Did anybody see "60 Minutes" last night? GMC failure=workers' fault

[mistertrickster]

The first segment was the impending GMC bankruptcy. It was all about how much the pensions cost, the unsustainable benefits of health care, and the grasping unions making the business uncompetitive.

Earth to 60 minutes--it doesn't have anything to do with the giant, gas guzzling behemoths like the Chevy Suburban, the full-size V8 and V10 Chevy and GMC trucks, and the road yacht Cadillac lines GMC has pushed relentlessly over the decades? And the doubling of gas prices in the last two years?

What a bunch of corporate shills this program has become . . . someone should see how much advertising revenue the show gets from GMC.

[MadMaddie]

1. It's a sham that this administration has perpetuated...it's the workers

fault, it's the unions fault, it's the healthcare for workers...it's never the CEO's getting billions in compensation for businesses failing...making poor business decisions and not being held accountable.....

Will we ever be able to right this ship? American Workers have become the enemy in this country......

[mistertrickster]

3. Right, MM, the pensions should have been invested so that they

were funded whether the company went belly up or not. Workers and consumers today should not be paying for pensions set up decades ago.

That's a management screw-up.

And health care is a systemic problem that's killing American business everywhere. The answer isn't "less of it." The answer is nationalizing it like every other country has done.

Duh.

[ClintonTyree]

11. Many of those pension funds.......

were mismanaged and invested in Mutual Funds that lost a great deal of money in the last stock market meltdown. If hey had been left were they were, in T bonds, tax free munies and such, the money would be there right now with a bunch to spare. The managers of these pension funds got greedy (along with many other Americans) and decided they were going to "make a killing" in the market. :eyes:

Now the pension funds are under funded...if they're solvent at all...and Wall Street (read: bush's friends, his "base") stole the money just like they stole billions of net worth from other trusting Americans.

What we need is yet another corporate bailout at the expense of the taxpayers so they can perpetuate this ponzi scheme in perpetuity. bush's pals are going to steal everyone's money one way or another, the system is completely rigged in their favor.

[havocmom]

19. Mutual Funds and Wall Street = the folks pushing for SS payroll taxes

to be put into the stock market! What a rip! They KNOW they are operating a pyramid scheme. The only thing most US corporations are worried about selling is stocks! They don't care to build anything or provide any real service, as that would take capital and payroll. They don't care about anything but making the quarterly report look good so they can sucker people into buying their paper. That pretty much makes the companies worthless.

They have pretty well eaten up most people's discretionary income, retirement income and now they need the Social Security Payroll tax $$ to keep the whole thing looking solvent and enticing.

And isn't the US fund that backs pensions WAY over extended on what it will be having to pay out over the next several years? They back pensions (for lesser rates to retirees) when corporations find loop holes to jump through to weasel out of the promises they made to long-time, dedicated employees who are now nearing retirement.

And about GM: Didn't GM management just recently decide to build MORE huge gas guzzlers? Gee, their bad, dumb-ass decisions are not the problem? the people who actually BUILD THE CARS are the problem?!?!?!:wtf:

[atreides1]

4. And Yet

Some of those who will be losing their jobs will still vote for a Repuke come election time!!!

That's where the problem lies, people who will still vote for the Repukes, even as their pension
disappears into thin air!!!

How do you change the mind of someone who's convinced????

[mistertrickster]

5. Good point, they'll vote to keep their guns over keeping their jobs

nt

[Selteri]

15. What's the point of having the right fto ahve a gun

When nobody can afford the bullets?

[zbdent]

18. Or, what will you have that's worth stealing?

Watch a few of those who said they bought the gun for "protection" get shot while someone else is "protecting his own home" . . .

[MadMaddie]

6. When they lose everything...perhaps they will wake up...

who knows...they are the brainwashed masses...they are unable to think for themselves....

[area51]

9. "American Workers have become the enemy in this country."

Well said. That's how many psychopathic bosses see their workers.

[BlooInBloo]

16. Not a chance....

... as long as gays are tryin to get married, and unqualified negroes are trying to take spots rightly filled with a white man, they'll vote republican.

They deserve what they vote for - every bit of it.

[davidwparker]

2. I should have. Here I was thinking it was stupid white men that

caused it.

[wtmusic]

7. DU's Tahoe campaign will turn all that around nt

[TreasonousBastard]

8. I saw it, and didn't get that impression at all...

GM had little problem with the contracts when times were good, and the program made no bones about their fundamental problem being losing market share and not selling enough cars. Spinning the segment to claim that it was blaming the woprkers for a contract both parties happily agreed to is a bit egregious.

Now, we can argue all day long about whether or not an assembly line worker is worth 100 grand a year with the overtime, but the fact is that GM had given all of its workers, non-union, too, an excellent benefits package that can't be sustained when it's losing billions.

We can also argue about whose fault it is that they aren't selling enough cars, but the fact remains that even the good ones they have just aren't selling enough. And they are making some very good ones.

