Ford expected to announce 25,000 job cuts Monday (AFP)

[Up2Late]

(Does this mean the economy is NOT booming?)

Ford expected to announce 25,000 job cuts Monday

22/01/2006 04h30

CHICAGO (AFP) - Ford Motor Company is expected to announce plans to cut 25,000 jobs and several plants on Monday but analysts are warning the move will not be sufficient to allow the automaker to return its struggling North American unit to profitability. "The near-term savings are not going to be as much as it needs to be," Brian Ropp, an auto analyst with T. Rowe Price in Baltimore, Maryland, told AFP in a recent interview.

"What it does is keep them from producing cars they don't need and they won't have to discount the cars as much." The savings from job cuts are limited by the peculiarity of the automaker's contract with its main union.

Hourly employees who don't take early retirement packages enter the jobs bank retraining program in which they collect full pay and benefits while waiting for a spot to open up on the assembly line. Cutting production levels also won't help Ford stabilize its steadily declining market share. In the past ten years, Ford has seen its share of the massive US market drop from 26.4 to 17.4 percent, the lowest level since the 1920's.

While Ford has managed to overcome the quality problem which dogged sales in the 1990's, it has still not been able to come up with small cars that excite consumers. The world's third largest automaker did manage to boost overall sales in the 1990's with the introduction of sports utility vehicles but its market share in that highly profitable segment soon began to wane as Japanese rivals introduced smaller, car-based crossover sports utility vehicles.

The real trouble hit in 2005 when gas prices topped three dollars a gallon and Ford's light truck sales - which include the highly profitable SUVs - fell 8.7 percent. Ford's North American unit posted a 1.4 billion dollar loss in the first nine months of 2005 and Standards and Poor's has warned the unit's pre-tax losses could reach two billion for the year.

(more at link below)

<http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/060122032339.xr4xdy2p.html>

[Botany]

1. but but but

bush said the economy is doing great .... I hope he wasn't lying.

[firefox]

5. Now they can get jobs in the new economy.

The problem now is that we do not have enough people trained in the new economy. Once we get people out of manufacturing then we will have enough people for the new economy and the glorious information age will lift us all to a higher standard of living than ever seen before. And the biotech industry will see that we are healthier and have more efficient farming with plants that need less pesticide.

This shift in employment is a good thing.

[Deja Q]

8. That was 1984. Today is different:

The problem now is that we do not have enough people trained in the new economy. Once we get people out of Information Technology then we will have enough people for the new economy and the glorious (we're not sure yet, but until then we need more people in the military) will lift us all to a higher standard of living than ever seen before. And the (we're not sure yet) industry will see that we are healthier and have more efficient farming with plants that need less pesticide.

This shift in employment is a good thing.

[Botany]

9. O.K.

Info jobs to India.
Biotech jobs to Korea, Japan, China, Australia, and the EU.

We are gutting our country.

S.E. Ohio Nelsonville .... Home of Rocky Boots ...... The man who started it stuck by that little town ....
"They were always good to me .... I owe everything to them." After he died his heirs took the company
public and shipped the jobs off shore ..... they were still making a very good profit and supporting
a local economy ....... One laid off worker in his 50s who won an award as one of the best shoemakers
in America said ...... "It is like being the best steam locomotive engineers."

In the end a very few rich have the $ and the rest of us try to sell each other cell phone contracts.

[barb162]

23. nursing home jobs will be left

[cornermouse]

27. Not really.

Most of us won't be able to afford to go to a nursing home in Bush's America.

[raccoon]

70. And we can wash dogs and mow lawns for the very few rich. nt

[daleo]

13. The glorious new Rapture Economy will have plenty of jobs. n/t

[barb162]

22. what is the "new" economy

and what do you mean that this shift is a good thing

[firefox]

45. "the new economy" is the fascist thought stopping phrase

Losing the industrial base means a decline in the standard of living in this county. We cannot survive on making and delivering pizza. We have no solution to ever exporting something to pay for all the oil we import, much less the goods we import because we no longer make them.

I was just spouting Borg programming.

[rooboy]

29. Jobs in the new economy...

come with no healthcare, no pension fund and no long term security. If you're really lucky, you won't lose it to a company in India, China or Mexico. The new economy sucks.

[alfredo]

33. Without a manufacturing base, bush's goals of military dominance

of the world will fall short. Sooner or later he will have to make war with countries who are supplying the essentials for our military. Where are the micro chips for our high tech military made? How much American steel (metals) goes into our weapon systems?

[PassingFair]

67. Why do you hate America?

Why do you ask these questions?

:sarcasm:

[alfredo]

83. Because it messes with the reich wingers,

Gives them something they rarely have, a moment of doubt in their Fearless leader.

[mikeybabe125]

50. Good ol' economy for ya...

it's doing great, just great. /end sarcasm

[daleo]

2. Monday's stock market bears watching, of course. n/t

[VegasWolf]

35. Yes, but volatility will be the name of the game with all this

uncertainty. Bush is a great thing for one's personal finances, never buy long except for Halliburton and oil, sell short all other US assets. Short sellers made a killing on Friday.
Bush makes investing simple, everything is headed to hell with the trade deficit and national debt. Just short sell practically everything.

[daleo]

38. Your advice seems sound

The stock market hasn't budged for 6 years, but money keeps flowing in. So, short sellers must be extracting profit through it all.

