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Let G.M. go bankrupt

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#41

Post by thomasmallen »

omouse wrote: post #35
thomasmallen wrote: post #27

Sure, do just that, but you'd better have a damn good safety net unless you want Detroit in flames. In spite of my libertarian views, this is why I voted for Obama: On the issue of labor. I figured that the economy was already screwed, and we needed somebody who could look out for the middle class that will be left to the wolves.

Detroit has been fucked for a long long time.

In a way, I named "Detroit" as a symbol of other rust-belt American cities, and more generally, industrial labor in America. US Steel cut pensions, GM cut all salaries by 10% and stopped matching retirement, and this is just the very beginning of a series of moves that corporations will take to protect themselves. I won't comment on the ethics at play here, but I will say that if handled improperly, you will have many angry workers with a lot of time on their hands and little to lose.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#42

Post by arockwell »

thomasmallen wrote: post #30
hugh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto workers are a pretty weird subspecies of the "middle class" though. As far as I can figure out, they're lower-class people with lower-class jobs who get upper-middle-class money.

What makes that a lower-class job? The fact that you're not at a desk? However, you make a good point: I maintain that the prevelant college degree requirement for most desk jobs is responsible for the declining middle class. We're barreling towards a two-class system with a college degree as the price of admission into the upper class.

Being an autoworker is not a skilled job anymore. Anyone can learn to do this.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#43

Post by ojbyrne »

Dilpil wrote: post #39
ojbyrne wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited some auto manufacturing plants back in the 90s and the managers were very careful to point out that being an auto worker required a significant amount of math, computer programming and statistics because of Statistical Process Control, and Robotics, and they would point out that some of their foremen had masters degrees. High wages breed competition.

Your confusing the engineers with grunts.

Not the way it was told to me. Though, to be fair, this was a non-union workplace (and actually they made buses, not cars). The grunts could be all gone.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#44

Post by Prrometheus »

sown wrote: post #32
Kilimanjaro wrote: post #6

Let * go bankrupt That's what capitalism stands for. Those who kept a well managed admin and saved for the worst should be rewarded, not those who failed.

"That's what capitalism stands for." I think that is something we tell ourselves even though it is not really true. We live in some amalgamated economic system built on various rules of thumb, tradition and what ever else works to at least try to benefit real people and not perceptions. I guess the system also gets out of hand at times. ;)

It is ugly, though, to see the pigs begging for a place at the trough. What was sold as a bailout to sore up systemic instability in the financial sector has become an everybody-invited tax money giveaway free-for-all for the favored donors and supporters of Congressional election campaigns.

The next time I complain about high taxes and someone says "STFU the government does so much for you like libraries and fire stations", I am going to throw this trillion dollar pile of shit in their face.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#45

Post by Prrometheus »

timr wrote: post #33
mdasen wrote: post #2

I doubt this would happen. Of all the players involved, it's probably the UAW that has the most to loose in a Chapter 11 situation. What's killing GM (and the other American auto manufacturers) is the unreasonably high labor obligations they have accumulated back when the industry was an oligopoly. The question is, will a president who ran as union-friendly allow UAW workers to loose a ton? GM has a lot of people on…

I'm tired of reading posts by internet libertarians, blaming the GM employees for the sins of the company. GM's labor costs are high because of pension costs. They promised an entire generation of workers old-age benefits if they gave their life to the company, and now the company wants to eliminate that deal, because they simply didn't plan for it correctly (oh yeah...they also made crappy, fuel-inefficient products…

Nice anecdotes, but they also have rooms where workers they don't need and can't fire come in and sit for 8 hours everyday. The unions are a millstone around their neck.

Airlines, car makers, government, schools. Four sectors that are unionized, four sectors that are grossly inefficient, four sectors that are kept alive by taxpayer money.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#46

Post by Prrometheus »

lutorm wrote: post #13

It seems that the first lesson that should be learned from all of these "too big to fail" entities needing bailout is that there are other reasons to prevent mergers than just antitrust. If we prevented corporations above a certain size from growing (by merging), wouldn't these problems with mega-sized failures sending shock waves through the system be fixed? Maybe it would be less efficient, but it makes me think of…

I don't think they're too big to fail. They are too big to fail without causing a political issue that challengers can use against incumbents. That is not equivalent.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#47

Post by anamax »

thomasmallen wrote: post #27

Sure, do just that, but you'd better have a damn good safety net unless you want Detroit in flames. In spite of my libertarian views, this is why I voted for Obama: On the issue of labor. I figured that the economy was already screwed, and we needed somebody who could look out for the middle class that will be left to the wolves.

> Sure, do just that, but you'd better have a damn good safety net unless you want Detroit in flames.

Giving in to extortion is a bad idea. Giving in to dumb extortion ("we'll trash ourselves") is even worse.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#48

Post by mgb »

mdasen wrote: post #2

I doubt this would happen. Of all the players involved, it's probably the UAW that has the most to loose in a Chapter 11 situation. What's killing GM (and the other American auto manufacturers) is the unreasonably high labor obligations they have accumulated back when the industry was an oligopoly. The question is, will a president who ran as union-friendly allow UAW workers to loose a ton? GM has a lot of people on…

>is the unreasonably high labor obligations

While Porche is insanely profitable because it exploits the slave labour wages and conditions for German autoworkers?

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#49

Post by thomasmallen »

arockwell wrote: post #42
thomasmallen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes that a lower-class job? The fact that you're not at a desk? However, you make a good point: I maintain that the prevelant college degree requirement for most desk jobs is responsible for the declining middle class. We're barreling towards a two-class system with a college degree as the price of admission into the upper class.

Being an autoworker is not a skilled job anymore. Anyone can learn to do this.

Anyone can learn to be a computer programmer too. It's called a skill. Unskilled labor requires very little learning, if any.

Re: Let G.M. go bankrupt

#50

Post by thwarted »

thomasmallen wrote: post #40
byrneseyeview wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes that a lower-class job? If you can only get a high salary by joining a cartel, you are in a low-class job. If you join the cartel instead of earning what you're worth or finding a different line of work, you are a low-class person.

A union is a cartel now? Are you shitting me? It's amazing how anti-labor people are nowadays.

http://www.google.com/search?q=define:cartel

s/(firm|enterprise|organization)s?/people/g

In as much as UAW, for example, couldn't be considered a "firm" or an "enterprise" already. In some sense, UAW is a contracting firm whose service is its members' work product.

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