GM cutbacks portend tougher road ahead

[Thom Little]

By announcing plans to cut 30,000 workers and close multiple US factories, General Motors Monday sent a warning that ripples beyond the automotive industry: Working-class jobs with generous benefits are slipping away.

In many ways, the current woes of GM and other automakers merely follow a pattern long visible in other old-line industries, from steel to airlines. When overseas or nonunion competition rises, the result is cutbacks in jobs, pay, and benefits.

But this time, the company at issue is General Motors, which for much of the past century epitomized the ability of US industrial prowess to lift assembly workers into middle-class lifestyles. And this time, the larger-than-expected job cuts come even as the larger threat of possible bankruptcy lingers in the background.

The challenge facing GM is competition from Asian carmakers with lower manufacturing costs plus the burden of past promises to fund pensions and healthcare to legions of now-retired workers.




http://csmonitor.com/2005/1122/p02s01-usec.html

[mrcheerful]

1. GM has been down sizing since the 1980's.

But what few know is they are only down sizing in the USA, most of those 30,000 jobs will show up in mexico, thats been their pattern since Reagan.

[msongs]

2. LA Times today: China aims to sell its cars in the USA....

nice feature article front page: Chinese car makers, with heavy government subsidies and extremely low wages to workers, are beginning to export cars to Europe and very soon to the USA. Chinese cars may be the third best selling kind in 5 years, selling at prices way below similar American made and Japan import cars.

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my opinon - who will buy those cars? the same Americans who are buying all the other cheap china made stuff and putting Americans out of work so they can save a few bucks for things they mostly do not really need.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[madrchsod]

4. chinese cars?

can you say-le car?

[elfin]

3. One solution to many big corporate auto woes...

National health care - will immediately make them more competitive with Toyota etc. Plus increase the cafe standards.

Stikl waitiing for corporate America to call for national health care on these grounds if none other - in vain, I know, but maybe there is a cororate Murtha out there somewhere just waiting for the moment when it can be tolerated no more.

[sam sarrha]

5. soon as they dump the pensions they will move to China..