[Massacure]

3. If this keeps up, Detroit will become a ghost town.

[Up2Late]

10. Not just Detroit, Atlanta just lost a Ford Plant in Hapeville, Georgia.

Right after the we loss of the GM plant on the North side too.

In November, Georgia had a -32% employment rate. I think December improved slightly with only a -24% employment rate.

[barb162]

24. and it 's been looking that way for a while now

[samplegirl]

4. With Bush

ready to help them pack. Another 25,000 jobs
to Brazil thanks to Bush siging Cafta.

[zann725]

6. Can't get much more "all American" than Ford. And if Ford is 'tanking'...

And "early retirement packages"...you know what that most likely means, cuts or elimination of most of their pension, and benefits. They mention "unions" as problem...Union bustiing is the core issue here. And the Auto Nation was one of the last hold-outs union-wise.

[juliana24]

57. So are all American jobs. Private unions gave us the workweek, so

I suppose that we will all be going back to 7 day "shifts" soon?

[fishwax]

96. "union busting is the core issue here"

good point. these big layoffs always come with an element of demonizing unions.

[Deja Q]

7. If only they didn't make SUVs and made something better to hype.

Oops!

Sorry Henry, your model T just wasn't good enough anymore.

They can blame health care costs all they want. Don't expect those to improve either.

[awoke_in_2003]

19. That is at least part of it...

once upon a time, the fledgling japanese car manufacturing businesses came to america, learned how we did it, went back home, and made a vastly superior, more efficient product. Maybe it is time that we return the favor (oops, couldnt do that, might piss off struggling oil executives, plus the american model is built on the reliance that people will buy new cars every 4 years, so they don't have to last)

[Shadder]

46. You sure got that right

My Dad was the director of Quality Control for Pontiac Motor Division up untill around 1980. While he was a Pontiac employee he was always not only going to the other GM division plants to help them with issues but would also go to Ford and the others to help them where he could. He and his counterparts from the other divisions and companies played a pretty big part in helping the Japaneese. He had all kinds of srories about how the American companies all worked together to teach the Japaneese everything that they wanted to know. We showed them everything that we were doing at the time. And they took it and did what they do best with things - improve them.

[Up2Late]

55. Don't know if you ever saw it, but if not, rent the movie "Gung Ho"...

...starring Michael Keaton (1986) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091159/>

That movie says it all and is one of the best Ron Howard ever did. He even let his brother Clint (who was the kid in the show "Gentle Ben") have a bit part.

[SammyWinstonJack]

66. If health care costs are too blame, why not fix that problem with

universal health care for all? Aren't some of these Corporations who are complaining of health care costs, moving some of their plants to Canada and other countries with universal health care?

Not that I believe anything these Greedy Corporations say in the first place, however, if they really cared about the American worker who built their companies, seems that they would want to find a way to keep American jobs in America. Yeah right, sure! :rofl:

[bluestateguy]

11. The Democrats should make this their message:

Every American should have the right to work IN HIS/HER FIELD OF EXPERTISE.

[dysfunctional press]

17. what happens when a person's field of expertise becomes obsolete?

you can't stop progress.

[bluestateguy]

18. I not going to respond to that canned question.

That's just MBA written language.

[dysfunctional press]

20. it's a legitimate question-

you said, in caps no less, that every person should have a right to work in their field of expertise-

but what happens when technology changes things and some fields are no longer needed?

no job is gauranteed.

[Psephos]

36. I agree

This is beyond discussion. I don't see a lot of button-hook artisans or steamship designers clamoring for their rightful work. Their rightful work no longer exists.

American manufacturing jobs are disappearing not because of politics but because of economics.

Peace.

[davekriss]

54. I disagree Psephos

We are not talking about buggy whip manufacturers. The jobs still exist, they just exist in foreign lands, settled in low-cost countries without (in many cases) labor unions, without environmental and occupational safety regulations, without a State with any interest in increasing the quality of life of their laboring classes.

We're not talking about Joseph Schumpeter's Creative Destruction, no, we're talking instead about corporate feudalism, as hinted at in a seventies work by Robert Heilbroner (was it the "Business Civilization in Decline" slimbook?).

Business Process Outsourcing. BPO. Wonderful term. Taking jobs done here and doing them over there where the wages are low and state oppression is high, a capitalist's wet dream. Add to that H1B and L1 Visas, and we've already gutted middle class opportunity for our children and grandchildren. My work often gives me glimpses of boardroom strategy; trust me, their actions are eroding further your occupational security every day. And we tolerate it ... because we don't know, we've been sidelined by the spectacle beaming out of our TV's, the chorus of anomie and "just leave it to the experts" that slops forward daily from our MSM, we bleat blindly as we are led to sacrifice at the pious altar of economic efficiency. The owning class, meanwhile, make out like bandits over our eviscerated carcass, the carcass of the once middle class.

On one hand, as a very left progressive (my political compass scores come in around -9/-9), I look at the fact that the U.S. controls 35% of the world's resources while representing only 6% of its population. Social fairness and equality should make me happy to see the numbers fall closer to 6%/6% (preferably by growing the pie we all share), but that's not what's happening.

Overt class war erupted in the eighties, and the laboring classes have been losing much. The bunker buster? Globalism. Capital is free to fly around the globe, harnessing the lowest labor costs, but labor itself is stuck like pigs in a pen, behind national boundaries, and forced to compete on costs against neighboring pens. THe result is a race to the bottom and the laboring classes lose. Expect a precipitious drop in the standard of living for the rascal multitudes. But not for everyone.

