No holiday for GM workers

[Pacridge]

Ya .. it really is.

I have no doubt there are midigating circumstances also. But the root cause I definetly think comes down to the unions. And now there members are going to have a welfare christmas. Maybe 27 bux is to much to sweep a floor

I agree with Scotty. I don't think it's even close to being that simply. Most problem of this magnitude in life don't have, simple one sided, causes. Nor simple solutions for that matter. Is $27 an hour too much to pay someone to sweep the floor? Well I think so. Here's an article about auto workers pay I found interesting:


http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0509/18/A01-318432.htm

Hmm, a guy driving a forklift makes 87K and year and files bankruptcy. Granted his pay slipped 16K in one year. People get accustom to whatever it is they make. I know when I got out of the Navy 20 some years ago I got two jobs and was making about 18K a year total. Now 20 some years later I make considerably more. Could I take a 16K a year drop? Yeah, but I couldn't several years in a row without some major impacts.

I don't know how hard a guy works in an auto factory. Never even seen an auto factory. But 87K a year to drive a fork lift sure seems like a lot of cash.

I think another key to the problem can be found at the top. Look at this article:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P119362.asp

The guy in charge at GM gets 40 mill+. Well who's agreeing to all these union contracts? Is what he's doing really worth 460 times that of the fork lift driver? I don't think so, not if he can't seem to make the company profitable.

 

[UtahBill]

Why do I keep reading and/or hearing people talking about cutting health care to reduce the bottom line of businesses? Are you willing to give up your health insurance...or just other peoples health insurance?

That is going on everywhere. My son's family plan just went from $7,000 per year to almost $10,000 per year. He dumped it and got a high deductible family plan that will save him a lot, as long as they remain healthy and have no more children.

Industry started screwing around with retirement plans 25 years ago, and now they are working on reducing their subsidy of medical benefits.
Their overseas competition provides very little in the way of employee benefits, and that is what they want so they can better compete. Guess who will have to take up the slack? Either the government, or ourselves, or some combination of the two.

The healthy among us will be able to buy decent plans at good prices, but those who are unhealthy, even through no fault of their own, will get the shaft. They will be the least able to get hired, and the least able to get affordable insurance. I wonder what will happen next? More of them will have to go to the government for assistance, and we will likely be one step closer to government funded universal health care, and/or having an underclass of poor, sick, dying, homeless people. And the birth rate will decline as well. Insurers even now have much higher rates for families who have or who plan on having children.

We are part of the problem as well. I know lots of people who have the money for new toys (boat, quad, snowmobile, PWC) but somehow no money for medical insurance. A large portion of the "uninsured" made that decision themselves by spending all their money on toys, financing them to boot, and having nothing left for insurance.

Bend over America, and get ready to take the big one, but bear in mind, that many of us have been asking for it for a long, long time.:2wave: