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Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

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Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#81

Post by bigyabai »

nerdsniper wrote: post #76
justin66 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once those UAW workers achieve seniority they might be able to afford a very small house.

In fairness, homes in Detroit can be quite affordable. There are quite a few 2,000 sq. ft. homes listed for Good school districts are likely to be less affordable though, but cost of raising children is a whole other can of worms.

I think the parent's point is more that there are so few of those workers that you need seniority for any job security in the first place. The 22-year-olds are the first people getting fired in a scheme like this, and there's not exactly a burgeoning demand for their replacement.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#82

Post by alistairSH »

nerdsniper wrote: post #11
techdmn wrote: post #7

Seems like a good time to mention my old stand-by: There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There may very well be a shortage of qualified people willing to work under the conditions and for the compensation a company would like to provide. When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation.

99% of the time, I agree with you. But hypothetically, what would you call a situation where 20 companies would all be willing to pay salaries of $1 million/year to fill 10,000 open positions that required 5 years of training, but there are only 5,000 people who have that training? Would that be a "labor shortage"? It seems your solution works for companies willing to pay more to poach from other companies, but might…

Did that job/skillset just conjure itself into existence? Or were the companies shortsighted in not training in-house 5 years ago?

I'm guessing we see a lot more of the latter than the former. Cutting edge knowledge industries might be an outlier here, but certainly for anything related to "factory work", it's probably true.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#83

Post by rockercoaster »

freedomben wrote: post #75
rockercoaster wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> modern culture of company hopping is contributing to this Zero people are doing this for the fun of it. This is entirely driven by incentives, not "culture". Or, rather, not by "culture" of the people doing the hopping—C-suite and MBA culture, yes, very much so, this is one of many bad outcomes from having companies run entirely by "professional managers" and finance dudes rather than people who were, at the start…

I don't disagree, but I think it's the incentives that led to the culture. Changing the incentives will have a downstream affect on the culture, but it's not immediate. It takes a bit of time for the shit to roll down hill.

I think it could be pretty damn immediate. What's missing are unions and pensions for long-term job stability, tolerability, security, and clear career progression. What's missing are wages that kept up with the inflation rates of housing and healthcare, not the price of wheat or flatscreen TVs. What's missing is C-suite norms that favor retaining workers through the usual economic-cycle downturns, rather than swiftly choosing to enact mass firings any time the CEO has a little indigestion (the science is extremely mixed on this anyway, there's not even a good reason to believe the latter approach is better for the company in general, and the C-suite zeitgeist used to favor avoiding mass firings unless absolutely necessary)

I don't think there'd be any waiting for worker "culture" to catch up to fill roles with comp packages and working conditions that addressed those core issues.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#84

Post by Kim_Bruning »

nerdsniper wrote: post #3

> Ford’s signature element in its new labor agreement was to get full wages to entry-level workers. But beyond that, he began looking at the labor shortage in trade work, starting with technicians.“Old-timers in our plants were saying, ‘It’s no longer a career, Mr. Farley. Working at Ford is no longer a career.’” He warned that millions of well-paid jobs are going unfilled because they require specialized skills. Put…

This is not unprecedented. Historically Henry Ford drew a lot of attention in 1914 when he doubled people's wages overnight.

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/ford-doubles-min...

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#85

Post by nerdsniper »

ramesh31 wrote: post #42

Just tell them to go live in a van down by the River Rouge, Mr. Farley.

It's interesting that myself, and a non-insignificant number of other people, would take an option like this if it were legal. It would certainly make vacations much more affordable to be able to bring my home with me and not pay for an AirBNB/hotel + rental car/ubers!

However, to someone for whom rent is an onerous expense, vans and box trucks are prohibitively expensive, especially when you consider 10 year TCO.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#86

Post by alistairSH »

parineum wrote: post #49
techdmn wrote: post #7

Seems like a good time to mention my old stand-by: There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There may very well be a shortage of qualified people willing to work under the conditions and for the compensation a company would like to provide. When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation.

