Steelworkers Unite!

Actually, given a few generations of family members who were steelworkers, I'm well aware of how few of them we actually have in America these days. Sad really. Among several stories, I remember one uncle bragging about the magic formula that gave him 17 weeks of paid vacation one year. I wonder what happened?

Honestly, I do regret that the face of work is changing so much in America as compared to what it was only a decade or two ago. But globalization cannot be stopped and manufacturing will continue to become a less and less viable occupation. In general terms, Go West if you want, but go to college young man , or woman.

DETROIT (AP) - If the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors Corp. lasts longer than a week or two, it could cost GM billions of dollars and stop the momentum the company was building with some of its new models, according to several industry analysts.

A strike of two weeks or less would not hurt GM's cash position and would actually improve its inventory situation, Lehman Brothers analyst Brian Johnson said Monday in a note to investors. But a longer strike would be harmful, causing GM to burn up $8.1 billion in the first month and $7.2 billion in the second month, assuming the company can't produce vehicles in Mexico or Canada, Johnson wrote.

Comments

[bloodrage bob]

"go to college, young man"?

to hell with THAT noise. spend 6 years doing what used to take 4; being spoonfed political dogma daily instead of learning how to think; and - unless one has a technical degree - leaving with no real, tangible useful skills? baaaaaad plan, kiddies.

here's the way the world works, kids: you need to either figure out a way to be a great salesman - the world will always need and reward great salesmen - or learn a trade/skill in which you can either operate your own shop, or work as a free agent in a corporate setting. allowing yourself to be a corporate minion is a bad plan. read "dilbert". in the real world, it's actually worse than that. being a union guy clearly has no future: the morons who go into corporate management do not have the brains or talent to adequately manage a unionized workforce (except for UPS). it's just SOOOOO much easier to whine about "globalization", and send production to china. of course, that'll mean YOU getting fired, but who cares about YOU? a corporation certainly won't.

examples: a nurse can work *anywhere she wants to*. there's a huge nursing shortage, and it's getting worse. want to work a 3-day, 40 hour week? have 4-day weekends? no problem.
a pharmacist makes 6 figures right out of the box in most parts of the country. there's a pharmacist shortage, so if working for rite-aid doesn't make you happy, you can quit today and be working down the street at sav-on tomorrow. ANY sav-on. ANYwhere in the country.
remember the idiot joey buttafucco? the butt of a *lot* of jokes, remember? what a maroon! yeah, but he was a maroon *who owned an auto-body shop*. he made somewhere around $300K, i'd guess. that's $25,000 a >MONTH< kiddies.

newly-hired middle managers make somewhere south of $40K in most of the country. if they don't play the corporate kissass game just right, (the wall st. journal runs a weekly column on this), they get *fired*. office workers make somewhere south of $35K in most of the country. if their jobs are shifted to india, they get *fired*. new reporters straight outta J-school make less than $25K in most of the country. if they don't parrot the bosses' liberal dogma just right, they get *fired*.

who would you rather be? the newly-fired journalist with $40,000 in college debt, or joey buttafucco making 12 times what the fired guy *used to* make?

[chris]

Bloodrage Bob is giving career advice. That's like the Decider teaching public speaking and a course entitled "How to Catch bin Laden".

You patriots are an inspiration!

[bloodrage bob]

....as opposed to you labials (heh) who offer no solutions that don't require higher taxes; open borders; loss of freedom ("we're going to have to take things from you" - hillary clinton); and ever-increasing spinelessness ("the surge has failed" - harry reid, one week after the surge began), chrissie.

you liberals are remarkable!

[Fred Beloit]

I worked at a very large and successful corporation for 25 years. BB is right not to recommend it. Dilbert may be funny, but it is also all too real.

[templar knight]

Hahaha...chrissie is one of those J-school grads kissing the bosses' ass and making south of $25,000 per year, about like those ditch-diggers he hates so much. Now I know why he hates them so much, they're making more money than he is. Hahaha! How is that view from Mommie's basement, chrissie-pooh?