THe owning class is making out like a bandit. As labor's claim on the value of product they produce falls, the value added available for executive pay, bonus, and dividends rise. So we have the example of the period between 1981 and 2000, where productivity soared (more widgets are produced per hour worked) and output more than doubled, but the median wage for the average workers fell slightly. Of course, CEO wages climbed from about 41 times the lowest paid workers compensation to over 521 at it's peak (it's fallen to about 432 right now). The share of the top 1% grew from about 8% of national income in 1980 to just under 20% in 2002. Holding the value embodied in a widget steady, this largesse to the monied class is a result of declining real wages for the laboring classes, and this is greatly fueled by offshoring (manufacturing, IT, BPO) and inshoring (H1B, L1), made possible by the laws and regulations of this land, proving whom our Republicrat Presidents, Sentators, and Congressmen really serve (they serve in the court of the feudal corporate and government centers).

Getting back to growing opportunities for Indians in Bangladore and Mumbai, in Russia and China, everywhere. This in itself is not a bad thing except to say it works itself out as this centuries imperial adventure, enriching the owning class in the western states at the cost of a diminishing quality of life for the many in their own nations.

Who will they sell to, you ask? The billions in India and China, to Russian and Irish programmers, Philipinno call center support engineers, South Korean automobile designers -- and those Indian, Chinese, Irish, British, Russion, etc. workers working here either on an H1B or L1 VISA.

Ever wonder why the try to steal our attention with gay marriage and terrorist alerts? It's so we won't pay attention to our rapidly deteriorating position in the economic scheme of things. Eventually the US collapses -- hey, given Hubbert's Peak it's inevitable -- but only after the owning classes have steeled their financial fortresses, rendering them impregnable to harm. Tough luck for the rest of us.

This is the world you live in. Get ready. (Get nasty!) Demand a better world!!

[Stockholm]

60. Good answer to a really difficult question

well done!

[dysfunctional press]

63. how many white-collar guys who are now seeing their jobs outsourced

were supportive of the blue-collar & union workers back when their jobs were being sent overseas?
How many computer programmers/techs were driving American cars during the go-go 90's?
not many, i'll bet.

but now that it's the white-collar guys' turn to get a taste of the unemployment line- they just whine about the unfairness of it all.

go figure.

no sympathy here.

[davekriss]

65. First...

...you can buy a Honda that has more of it built in the U.S. than a Ford. ALL Fortune 100 companies today are operating on global operating (production) models. The trend to offshore will continue in the form of Business Process Outsourcing, whole accounting and finance departments, everything backroom -- it's going overseas.

What does that leave for your children? Can you afford to send your kids to Harvard, Yale, MIT, Standford? If not, and if they cannot get clubby with the sons and daughters of the corporate elite, then the chances that your kids achieve and sustain a middle class lifestyle are greatly diminished. Your "lack of sympathy" here hurts everyone short of that elite. And the elite? You are nothing to them, they are not your friend. They make decisions that have nothing to do with mine nor your interests -- as long as we cede democratic power to their agents, our current crop of Republicrats that dance to the tune of our corpocracy.

We are gyrating toward the Argentine model of a rich, well-fed owning class served by a thin sliver of managers and magistrates, and all the rest of us -- the "useless eaters" and "cannon fodder" that languish outside of their gated, secure bubble communities.

Your choice, my friend.

[dysfunctional press]

68. first...

how much of that "american-made" Honda was built by UNION labor? and what percentage of Honda's profits were kept in the U.S.?

second- i have no kids to worry about- my wife and i made a conscious decision not to procreate.

you claim that my lack of sympathy hurts everyone short of that elite-
well, i never owned a car made by a non-american company- can you say the same?

if not- your opinion on the matter means precisely ZERO to me.

[raccoon]

71. Your attitudes as expressed here sound a lot like,

"I've got mine, the hell with anybody else."

[dysfunctional press]

78. and that's EXACTLY the sentiment that a lot of techies had in the 90's...

when they were riding high on the tech boom- they didn't give a rat's ass about blue-collar factory jobs going overseas back then...they just wanted their stock options and signing bonuses...but now that it's their turn under the grist stone, they're whining and wondering why nobody's there to empathize with them.

in the immortal words of nelson: "ha-ha..."

[davekriss]

84. I am less concerned about the skim

That is, I'm less concerned about the profit Honda skims from the value created by American labor, and more concerned about the value retained by labor. Same for Ford workers. Same for GE, Emerson, IBM, Kodak, Toyota -- any worker found anywhere on the face of the earth. I have more in common with them than I do with those who solely collect rent, dividends, interest and capital gains while sipping too many martoonees at the country club.

Workers everywhere unite! It is NOT a fight of American vs. Indian vs. Irish vs. Mexican, it is a fight of us, all of us who earn our keep through our daily toil vs. them who collect their keep off of our sweat.

I outlined on this thread my idea of a tariff scheme that would siphon off the incentive for U.S. firms to offshore jobs, ANY job, be it an auto assembly line worker or an accounts payable manager imprisoned in some corporate behemoth's back rooms. The value stream captured by the tariff would be plowed back in to the American worker, too, ending the stranglehold on our welfare that the multinational corporate fiefdoms have over us today. We ought to USE our democratic institutions rather than cede our power to the owning class.