> and for the compensation a company would like to provide. "would like to" is usually "can justify, financially". Most companies don't have a bunch of extra money laying around. > When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation. I know the way you mean that (companies pay more) and that's an option that does happen but it also goes the other way, employees…

Sure, but a company doesn't have some mystical right to exist with a below market clearing comp package. Assuming no other factors, the correct solution here is for the company to fold and be replaced by a company that is more efficient. Instead, we have companies complaining about a shortage (that they've created via low pay) and demanding action (more immigrants, or whatever else).

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#87

Post by freedomben »

rockercoaster wrote: post #83
freedomben wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but I think it's the incentives that led to the culture. Changing the incentives will have a downstream affect on the culture, but it's not immediate. It takes a bit of time for the shit to roll down hill.

I think it could be pretty damn immediate. What's missing are unions and pensions for long-term job stability, tolerability, security, and clear career progression. What's missing are wages that kept up with the inflation rates of housing and healthcare, not the price of wheat or flatscreen TVs. What's missing is C-suite norms that favor retaining workers through the usual economic-cycle downturns, rather than swiftl…

If there was high trust, then I would agree with you. However, the lack of trust means that a lot of people would not believe The pension would even be around, and especially I don't think people would believe that The mass layoffs would be a thing of the past.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#88

Post by parineum »

bilekas wrote: post #18
techdmn wrote: post #7

Seems like a good time to mention my old stand-by: There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There may very well be a shortage of qualified people willing to work under the conditions and for the compensation a company would like to provide. When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation.

> There is no such thing as a labor shortage. Of course there isn't. This is out of touch employers saying "Nobody wants to work for $1 an hour, so must mean there's a shortage." It's wild, that same in the service industry, restaraunts for example paying 1/2 dollars an hour and then putting the onus onto the customers to pay in tips. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-waf... It's ridiculous, Ge…

The economics of restaurants are pretty unique. I'm all for not tipping and paying a normal wage to wait staff but picking out restaurants fail at an incredible rate.

Using Waffle House as an example is hard because it's a private company but food service profit margins aren't typically super high. A Waffle House, in a good location, I'm sure makes a good amount of money but the owners of those restaurants are often the hardest working employee there (and they are there, at least in the beginning) if they are going to succeed. Plus, those owners have loans to pay off at the beginning. It's a tough business.

There's more I could say but, the TL;DR is that most businesses aren't making the profits of a Google or Apple and don't usually have tons of spare cash around to give everyone a raise, as much as most (small) business owners would like to. Especially newly established restaurants, paying off business loans takes a big chunk of the revenue.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#89

Post by nerdsniper »

michael1999 wrote: post #80
nerdsniper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the time, I agree with you. But hypothetically, what would you call a situation where 20 companies would all be willing to pay salaries of $1 million/year to fill 10,000 open positions that required 5 years of training, but there are only 5,000 people who have that training? Would that be a "labor shortage"? It seems your solution works for companies willing to pay more to poach from other companies, but might…

You could call that excess capital as easily as a labour shortage. Or a shortage of training pipelines in an irresponsible industry. When GM realized they needed more mechanical engineers than existed, they built a whole university. These days, capital just whines. If you can spend $100 BILLION on data centers, you have the budget to stand up a proper school.

> If you can spend $100 BILLION on data centers, you have the budget to stand up a proper school.

This is an excellent point. Georgia Tech, a top 10 computer science university, has an annual budget of $2.7 billion (2024) for the entire university to educate an enrollment of 53,000 students. Really puts it into perspective; this is 1% of Google's annual expenses.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#90

Post by a_wild_dandan »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #34
constantcrying wrote: post #22

It is ridiculous to have American workers and Chinese workers doing essentially the same job, at the same quality, while their salaries differ enormously. American (and European) automotive companies will never be able to compete long term in any market which allows competition between Chinese and American (or European) cars. The labor of an auto worker is not worth that much and only by banning competition can Ameri…

Maybe China is the one that will find their labor compensation unsustainable?

You're right! China is presently terrified of involution. They're dealing with wage deflation and immense debt right now. Beijing is telling its companies to scale back subsidies and stop price wars. The flood of cheap batteries, solar panels, etc is about to change.
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