General Motors is slashing 30,000 employees to try and save the company. They have enough of their own problems elsewhere (read: Delphi), but what it basically comes down to is they are building cars that no one wants to buy, and when you do buy them, the cars takes too long to fix.
That is the worst way to build customer loyalty.
It's not just General Motors, it's also Ford and Chrysler, and most of the fault lies with the workers of those companies who build the cars, and also the UAW for allowing the workers to slip this far. No one is guaranteed a job if the workers' performance is so bad that the company goes bankrupt, right?
I'll give you an example -- a friend of mine owns an American-built car, and to keep his identity secret, the car's name starts with "Mus" and ends with "stang", He's had it roughly for six months, and the liner in the trunk is already falling apart. He could take it back to the dealer, but there's several other small problems with the car, and he figures that it's just better to live with it.
In comparison, another friend of mine owns a Scion, and that car is rock solid. I've driven it, and it's one of the best values I've ever seen. I also drive a foreign car, but that car is assembled here in the United States, and the workmanship is far superior than many cars I've seen built by American auto makers.
And do you want stories about what actually goes on in Detroit on the production line? Just never buy a car built on a Monday or Friday.
Combine that with quality and featres that are five years behind many of the other auto makers, and pretty soon you have a cycle of profit sapping rebates and other incentives that contributes to the record losses being put up by these companies. Of course consumers are going to wait for the incentives, but other than that there really isn't a reason to buy the cars.
I don't buy the argument about excessive pension costs -- if they built quality cars, people would buy them, period."
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