so are my parents :highfive:
but my father drives a 10 y/o caddy and my mom drive a 9y/o s-10…gm 4 lyfe
Beck - Toyota is the most rapidly growing manufacturer in China - and labor there is much cheaper than in Japan or the US.
Also - if you haven’t been keeping up - the annualized car sales rate in the US has plummeted to mid-90’s numbers - a time where we had about 100 million fewer people. Therefore THE SAME VOLUME OF CARS ARE NOT BEING SOLD.
You just gave Toyota props for reducing output. For GM to do the same, it’ll HAVE to shrink, and jobs WILL BE LOST.
$30! Jesus my guys are paid between $9.50 and $13 /hr. and they work their asses off!
Think of the money GM would save if everyone making over $50/hour took a 50% pay cut. BILLIONS.
I know they aren’t being sold, but they are being produced. If GM thrives, it directly affects the economy. GM does better, the economy does better. Therefore volume changes in an increasing manner.
And remember, it isn’t the current crop of employees that’s costing GM the big bucks - it’s the retirees. Pension and retiree health costs are the crippling part. Something the imports don’t have to deal with.
Fuck they couldn’t do that though, how would they stroke the higher ups cocks and still produce a bellow average product, if they did that then they might have money to spend on actually “developing” cars, and that would be ludicrous.
Overproduction is what got GM in this fix in the first place. Unsold product is a liability, not an asset.
That’s why GM went through all these incentives the past few years - to clear out product. And the net effect is to condition the customer on bargain hunting for cash-back incentives, and cheapens the brand’s resale value.
Everyone is bitching about some people at dealerships losing their jobs. Too bad. It’s either that, or GM going bankrupt and EVERYONE losing their jobs. MILLIONS MORE, INCLUDING THESE DEALERSHIPS.
If you only manufacture Chevrolet’s, and replace the GMC’s with Chevrolets…your chevrolet dealerships will grow larger, producing the need for more workers…meaning your saturn worker’s who lost their jobs can go to a growing chevy dealership.
$50 /hr. (it is a little out there but ok, round number)
50% wage reduction.
$25/hr * 40 * 52 = $52,000 (this doesn’t even factor in the immense ammount of taxes GM pays on this $)
52,000 savings per employee * say 5,000 employees as a small number $260,000,000 saving per year in just wages.
Someone who knows more about GM’s balance sheet can make these more realistic. This just gives a savings example
Cheapening the resale value, directly results in them losing money in returned smart buys and smart leases. They did it to themselves.
America WILL DO JUST FINE WITHOUT A NEW CAMARO, OR A ZR-1 VETTE THAT YOU JUST SPENT 238293823 BILLION DOLLARS DEVELOPING, ADVERTISING AND MANUFACTURING. GOD FORBID YOU MAKE THE COBALT BETTER WITH THAT MONEY AND SELL 500,000 MORE A YEAR.
Beck - I’m not disagreeing with you about people losing their jobs. It will HAVE to happen at some point. That’s the nature of the beast - it’s just that without Chapter 11, GM can’t justify it.
I’d argue that GM would shrink to just that - Chevrolet/Buick/Cadillac, or even just Chevrolet/Cadillac in the USDM, keeping Buick for China only.
It’ll also alllow them to ditch 2/3 of their dealers, and not get the tab for closing them down.
Now whether or not they can do that with a Chapter 11 reorganization - or wheter or not anyone would buy from them afterwards - is the unknown part.
Now what about the guy paid 200k a year to design Envoy seats? Pay him half that to make Trailblazer seats better.
If you get rid of Pontiac then GM will loose 90% of their female demographic.
What are we going to do with out the CTS-V ???
Beck does sort of have a point on one thing here regarding the workers… everyone is saying these things can’t happen because some people would be out of jobs etc… isn’t it better to save a company and a majority of its employees, than to have the company go belly up and lose ALL its employees? There is going to have to be some sacrifice here like it or not, and they brought it about themselves! If there was no downside to these suggestions, then we wouldn’t be talking about a crisis now would we 
Who gives a FUCK there all worthless clones of cars GM already produces, a complete waste IMO
Toyota needs to buy GM, and do exactly what I’m saying. Reliability goes up, resale goes up and TOYOTA just cornered the fucking market. Then allow Honda to make bids at Dodge/Chrysler, or Ford. Let them pay the union workers less. Let them restructure the companies into the successful companies they have today.
fixed.