Where the segment fell down was in not emphasizing that a single payer health plan would solve the immediate problem of health benefits for around a million employees ands retirees that GM is paying for. A similar plan to revamp pension plans and make them more universal would also help.

[noonwitch]

10. If Delphi strikes, GM is bankrupt

Delphi workers are pissed at losing their jobs, or having their wages cut back to McDonald's levels. They've been talking about striking. Since they provide GM parts, a strike would cripple the automaker.

I don't know where I stand. As a Michigan resident, I recognize that a GM bankruptcy would be devastating to a state and it's residents who are already having a lot of problems. Yet, it would serve GM right in some other ways, for it's irresponsible management.

[napi21]

12. The ONE big problem that is affecting EVERY business is

healthcare costs! WHY aren't those business using their corp. clout to resolve THAT problem instead of just complaining about them?

[kenny blankenship]

13. They spent the 80s and 90s quenching the brushfires of socialist medicine

for them to turn around now and embrace socialized medicine would go against every capitalist instinct they possess--except maybe the instinct of self-preservation.

Making common cause with insurance companies, big pharma and hospital corps to promote the Reagan Revolution and subvert the government. They all wanted the gummint out of employer worker relationships, they all wanted deregulation of their various industries; the best way to achieve their separate goals was to back each other up, and above all, to push the Republican anti-government line.
Now after a generation of tightening ideological dominance and soaring medical costs, they only have themselves to blame. Which means of course they'll blame someone else: the workers are the most convenient scapegoat.
Automakers are just the largest and most visible of traditional American industries that stood to benefit by the rationalization of health care delivery under a nationwide, single payer system. But the threat that the car companies chose to react to instead was the possibility that the Feds might push stricter fuel economy and safety regs. They didn't want to be told how to design their cars and what kind of fuel economy they should get. In the short run they saw higher profits for themselves with larger and larger cars, and a return to gas guzzling large displacement V8s. And their own corporate culture as well as the logic of the stock market required them to value the short run to the exclusiong of long run prospects. They would do nothing to encourage the idea that the federal government had a role to play in guaranteeing a minimum of quality of life benefits to the American people, and aligned themselves with the Reaganite right. (Reagan rewarded their faith with relaxed fuel economy targets, emissions and crash safety standards, and he let Detroit be Detroit despite the mounting evidence that our petroleum dependence was a looming threat to the national well-being). Anything that, like nationalized healthcare, tended to validate the idea that democratic government could and ought to make decisions to safeguard or to spread quality of life for the public was simply a distasteful idea to Detroit, even though it might very well save their companies.

Ideological blinkers work differently from the usual kind in that they block the view of hazards positioned directly ahead, rather than from the side.

[newswolf56]

14. GM's failure is but another example of how capitalism is ultimately...

nothing but a pyramid scam.

Because capitalism is nothing but a pyramid scam, it ultimately requires goon-squad methods to maintain itself. Hence fascism -- of which "blame the workers" (and destroy the unions) is a big part -- never mind the fact that in any given industry, executive salaries are now at least 700 times what rank-and-file employees make.

Hence too -- yet another part of fascism -- the dumbing-down of America: why there will never be single-payer healthcare in the U.S., why the U.S. has (and will always have) the worst public transport in the industrial world, why the American Experiment is rapidly deteriorating into theocratic tyranny.

[newportdadde]

17. Actually its GMs fault for not keeping its deals to workers.

We all go through life making deals, signing contracts etc. If I sign a mortgage I do so knowing I may loose my job, unforseen costs could increase(new furnace, roof), property taxes could skyrocket etc. Now lets say one of those costs occurs.. lets say the furnace... can I know go back to the mortgage company and say "Hey this wasn't part of my plan so I need you to reduce my mortgage by 50%", fuck no you can't.

GM is trying to get out of its responsibility, don't make deals you can't keep up GM. If you know pension is going to cost XYZ then you damn well better be approaching your market place and strategy with those costs in mind.

[TheUnspeakable]

20. It's a bunch of s**t--record profits WORLDWIDE..

Am I not understanding this? A few months ago, I see this headline

Chairman: GM sales highest since 1978

then, on the back page of the Chicago Tribune, is a FULL PAGE apology from the head of GM, whining how they can't afford health care,etc. and they're sorry to have to shut down their plants. I think it's just greed-pure and simple-they could afford to stay here, they just don't want to. Am I missing something here?
(can't link to Tribune article, cause you have to pay) here's another article.

<http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20060107/NEWS03/601070344/1004/news03>

General Motors Corp. Chairman Rick Wagoner said Friday that GM sold nearly 9.2 million cars and trucks worldwide in 2005, the most since 1978, casting doubt on forecasts that Toyota Motor Corp. might surpass GM as the world's automotive sales leader this year.

Not only did GM emerge as the market leader in fast-growing China, it also posted all-time sales highs in Latin America and Europe. The result was a 2 percent increase in global vehicle sales, despite a 4.3 percent drop in U.S. sales

[mdmc]

21. nothing a good ad campaign couldn't fix