[Manufacturing Guy]

If we all take a deep breath and step back from the comments a little, I think a clearer understanding will emerge. I have been in the industrial manufacturing industry for almost 20 years. In that time I have worked my way up from hourly Union guy to being a senior manager. I went to night school for 11 years straight, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Globalization is not the problem; competitiveness is. The business will go (usually) to the best combination of features that makes your customer successful. I have both lost business to companies in other countries, and have taken business from companies in other countries. There are a lot of considerations - the ones you hear on the news are but a few of them.

Manufacturing will be difficult for the next 20 years or so, and lots of talented people will bail. Good - I will get promoted faster due to lack of competition. In the meantime I will continue to develop a team of managers and executives that will learn to appreciate, adapt and beat whomever we can. We will learn from our failures, and come out better for it in the end. Some of us will not make it, and I may be one of them. But the market will be better for the competition, and I will be personally better for having learning new competitive skills.

At the end of the day, we are all worth what we bring to the party in a market-driven economy. DO go to college, but take something valuable. If anyone can do it, no employer will pay you much to do it. Learn as much as you can, and keep learning! The technology is moving forward so fast, we are all obsolete 10 years after adulthood. You owe it to yourself to keep the saw sharpened.

And about Dilbert - the vast majority of executives I know work their butts off, have extremely high degrees of integrity, and are much more like "us" than you think. While Dilbert has its place, it is much more at home in Staff functions (HR, Acctg, etc) than Operations functions (mfg, IT, Eng). Really - if you think your boss is a weenie, find a new job. This is America, folks. You can change your life on your own.

Relax, sacrifice your personal self for the good of something greater, and enjoy the work. Leave a mark.

[seekeronos]

Amen, MfGuy. Well spoken.

[wow gold]

He doesn't understand anything about
propaganda; except to believe that anything
the US govt.

[LOL]

rofl reading bloodrage bob's guide to success is kind of listening to Rush limbaugh talk about breaking an addiction. Winger habits provide no end to my bemusement.

[bloodrage bob]

gotta disagree, mfg guy. gotta.

let's look at just 1 manufacturing industry: autos.

the US auto industry had every advantage in the world as late as 1968. the best autoworkers, the best systems, and the american public who, used to buying from detroit, allowed the big 3 to rack up 90%+ market share here. oh, sure, you had the germans with the benzes und der beetles; and the silly little japanese with their riceburning crackerboxes, but they were fad cars. no one of any seriousness drove such things. they bought american, naturally.

then came the next generation of managers. men who figured they, having MBA's and all, were smarter than the average bear and trick the car-buying public. so they started cutting back. on material, on quality, on R&D ... you name it. they gave us the pinto. the vega. the maverick. the torino. the mustang 2. the (90% front-weighted marcury) capri, guaranteed to slide into 360's if it ran over a raindrop. (ask me how i know.) the chevette. the k-cars. the fairmont. the monza. the granada. and on & on & ON.

within just 15 years, the management geniuses in detroit ran their product, their brands, and their customer base into the ground. squealing about how it was "the union's fault!" every step of the way, because everyone knows that *good* managers are *never* at fault. no, it **must be** those darn union healthcare bennies that are to blame. meanwhile, management and executive pay increased exponentially, even as market share declined. meanwhile, japanese automaker management worked long into the night, trying - always trying - to improve. better quality. better reliabilty. better **value**.

the management in detroit snickered. "look how much money those guys waste in R&D!" "they made their belts and hoses waaaay too sturdy!" "if the cars don't disintegrate in 5 years like ours do, the owners won't buy new ones!"

now, even as they've finally become (dully) aware that americans aren't falling for their bullshit anymore, ("let's make the corvette interior out of cheap plastic. the suckers won't notice their $45,000 car has the same interior as a malibu, right?"), even as big 3 market share is shockingly below 50%, they continue on in their profound incompetence. ever seen a ford 500? were you impressed? or those rockin' *saturns*?? how bout a chevy impala? didja rush out and buy one? me neither. BTW, US automakers are in REAL trouble now: nissan and toyota already make big trucks as good as detroit, and they make better minivans by far. what'll they make in 5 years, i wonder?

and you're telling kids to trust their futures to morons like THAT?!?

