While they pay union workers to sit on their buttes.
You didn't read what I wrote then. The vehicle has to be cheapened because of the high overhead costs so it can be sold for a profit. I have discussed the f***ups the marketeers on many occasions. It's clear you don't understand how little power engineers have in corporations like ford and GM. Most know it's poo but there isn't a damn thing they can do about it.
CAFE did that.
That's a US mentality.
No, just increased the build price significantly if the cost didn't come out elsewhere. And often a number of problems of why domestics have a bad rep is build quality. That's why one car, same make and model is perfectly reliable and the next one is a turd. The turds ruin the sales for the good ones. This happens with US automaker's models but so much with the foreign makes why is that?
Most of the vehicles the japanese makes have to compete with GM and ford's standard faire are made here in the USA. Their non-union plants do pay well as I understand, but are no where near as costly labor wise as GM's and Ford's. Why is that? The same can be said of BMW, and every other foreign make with non-union factories in the USA as far as I can tell.
Why is it that these non-union factories pay well and are much less costly labor wise? Could it because they are non-union and don't have the burdonsome costs of decades of contracts and silly nonsense?
Imagine you are in business making a product. You want to compete price wise. Labor costs you twice as much as it does the other guy. You want your quality to be the same or better. Here are your options:
1) bring down labor costs. a) use less workers. (oops against union contract.) b) automation. (oops against union contract.) c) go off shore. (oops against union contract.) 2) Try to cheapen the design and hope it doesn't reduce product quality. 3) forget about profits and sell at cost-loss.
1 and 3 are immediately off the table. So it's 2.
The other option is to forget about large segments of the market that don't have enough margin to cover your added labor costs. However your compebreastors can beat you on cost in the more expensive clbuttes as well. They use their profits from the lower tier that you don't have to subsidize driving you out in the markets you are selling in. Now you're really screwed.
Again, what do you do? You aren't allowed to reduce your labor costs.
What do you do?
No help or wrong help for Detroit 3972wolfpuppy And yet, they, and their contracts, are an exceedingly easy scapegoat for the ills of the auto industry. Here's a thought exercise - back in the early '80s, foreign makers made what were then deemed...
You do 2), you make your engineers take as much cost out of the component side as possible. You lean on your suppliers hard. You keep going and hope it doesn't cause problems. But oops, here's the big curve ball, your finance guys and marketeers come up with one bad idea after another and the good ones that engineering or even the marketeers come up with end up making it to market as a shadow of what they should be if they do at all to make up for labor costs and meet price point.
So, you go out of business, that's what you do.
So why all the union support?