For every dollar the boss has and didn't work for, one of us worked for a dollar and didn't get it.
-- Big Bill Haywood

[dysfunctional press]

88. in other words- no...

your concern for American jobs probably started the day they came for yours.

i know the type well.

and as for your tariff 'scheme'-how do you think it would play with the WTO?
because they have the final sayso- they even trump American law.
you can come up with all the schemes you want- but unless it's something that's good for the corporati of the World Trade Organization- it ain't gonna happen.

[davekriss]

90. You are such a crank, my friend!

My concern for the worker, of whom I am one, started in my days as a teenager when a dim political awareness began to glimmer in my consciousness. It started when I could sense inequality, racism, class-based politics, injustice. No one has come for my job (yet), I am neither an IT worker nor work in manufacturing.

What do I think of the WTO? Your cynicism has merit as their grip is strong and tight. Let the words of Billy Bragg's NPWA answer for me...

I grew up in a company town
And I worked real hard 'til that company closed down
They gave my job to another man
On half my wages in some foreign land
And when I asked how could this be
Any good for our economy?
I was told nobody cares
So long as they make money when they sell their shares

Can you hear us? Are you listening?
No power without accountability!

I lost my job, my car and my house
When ten thousand miles away some guy clicked on a mouse
He didn’t know me, we never spoke,
He didn’t ask my opinion or canvass for my vote
I guess its true, nobody cares
'Til those petrol bombs come spinning through the air
Gotta find a way to hold them to account
Before they find a away to snuff our voices out

Can you hear us? Are you listening?
No power without accountability!

The ballot box is no guarantee that we achieve democracy
Our leaders claim their victory when only half the people have spoken
We have no job security in this global economy,
Our borders closed to refugees but our markets forced open

The World Bank says to Mexico,
We’ll cut you off if you don’t keep your taxes low
But they have no right to wield that sword
‘Cos they take their orders from the chairman of the board

IMF, WTO,
I hear these words just every place I go
Who are these people? Who elected them?
And how do I replace them with some of my friends?

Can you hear us? Are you listening?
No power without accountability!

[davekriss]

87. "no kids to worry about"

QuestionAll: "second- i have no kids to worry about- my wife and i made a conscious decision not to procreate."

I made that same conscious decision. Instead, I adopted two special needs children (one autistic, the other bipolar disordered). We might adopt a third troubled child pretty soon (it's in the works). We were, also, licensed emergency foster care parents until we moved cross-country.

See, some of us do worry about others, even sacrifice much for others, even when not our flesh and blood.

(A little more personal history: My grandfather helped found the Screen Cartoonists Guild in NYC -- he was even blacklisted for a time. I am third generation pro-labor pro-union pro-democracy, and only third generation off the boat, too!)

[BiggJawn]

34. Not obsolete, off-shored.

How many times should someone be expected to "retrain", eh?

When my industry went tits-up in those wonderful "Reagan Economic Miracle" days, do you know what they wanted to retrain me as?

A fucking KEY-PUNCH OPERATOR!
How may of THOSE still have jobs?

I retrained as an electronics tech. At least I can feed myself and have SOME nice things to make the pain of living in MBA hell not hurt so bad.

[dysfunctional press]

43. off-shored equals obsolete in this day and age.

if it can be done cheaper somewhere else- it will be.

and no matter how hard techs/programmers stamp their feet, or hold their breath until their face turns blue- those jobs aren't gooing to magically "come back".

most people change careers(not just jobs) several times in their life.

NO job is gauranteed safe from progress, and they shouldn't be.

[BiggJawn]

47. Yeah, whatever.

So how many times should one be expected to retrain? Again, I ask you.

It was 25 years ago the first time I became "obsolete". It cost me $10,000 to retrain in my present field.

I have YET to reach parity with the factory job (adjusted for inflation,of course)that I lost in 1982. I'm close, but I still don't have the same standard of living that I had then.

So maybe I should re-train AGAIN? Another 10 kilobucks for what? to become a $55,000 a year Middle Manager instead of a $40,000 Technician? "poor return on your investment" is how they say, isn't it?

Or maybe I can get into the exciting world of Fast Food Management.

Yeah, I can see when you're 20-something expecting to "change careers" a few times before you get too old and undesirable in the labour market to retrain.

Problem is, at 49, I'm there already.

I guess we all will eventually be selling cellphones and hamburgers to each other and having our pay direct-deposited at Wal-Mart to draw on.

[dysfunctional press]

58. so i guess that society should stop the clocks and chuck the calenders-

because you (and others) apparently made what were ultimately bad choices as to what field to go into...? or what?

how many times should one person be expected to retrain?

-as many times as it takes...(or do you think we should still have factories cranking out buggy whips? -in the name of job security and lifetime employment!)
it may sound harsh- but it's the truth...one person should be expected to train as many times as is necessary throughout their working life...it might be 0 for some people, 20 or more for others.

and- you consider spending $10K on re-training to make $15K more per year a bad investment? maybe...if you're 2 or 3 years away from retirement. but if you still have 10-20 working years left(and at 49- you do)- it sure sounds like it could be a good investment.
but then- nothing is guaranteed, is it?.

aside from stopping progress, what are your answers to your questions?

BTW- i'm 45, no college degree, and preparing to enter career number 6- artisan/entrepreneur. my wife and I specifically chose NOT to have children so that we could enjoy our adult lives as we see fit, and with a little more time & money to do so than if we had bred...neither of us had a particularly happy childhood, and feel we owe it to ourselves to enjoy what's left, and make the best of it.

[trogdor]

77. WTF is an "artisan/enterpreneur"?

Somebody who sells T-shirts at CafeShops?

[dysfunctional press]

80. well- that would probably qualify...

in (my)very general terms- it's someone who sells what they make.

just like it sounds.

if the person selling on Cafeshops designs and makes the t's and makes a semblance of a living at it- they're in the club afaic...

[davekriss]

56. Offshore/It will be -- NOT if we exercise our democratic rights

to determine what we want our society to be. We can erect quality of life tarrifs, for example, so that cheap goods made overseas but sold into the U.S. cost the near the same, the same, or more than U.S. goods. The tarrif would capture the differential of the value the offshored worker claims vs. that claimed by an American worker. It would account for differences in workplace safety, for less rigorous environmental protections -- the tariff would even the playing field, reducing to near zero the production cost differential inside vs. outside the U.S.

Does this mean an American would pay more for a car built here or in Mexico than, say,a Mexican would pay for the same car when built in Mexico? Yes. But I'd reinvest the revenue from those tarrifs to invest in the American worker, from steelworker through designer, with the aim of developing innovative engineering improvements, operational improvements, etc., until the differential if U.S. labor (a small % of the cost of building any car) is offset by other advanatages that make the U.S. competitive despite the fact that we'd be building for export with higher priced labor here in the states.

We have to envision a better world and take action to get there, not except what we're given by the luminaries that trot out of The American Enterprise Institute, CATO, The Hudson Institute, and the 24+ other major right wing "think tanks" funded by our corpotocracy to fashion propoganda that keep the masses sideline and somnambulant spectators of the American scene.

[dysfunctional press]

59. be careful what you wish for-

trade wars can get real ugly.

[davekriss]

61. All wars, cold and hot...

...are trade wars, fought over the interests of the owning classes. THe rest of us, in the (purported) words of GHWB, are cannon fodder.

[raccoon]

72. True, most people change careers several times in their lifetime.

Just try to change careers when you've got some age on you. Good luck.

[dysfunctional press]

81. i'm changing again, and i'm 45...

the longer you live, the more you know, the more experience you have...you just have to find a way to make it work.

i never had any allusions of or desire to, make a climb up a corporate ladder- i've always pretty much had two distinct goals in life:

1.- i don't want to have a boss, or be a boss.
2.- i want to live where there are palm trees(i'm a midwest kinda guy...and btw- vegas doesn't count- they have to be naturally occuring coconut palms)
(2 1/2.- it's gotta be legal.)

it's taken me awhile(like i said, i'm 45), but i'm on the cusp of realizing goal number 1.

goal 2 might take a couple more winters.

[Lorien]

40. This isn't progress; this is decline

I work in a field where old expertise became obsolete; as a traditional animator. When the art form "progressed" into computer animation, most studios retrained their workers to work as CG animators and kept business humming along. But a few studios were closed down by their parent companies, who sent their traditional animation work overseas. That work is crap; so eventually the parent studios stopped doing animation all together; they declined while the others that retrained their workers flourished.

Question to the Friedman flat-earthers: who buys the products when the nation is jobless?

[dysfunctional press]

48. actually- it IS progress.

and from what you posted- the companies that re-trained workers with "obsolete" skills seem to have handled it better.

you may consider it decline- but it's the same in a lot of fields-
as a former carpenter- i would NEVER buy most of the new houses i see going up- in 30 years, those houses aren't going to be holding up as well as the houses built 30 years ago are doing today.

eventually in every business/industry, corners have to be continually cut(and new cuttable corners found), so that stockholders can get their higher profits than last year- year after year after year.

and i hope that your not mistaking me for a friedman-ophile.

[Lorien]

49. Ford is eliminating workers-not retraining them to create better,

more "progressive" products. Ford is declining in stature among car manufacturers, as well as in profits. This IS NOT "progress".

[dysfunctional press]

51. you may not like the form it's taking- but it's still progress-

and the dinosaurs are dying off.

like i said- not every compnay handles progress correctly.

and the American penchant for succumbing to immediate gratfification in all aspects of life doesn't help.

[stevekatz]

74. ford is

Ford is reacting to a smaller market share.

Someone said ealier in this thread that you would have done well to have bought a Hyndai or Kia in the past 5 years.
Personally I see Kias and tiny death traps.

But it's true, people don't buy American cars anymore, and the company has to react to that or the company will disapear and every single person will be out of a job. And it boggles me to hear people talk about poor quality Ford Products, my last two vehicles have been Ford Rangers, my 2000 model was awesome until August 29th when it washed away in Katrina. And my new one just fine (granted it's still quite new)

I just hope that Ford comes out with a very fuel efficent line of vehicles in the near future, thats where the money will be in the long term.

[raccoon]

73. Absolutely, Lorien! That's what I wonder about myself.

"who buys the products when the nation is jobless?"