PS - LOLly, your mom called: she says she wants you to move out of her basement by monday. you're 42, for god's sake! get a job! go on a date, finally! your mommy is bemused!

[BobInStamford]

Bloodrage Bob, clearly a titan of industry, and a thinker who has no use for 'college types', is busy giving career advice at 2:30AM. I would think that good, decent, hard-working patriots are asleep at that time.

In any case, it is time to get into my German-made vehicle and drive to my job that my wasted higher education has made possible.

I wish I had enlisted and joined the surge instead!

Carry on, heroes!

[templar knight]

"I wish I had enlisted and joined the surge instead!"

Hmm...wishing you some honor and prestige, huh, Bobby? Well, you'll not have it. And as for VW Beetle's, I ran one of those into the creek one time, just to watch it float, I wondered what happened to it. Glad to see you are getting some use out of the thing. Now, carry on, dumb ass!

[seekeronos]

I'll have to agree with BB about the decrepit state of our largely outsourced auto industry, which can hardly say that its product is any more "American", with parts coming far and wide across the world. Cheaper, cheaper, and cheaper still, thermostats that are doomed to fail, transmissions that are built with poorly contrived alloys, and which are almost programmed to fail after a certain mileage.

Programmed obsolescence - a charlatan's tactic to keep their hands in your pockets and on your paychecks... and a tactic that drives more and more people into the bosom of elite foreign auto manufacturers each year.

I hate to say it, but I will probably never buy an American car, new or used. I have still a 1993 Subaru in my motor pool, which isn't the prettiest car on the road, but runs and I own it outright. A friend of mine had dropped no less than $4000 one year on his just-past-the-warranty Ford, and a couple of thousand the next year, until he finally wised up and bought Japanese.

I'd say the Big Three would do better to temporarily divest themselves of their consumer auto markets (license their leading brands to the Japanese, Koreans, and Germans for a decade or two, with options to recover any upstream/improved brand designs) and focus on heavy equipment, their military division, and maybe the services sector (garbage trucks, stuff like that) ... or at the very least, fire off the managers and bring in some Japanese and German talent.

Meanwhile, develop different management teams who WILL be able to observe, adapt, and overcome to motivate and produce a better product, and perhaps competitively re-enter the consumer car market once the licenses expire.

[Manufacturing Guy]

BB and Seeker,

You raise good points, and I cannot disagree. The U.S. auto industry is in dire straights, and has largely earned its current position. While I don't work in the industry, friends do and I get to hear a lot of complaining.

Ford, GM and Chrysler clearly failed to match the global competition. There are far too many reasons to recite here but the two most common ones are usually executive pay and benefits and hourly pay and benefits. These are real problems. Exec pay is too high I agree, but one exec making $500,000 is less of a problem than 1000 hourly employees each making $100,000. It's an order of magnitude different, and it's just simple math. Moreover, the benefits side is out of control. Any employee at any level who refuses to see the reality of having to pay *any* portion of their health care is living in fantasy land. Also, it takes responsibility for your own health out of your domain. The fact that I have to pony up $15 every time I see a doctor makes me think twice about the Bacon/Mushroom/Onion/Glazed Double Cheeseburger (but I get one every once in a while). It is a silly argument to suggest that one is not responsible for one's health, even to financial responsibility.

