Well, what do you know... Obama's "socialist" takeover of GM saved the company after all

[scheming daemons]

Will the MSM give him any credit? GM is beginning to thrive again....

G.M. Plans to Reinstate 661 Dealerships

DETROIT — General Motors, seeking to avoid a protracted legal battle as it focuses on increasing sales, said on Friday that it planned to reinstate 661 dealerships cut last year as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.

That is more than half of the roughly 1,100 dealers who filed to challenge G.M.’s terminations through an arbitration process established by Congress.

G.M. said that it was calling and sending letters to the dealers being allowed to stay open and that they would receive notification by Monday.

“By doing this, we save a lot of time, energy and dollars, saving us and dealers from going through what could be a very long arbitration process,” Jim Bunnell, G.M.’s general director of dealer network support, said in a conference call with reporters.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/business/06dealers.html?hp

[Captain Hilts]

1. Yes. That and the cash-for-clunkers was a very good idea. nt

[leftstreet]

2. GM unveils new car its employees can now afford: The Peon

n/t

[bridgit]

3. That's why repubs are going so ass-hat in-fucking-sane cause Obama did...

what they could not bring themselves to do in a fraction of the time

[FrenchieCat]

4. They are jealous and disappointed!

They ain't got nobody close to Pres. Obama on their side. Ronald Reagan's been dead!

[MUAD_DIB]

6. Not True. Reagan lives baybay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAk7Hrf2joU

[bluestateguy]

5. Indeed

The prepackaged bankruptcies with government support have proven to have been the right course of action.

Some people wanted him to just let GM go into liquidation and others wanted us to just endlessly pour bailout money down GM's drain.

[FrenchieCat]

7. Now ain't that something!

[ChicagoSuz219]

8. Oh, ye of little faith...

...never doubted it for a minute.

[B Calm]

9. It saved my job. The cons don't understand it was a LOAN!

[Hannah Bell]

10. yeah, i love that non-union plant they just opened; new hires at $14/hour

Green Battery Plant Opens Non-Union
The “reinvention” of the “New GM” has begun with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event was remarkable not only because the Brownstown plant signals GM’s return to the production of an electric vehicle but also because, for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S.

The new plant is funded in part by taxpayer dollars, and GM is not rehiring any of the thousands of UAW members who were laid off when their plants closed—despite union promises that workers’ concessions on pay, benefits, and speed of work would save GM and were their only chance for job security.

The plant, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, opened on January 7 and currently employs 25 hourly workers. Last year former GM CEO Fritz Henderson said GM planned to hire new workers to fill 100 hourly jobs at second-tier wages of about $14 an hour. (Henderson, who was fired by GM, is now being paid $60,000 a month as a “consultant” to work 20 hours a month—$3,000 an hour.)

Speaking at the battery plant’s opening, new GM Chairman Ed Whitacre spoke of the company’s opportunities in the transformation to “green” products and jobs. Apparently, GM’s transformation doesn’t include UAW representation, as Ed Niedermeyer points out in his blog thetruthaboutcars.com: “If GM can get away with using non-union workers at a crucial plant that’s supposed to represent the firm’s future, things aren’t looking so good for our friends in organized labor.”

GM appears to have a strategy to bust our seriously weakened union—a move in which the UAW leadership has been knowingly or unknowingly complicit. It’s not hard to understand GM’s objective. The company appears to be emulating the move by Delphi to create a low wage, non-union workforce.

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2010/02/gm%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cnorthern-strategy%E2%80%9D-go-non-union

[B Calm]

11. A $60,000 a month consultant working 20 hours a month—$3,000 an hour.

And they blame union labor costs as the reason for the high price on automobiles, have they no shame!

[Hannah Bell]

12. ... $709,080 per year. for the consultancy. in 2009, as ceo,

GM, because of the bankruptcy, has not disclosed Henderson's 2009 pay. Treasury Department records show that the company's top executive salary this year is $950,000 in cash and total compensation of $5.4 million.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/01/autos/gm_henderson/

[malaise]

13. Funny how M$Greedia is playing this down

Layoffs are better news for them.