Er...maybe the workers in Mexico and CHina who are making such a terrific hourly wage? :sarcasm:

[Dunvegan]

12. There's only one thing that can help this situation...

...give Ford massive tax cuts, give the Ford CEO an even larger tax cut, help them by passing laws that assist in making the outsourcing of American jobs easier and even more profitable, lifting any and all emmission restrictions, offer government grants to companies that design and produce SUVs and other oversized gas-guzzling vehicles, and...of course, most primarily...outlawing unions immediately.

(This has been a message from the RNC: The Republican National Cabal.)

:sarcasm:

[Up2Late]

15. You forgot the "Presidential Medal of Freedom..."

...Isn't that standard procedure for this joker?

[Dunvegan]

31. Silly me...of course the medal for the CEO...

...now if we can just catch * giving him both a medal AND a blow-job....

[lovuian]

14. All the CEO's should be fired this is not the workers fault

its making SUV's and Gas guzzlers when they should have been making hybrids...

[DanCa]

16. Hey america you got what you not voted for.

Take that anyway you want it. :D

[juliana24]

21. 2005 Ford Focus: 28 MPG Highway.....Get a clue, Ford !!!!

A Honda of similar size would get 35 MPG easy.

[Lorien]

41. Geez-my '94 Camry does better than that! n/t

[phusion]

75. That's what my '92 Subaru Legacy gets ;) n/t

[hogwyld]

92. I hope all you people who bought foreign cars are happy...

As for me, I will continue to support my union brothers and sisters by buying American cars/trucks. You all complain about union busting, but brag about your jap cars made by non union workers.

[NickB79]

93. I'm very happy

My Toyota does far superior gas mileage to a Ford Focus, and the fit and finish are excellent. My Toyota was built IN AMERICA by AMERICAN WORKERS. In contrast, the new Ford Fusion sedan will be built in Hermosillo, Mexico. How many American union workers do you think that plant employs?

Why should I buy a POS Ford that will fall apart on me and die a few years down the road, and continue to put money into the pockets of greedy CEO's who care about nothing more than building the next big SUV? I do feel sorry for the workers at the plants, but they should be angry at the upper-level management who decided to have them build gas guzzlers and muscle cars rather than the hybrids and fuel-efficient cars we want and need.

Your anger should be directed to all the people who bought Ford SUV's; they fed the junkie's habit until they were at death's door.

[barb162]

25. more excruciating pain in the workforce and the people

will not be able to find jobs

[lakeguy]

26. is this really a job "cut" or a job transfer....

wouldn't be surprised to see at least some of these jobs heading oversease.

[BR_Parkway]

28. Isn't that what GM did? Cut about 30,000 jobs, then announced

expansion of their plants in India that would employ another 30,000 people?

[Psephos]

37. GM's global operations are larger than its North American operations

They're expanding in India because they are selling cars in Asia. It doesn't hurt any that labor unit costs and total cost of operation of a plant is less than half what they pay in North America. We could preserve high labor expenditure here if productivity could keep increasing, but it's not. I leave that to others to argue why.

I'm from a GM family with union members. That doesn't make me blind to simple economics. I imagine not too many people on DU pay a family-run grocery store $4/gallon for milk when Costco has it for $2.29.

Peace.

[Vinca]

30. I'm sorry Americans are losing jobs, but you reap what you sow.

There's a reason for that old, Ford joke: F(ound) O(n) R(oad) D(ead).

[Glidescube]

39. FIAT

Fiat = Fix it again Tony

[jazzjunkysue]

32. Glad I voted for Bu***

[sarcasmo]

42. Kick and Nom. The Big Two Nissan, and Toyota.

[DemoTex]

44. "Excursioned"

25,000 jobs lost because of management decisions. Stupid is as stupid does. I don't know which is worse, the auto industry or the airline industry. Either way, the scapegoat is always labor.

[wordpix2]

52. people waiting in line for Honda/Toyota hybrids while Ford's gas guzzlers

don't move off the lot. How stupid can you get?

[renter]

53. Chrysler, Ford and GM...

and Honda where the first four cars I owned. My Honda is the best quality-wise.
Perhaps if the big three automakers and the U.A.W. want me to be American and buy American then they should be build something worth buying by an American. I used to give safety lectures and presentations in G.M. factories during the 80's. The U.A.W. employees did hot, hard and dirty work. It was rare to see a management or labour employee taking some pride in their work. Management and labour seemed like a couple right before a divorce. The kindest thing I can say about the management of G.M. is that it is less than average. The kindest thing I can say about the U.A.W. then is that the their American customer could buy Japanese cars, and did. Perhaps, just perhaps, if Detroit paid as much attention to quality as they say they do now, they wouldn't be in such a mess. The best vehicle today put out by Detroit are not cars but trucks. Having stated the obvious above, when American products are not pieces of junk, then I feel you should buy American. We all would have more jobs

[dryan]

62. It's not the workers fault.....

my husband was in the telecommunications industry for most of his adult working life. He worked for Stromberg-Carlson. When Siemens took over, management said that the company was going to only produce a system that their engineers in Germany had designed. Sales staff told the new owners the product would never go over in US markets because it was too complicated. The system was very unpopular with American customers and business dried up. The manufacturing plant in Lake Mary, Florida went from a payroll of over 3,000 people to less than 20 -- and I'm not exaggerating -- only 20 people work there now and that is mostly janitorial. To make matters worse, the land cannot be sold either because of underground pollution. Seminole County where the plant is located is also in a real bind because they gave the company free property taxes in perpetuity!

