Big strike at GM

[Metric]

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i think the point is that if they can't avoid putting lead into children's toys and toothpaste, they'll have a tough time with the quality control required to build a car

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Those GM pensioners better hope that you're right, but it seems like a huge assumption to me. China has designed and built their own fighter jets -- there's nothing supernaturally difficult about building a reasonable car for less than GM can do it.

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the fact that china built is own fighter jets is completely irrelevant due to the fact that they aren't built on the cheap. not to mention they're fighter jets. have you been paying attention at all to news about chinese product recalls lately?

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Oh I see -- fighter jets are totally different, since they're fighter jets, but lead paint on Barbie dolls is proof that their brand new cars in the $4000-$9,000 range are poorly engineered and will never sell. Anyone else feel like investing for the long haul in GM right about now? I know I'm going to.

[MidGe]

I find this argument very interesting. Here we had a company GM that made an agreement with its workers in return for their labor to give them a certain salary and deferred benefits in the form of pensions. This was to the benefit of the company management (performance oriented bonuses) and shareholders (access to cheap fund for their company growth).

Now due to incompetence of the company management of allocation of its management responsibilities to incompetents, the funds (rightly the employees) cannot provide the benefits , not only envisaged, but promised.

I think that the suckers, the ones at the bottom of the wealth hierarchy got done once more! GM ought to be sold to some company that will pay the workers their past entitlements, or the directors and all those responsible for their false promises, should be sued for everything they have!

PS withdrawal of labor is the only recourse left when employers default on their obligations

[mosdef]

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Now due to incompetence of the company management of allocation of its management responsibilities to incompetents, the funds (rightly the employees) cannot provide the benefits , not only envisaged, but promised.

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You have this wrong. The employees own a contractual promise from the company to get a pension benefit. The plan sponsor owns the fund, which an entity created specifically to aid them in providing the benefit. While poorly conceived laws may agree with you, it is fundamentally wrong to say the employees own the pension fund, because they don't own the risk of the pension fund underperforming. Management must add money to the fund to address shortfalls, so they bear the risk of poor returns in the fund, so they must own the fund. The employees bear the risk of the pension promise not being fulfilled (from the money currently in the fund or through additional contributions to the fund). You MUST assign ownership and risk bearing consistently or the system will be a disaster.

[adios]

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I find this argument very interesting. Here we had a company GM that made an agreement with its workers in return for their labor to give them a certain salary and deferred benefits in the form of pensions. This was to the benefit of the company management (performance oriented bonuses) and shareholders (access to cheap fund for their company growth).

Now due to incompetence of the company management of allocation of its management responsibilities to incompetents, the funds (rightly the employees) cannot provide the benefits , not only envisaged, but promised.

I think that the suckers, the ones at the bottom of the wealth hierarchy got done once more! GM ought to be sold to some company that will pay the workers their past entitlements, or the directors and all those responsible for their false promises, should be sued for everything they have!

PS withdrawal of labor is the only recourse left when employers default on their obligations

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If people don't like their jobs they should find something else. Profound indeed.

[MidGe]

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If people don't like their jobs they should find something else. Profound indeed.

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A bit late if they worked for 20 years of their life expecting certain promises (should we call them contracts) to be held to.

Which is very much what GM promised to their employees when they needed to attract them!

[mosdef]

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If people don't like their jobs they should find something else. Profound indeed.

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A bit late if they worked for 20 years of their life expecting certain promises (should we call them contracts) to be held to.

Which is very much what GM promised to their employees when they needed to attract them!

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The collective bargaining process is supposed to be about negotiating compensation for the upcoming period. If they were promised deferred benefits in prior periods but didn't get them or expect not to get them, they should maybe stop negotiating for deferred benefits. The deferred benefit they have not received was in respect of work in a prior period, not for work in the upcoming period. If they want, they can quit and sue the company for the compensation they didn't receive for past work and work somewhere else for future work.

[MidGe]

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The collective bargaining process is supposed to be about negotiating compensation for the upcoming period.

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I can assure you that is NOT the way it presented to the workers at the time. Are you denying the contracts in place 20+ years ago and the basis for them? The workers skill base was not based on legal expertise, the negotiators on behalf of GM surely were very well skilled and/or briefed in legal obfuscation.

[pvn]

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I find this argument very interesting. Here we had a company GM that made an agreement with its workers in return for their labor to give them a certain salary and deferred benefits in the form of pensions. This was to the benefit of the company management (performance oriented bonuses) and shareholders (access to cheap fund for their company growth).

Now due to incompetence of the company management of allocation of its management responsibilities to incompetents, the funds (rightly the employees) cannot provide the benefits , not only envisaged, but promised.

I think that the suckers, the ones at the bottom of the wealth hierarchy got done once more! GM ought to be sold to some company that will pay the workers their past entitlements, or the directors and all those responsible for their false promises, should be sued for everything they have!

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GM ought to be sold? To whom? You would force someone else to buy it, and to make good on these promises which are economically impossible to fufill?

Basically it sounds like you're advocating a bailout for the "bad guys" here.

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PS withdrawal of labor is the only recourse left when employers default on their obligations

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Duh.

[mosdef]

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The collective bargaining process is supposed to be about negotiating compensation for the upcoming period.

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I can assure you that is NOT the way it presented to the workers at the time.

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Communicated by whom? What are you talking about? Are you saying that 10 years ago someone at GM said "If you agree to work for the next 3 years, we will give you pension benefits payable 10 years from now that will be available in exchange for work provided 10 years from now. So it's not actually in exchange for work to be done in the next three year. But sign this agreement saying you'll work for the next three years in exchange for this benefit. But the benefit is not provided in exchange for your work in the next three years."

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Are you denying the contracts in place 20+ years ago and the basis for them? The workers skill base was not based on legal expertise, the negotiators on behalf of GM surely were very well skilled and/or briefed in legal obfuscation.

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So you're saying the union failed to represent the interests of their members. And it's the employer's fault.

[iversonian]

I thought Iron was leveling. Now I'm confused. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]