Detroit certainly has put out some stinkers in the past 30 years. Pinto, Nova, Vega, K Car, Omni, Gremlin, etc. are not great. But what about the B210 (Nissan), 74-80 Civic (Honda), 914 (Porsche-sort of), 318 (BMW), Fox (Audi), 411 (VW), and absolutely anything made by Citroen or Renault? My 74 Civic rusted so bad that I had 24 hour A/C at the rear hatch. My 79 Accord rusted so bad that the spring mounts broke through the chassis and made the car almost ride on asphalt. But... my 87 Civic ran great to 200,000 miles and I just sold a 10 year old Dodge Neon with 203,000 miles to a teenager, and he's now racing it! Can we agree that things have improved... a little? If so, let's cover some other things.

Infrastructure - Please understand that the average auto plant is about a $200,000,000 investment. That's 8 zeros, boys. Now, imagine you have about 40 of these worldwide, plus a few dozen supply plants. OK, now completely change all of them - go. How long would it take to find that much money?

Inertia - How long does it take someone to change your mind, once you've made it up? OK, now imagine there are 100,000 of you, worldwide, and you all have differing opinions, different motivation, different cultures. Now how long would the 100,000 of you take to agree on a change?

The Japanese, in particular, had greater motivation to grow, better tools, and less inertia. They were smaller, and more mobile. Let's not forget that they grew quickly due to the kairetsu system (spelling?), which is largely responsible for Japan's overall financial woes now. Now that the Japanese are big, how will they fare against Kia, Hyundai and the coming Chinese car industry?

Now, let's forget about cars. It's easy to pick on cars because it's so obvious. If manufacturing is doomed, why do we see year-over-year productivity improvements in many industries? Why are we seeing tremendous investment in technology, including automation? What we are doing is maximizing our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses. For the next two decades, labor will be a problem for us. Eventually, market forces will fix it but we'll have to deal with it in the meantime.

If we give up, folks, then we are truly lost. Only by giving up, however, are we lost. We *made* industry, and the world followed our example. We continue to be the world's leading economy, and people are fretting about not being #1 in everything. It had to happen sooner or later; the question is what do we do now? I propose that we redouble our effort. We've done this before, so we should be able to do it again. And I have committed my life to the premise that we can do this. I'm sure of it, and if a few people join me, we cannot lose. Good Lord, we put a man on the moon! Surely to God we can make stuff on the ground.

The next few years will be difficult, but that's all. It's only "difficult". It's not "impossible". When we stand up after that time, and wipe the sweat from our brow, we could gaze upon a new American industrial juggernaut. And we will know what success looks like. Who's with me?

Manufacturing Guy

[Fred Beloit]

Manufaguy writes:"While Dilbert has its place, it is much more at home in Staff functions (HR, Acctg, etc) than Operations functions (mfg, IT, Eng)."

I believe this is a fair assessment.

[bloodrage bob]

what the japanese HAD, my man, was competent management.

mgmt willing to do the work, put in the hours, spend the money, and not shrug their shoulders at 5:00 and say, "it's quitting time. this pile of crap will just have to do."

US automaker management has been chasing japanese autos for **30 years** now, whining every step of the way. ANY improvement in US auto quality/reliability has been SOLELY due to trying to keep up with toyota. US automakers, after ***30 years***, should have a pretty good idea what we want by now: all they have to do is look at toyota/honda/nissan/hyundai. (let us note that hyundai went from a joke to arguably the most reliable cars in the world in about 7 years, btw)(US automakers ....well, they just "need a few more decades".)

and the big 3 STILL can't manage to make a decent car. who wants a ford 500 when they can have a camry? who wants ANY american small car when they can have the new rocket-ship honda civic? when the last person leaves detroit; when they put up the tombstone, it'll say "killed by bad management".

stay away from corporations, kids. working for ford, or american airlines, or countrywide mortgage is a recipe for ruination. they've PROVEN themselves to be stunningly incompetent. why hitch your wagon to a sinking ship?

[bloodrage bob]

.....or, as i meant to say, "why hitch your wagon to a ship commanded and piloted by short-sighted, incompetent idiots?" why let bozos like that have a say in *your* future, kiddies?