[dysfunctional press]

69. blue-collar guys don't design the cars- or the manufacturing process.

they just do what the guys with the white collars tell them to...

[newblewtoo]

76. blue-collar just do what the guys with the white collars tell them to

because they don't design the cars- or the manufacturing process...

Yep, sounds about right to me. Henry Ford built the business from nothing, his heirs are taking it back from whence it came.

[dysfunctional press]

79. why is it that when a company can't sell cars- the U.A.W. takes the heat?

factory workers aren't responsible for shitty designs and engineering, are they?

or did i miss something?

[newblewtoo]

82. Maybe you missed something....

blue-collar just do what the guys with the white collars tell them to
because they don't design the cars- or the manufacturing process...

Yep, sounds about right to me. Henry Ford built the business from nothing, his heirs are taking it back from whence it came.

May be you did miss something. Do you consider the UAW part of management responsible for the shitty designs and engineering. To me it looks like management failed to learn the lessons of the late seventies.

[davekriss]

85. Where on this thread is anyone knocking the UAW?

You've got to know your enemies, my friend, and we ain't them!!

[dysfunctional press]

86. I never said that I was refering to anyone on this thread....

but to answer your question- see post #53 by renter- it's right back where the sub-thread you're currently on deviates from the main thread.

[davekriss]

89. I see your point

There was a time when the quality of U.S. cars exceeded those of all the world; there was a time when that was not so. Today, there is a small differential. This is in part mismanagement (NOT a fault of workers who weren't empowered to direct what the company decides to do). This is also in part Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction".

Similar thing happened in the steel industry. The U.S. had its turn after the U.K. at being first and best at making quality steel. Engineering huge economies of scale giant plants peppered Pittsburgh, the midwest, and elsewhere. These economies of scale required huge capital investments. When science and metallurgical engineering advanced the quality and improved the processes used to make the world's best steel, these huge behemoths could not be easily retooled. Instead, new entrants into the market exploited new technologies, building smaller, more nimble plants churning out higher quality steel at lower cost. The result was the rust belt (see note at bottom of post). This is, however, NOT the fault of the worker, but it is a weakness of management from that time failing to anticipate change.

Ditto the auto industry. Detroit was already tooled and thus began lumbering along from behind the starting line in the eighties, when newer entrants were able to exploit new technologies ahead of Ford, GM, and Chrysler.

But that is not what is going on today. Ford just posted a $2 billion profit for the quarter. THe next day they announced 30,000 layoffs and 14 factory closures for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The reason? North American operations are "unprofitable" (I wonder, some Enronized accounting?). Instead, these jobs will pop up overseas in China, India, the Philippines, anywhere labor is cheap and unfettered by unions, the factories free from "onerous" occupational safety regulations, where the State taxes low (although it's hard to beat the low taxes in the U.S.), and healthcare a non-issue (either the State takes care of it or the sick simply die). It's part of that Globalization thing I mentioned on my first post on this thread: Capital gets to fly to the lowest bidder while labor is penned up like pigs behind national boundaries, forced to compete on price, and thus stuck in a downward spiral to the bottom. Capital wins, labor loses.

I personally look forward to the day when political upheaval crimps profits, or the price of oil adds so much to shipping costs that producing locally again looks like the smart move.

NOTE referred to above: On formation of the rust belt. This was also in large part due to the first wave of incredible debt formation when Ronald Reagan decided give tax breaks to the upper ranks of the U.S. socio-economic ladder while at the same time building up the military. Incredible amounts of debt were added. To fund these debts while avoiding a return to the inflationary days that Paul Volker's Fed just fought off, coupled with the slowdown in wage growth and thus savings rates, means for the first time the U.S. had to fund most of it's debt by attracting a huge flow of foreign funds. In order to attract these funds, interest rates had to rise. They had to be set at a risk adjusted premium over what could be obtained by other similar investments around the world.

Most people think Jimmy Carter holds the record for highest interest rates ever. Well, that's not true; the highest real interest rates in U.S. history appeared under Reagan (Carter holds the record for highest nominal rates, which are inflation rate plus real interest). The problem then was that you could only buy US denominated treasury instruments in US dollars, so the rest of the world had to sell their yen and marcs and francs to gain US dollars to exploit the high interest rates, and they did. But the inevitable pressures of supply vs. demand forced the dollar up to record levels against the world's other currencies (I can recall the dollar fetching 265 yen at the time).

This did two things: It made US goods look expensive, and foreign goods look cheap. So the US consumer (business and private) switched from expensive American goods to imports, diminishing internal market demand for American-made goods; meanwhile our goods looked expensive to the rest of the world, so they to switched to German or Japanese or Korean made goods, further dampening demand for American goods. The end result is American manufacturers lost market share never to be recovered; in some cases we even lost entire industries, such as television or VCR manufacture, which could not easily return as the combined knowledge of its workforce quickly dissipated and the costs of entry grew to high. Those industries that retained a foothold had to do what they could to lessen the impact of the high dollar, so they started moving manufacture overseas. The effect, then, of Ronald Reagan's upper-class-benefiting tax policies? It gutted American industry, and rusted our once great plants, the backbone of the blue-collar middle class, from Cleveland to Columbus, Chicago to St. Louis. It was a travesty driven by conscious, class-serving policies of our elected officials.

So, no, the worker is not at fault for his or her demise -- class war is a powerful thing. That any of us are still standing free from overt chains speaks to the tenacity and justness of our cause. So it was not the U.A.W., as poster #53 suggests, who is just wrong in his/her judgment.

[renter]

91. No davekriss I don't believe you do...

Lets go back a bit shall we. First I told about, albeit briefly, the two main problems with the "big three" automakers--management and labour. EVERY post above regarding management decisions including white-collar workers IS CORRECT. I think we can all agree on that. My parents were U.A.W. workers, now retirees from the 60s-90's. I gave safety presentations to the rank and file. As I stated earlier in my post, I was complimenting the U.A.W. members for what they did. There are idiots and bums in any organization. I SAW some of these people building cars. I tried to tell the U.A.W. representative with me about this. I got two things out of this; a downward glance and a shrug. If a part wasn't made just right or didn't fit right, they--these few U.A.W. members just didn't care. Their fellow workers, union reps, and foreman knew about this. They just didn't care. The U.A.W. had much more power in the 60's-to about the early to mid '80's than they do now. The U.A.W. members, being "in the trenches" knew what was going on yet refused to do much about it. The U.A.W. had the opportunity to wear the white hat at this time regarding shoddy parts and production. They didn't do it. Ask a U.A.W. member this, they'll tell you. Go to one of the few union halls remaining and ask. Yes, you and everyone one of the posters who stated management was the problem IS CORRECT. But, the U.A.W. DID NOT do anything worth wiled about it. There was a saying among the U.A.W. that you shouldn't buy a Friday afternoon car. This was due to the drinking that more than a few did, which resulted in a poorer product. Remember, in the '80's the Japanese didn't really sell their cars due to their looks,they sold them due to their reliability. THIS is something the U.A.W. could have told the idiots in management if they really wanted too. Take a poll about which brand of car DU'ers drive. Ask them why.

[davekriss]

95. Like all things in the real world

Occams Razor doesn't apply. Reality is thick, dense, a multi-dynamic molasses.

For example, our immoral and illegal invasion into Iraq was not just about the WMD, not just about the need to manufacture a Terrible Other outside our borders to take the voting public's minds off of our dismal economy in 2002; it was not just about the oil, nor a revenge war because Saddam attempted to take GHWB out in Kuwait in 1993; it was not just about the need to establish new impregnable garrisons, away from the House of Saud now that it appears on the brink of crumbling and because of our military presence there was the source of the terrorism that struck on 9-11 -- in the end Iraq serving as a better base from which to radiate imperial power throughout the region (controlling those future oil flows when we do indeed begin sliding down the backward slope of Hubbert's Peak; it was not just because Saddam had the temerity to sell his oil in Euros, breaking away from the neo-liberal arrangements long in place to buoy the American dollar and allow wreckless deficit spending to maintain an unearned level of consumption in our society -- it's not any one of these things, it was all these things. This set and more contributed to the final political decision to cast away any embrace of Just War and instead attack another nation without any evidence of imminent threat. The real world works that way.

Similarly the demise of the U.S. auto industry was not just about failed management, unable to anticipate future trends and built toward the future; it was not just because of strong unions that wrested their fair share of the value created by their efforts; it was not just because of huge investments in obsolete plant, equipment, policy, and process, not just because of the adversarial relationship that had grown between management and labor through years of struggle, both of these things serving as barriers to change, allowing nimble little new manufacturers to slip in unawares, stealing market share; it is not just that 12 years of Republican fiscal policy rusted out our manufacturing base due to generation of an overly strong dollar that resulted from the shock of (then) record deficit spending -- it's not any one of these things, it was all these things and more.

Those U.A.W. workers building defectful Friday afternoon cars, that was just a drop in a bucket the size of an ocean. The real problems throughout these two scenarios are an absence of leadership (at least a leadership concerned about all Americans, not just the few, GWB's Base), an absence of effective governance in both the halls of our political institutions to the boardrooms of our major companies. In an absence of democratically vetted laws and regulations that can but brakes on some of the excesses, business and workers operate in a universe of limited options, and the aggregation of choices made lead to the sorry state we are in today.

What's missing is leadership, and I mean leadership from within our ranks. What's missing is We, the many, taking back our democratic institions and making good use of them for our greater benefit.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Annapolis Citizens, 1809

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.
-- Martin Luther King Jr

You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
-- Malcolm X

If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. That's your choice.
-- Noam Chomsky

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
-- Mohandas K Ghandi

Now. Or never.
-- Henry David Thoreau

[renter]

97. Good post davekriss...

Keep up your work in an imperfect world. Hope your day goes well.

[stepnw1f]

64. Great Job GOP!!!

Under your leadership we have witnessed the worst.

What has the GOP done for "We the People"?

[JPZenger]

94. Wasted Billions and Billions on Acquisitions

The entire Ford Corp. today has a market value of its shares of $15 billion. Toyota has about the same annual revenues as Ford, but its stock is worth a total of 11 times as much.

Ford wasted billions and billions in the 1980s and 1990s on acquisitions of brands with small sales. Many of these brands needed billions of investments in addition to the acquistion price. These questionable acquisitions included Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston-Martin. The CEO of Ford at the time was British - the Queen knighted him for saving Jaguar. With those same billions, they could have designed a mass market minivan, a midsized car and a fullsized car that people actually wanted to buy. They also could have re-engineered their factories so that they could be shifted from one model to another to respond to market demand.