Its not like they need the UAW back, but they do need customers. Unfortunately for them, they just lost me.

This is the reason the US is so far behind in the Auto industry. Thanks my fellow Americans! :(

The Unions force companies to stay behind the times because they have contracts for certain positions for certain lenghths of time. So even if a computer/machine can inspect a part faster they can't use it due to unions.

Gotta love the American way.

"Gotta love the American way."-Gary

And what way is that? Shipping all jobs overseas and screwing older people with no other job training out of retirement / benefits?

I am glad to see this resolution. GM has been the first US company to see a rebound from their sales slump, due to more competitive vehicles, platform sharing with their Euro models, and increase in reliability. A strike would have profound negative connotations for both the UAW and GM. GM has proven that it can make attractive, competitive models, but has seen operating cost increase due to the benefits of their retirees. (the legacy cost, the big three always moan about). Allowing the UAW to manage these benefits should secure them for the long term, as these were always an issue for corporate profibility.

I agree that is someone works at a company for their whole career, they should be protected in retirement. This might be the best solution for all parties. Especially as the sales threat from the Japanese, Koreans, and eventually the Chinese will challenge the marketplace.

Did I read the article right yesterday?????? The UAW has over 800 million dollars in its strike fund???????? ALMOST 1 billion dollars in a fund they almost (thankfully) never use. What is the interest on 800 million, a day, a week, a month ???????? Maybe instead of striking against their employer, the people that put food on their table, put their children through colloge, pay their morgages, etc. etc. etc.......... They should petition "THEIR" union for some of "THEIR" hard earned money back !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let the UNION make a few contributions to the retirement fund for a change. Instead of hitting the workers with the increases in health care, LET the UNION pick up the extra for its members, I mean after all it is THEIR money (the workers) is it not.......... HARD to feel sorry for 73,000 people earning over $30 dollars an hour when most, AND I MEAN ALMOST ALL the rest of Americans make less than $10 hr............. AND can't afford one of GMs overpriced autos anyway........................ WAY TO GO UAW THANKS FOR THE OVERPRICED AUTOS...................

Did I read the article right yesterday?????? The UAW has over 800 million dollars in its strike fund???????? ALMOST 1 billion dollars in a fund they almost (thankfully) never use. What is the interest on 800 million, a day, a week, a month ???????? Maybe instead of striking against their employer, the people that put food on their table, put their children through colloge, pay their morgages, etc. etc. etc.......... They should petition "THEIR" union for some of "THEIR" hard earned money back !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let the UNION make a few contributions to the retirement fund for a change. Instead of hitting the workers with the increases in health care, LET the UNION pick up the extra for its members, I mean after all it is THEIR money (the workers) is it not.......... HARD to feel sorry for 73,000 people earning over $30 dollars an hour when most, AND I MEAN ALMOST ALL the rest of Americans make less than $10 hr............. AND can't afford one of GMs overpriced autos anyway........................ WAY TO GO UAW THANKS FOR THE OVERPRICED AUTOS...................

I think the biggest problem is that GM simply isn't making cars that people want to buy. The union contract doesn't help, but it's certainly not their biggest problem. GM had the same cost structures in the 1990's as they do now, but GM was making lots of money because people were buying a lot of their SUVs. They were actually making autos people wanted to buy. I look at the car lots at work and only about 25% of the cars seem to be made by a Detroit automaker. THAT'S the biggest problem facing GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Are union workers overpaid? Yes. But, if they made cars that people wanted to buy, then GM wouldn't be in this mess.

To Noya, why are we having to ship jobs overseas and reduce payrolls in the first place? One is due to crappy workmanship on American autos that made imports more attractive in the first place (something which can be laid directly on the unions feet), second is due to crappy design and engineering (which can be blamed on GMs few engineers and its irresponsible executives), and third is because American laborers simply overpriced themselves.

You talk about people with no other job training, what job training is needed to do this kind of work? None, you can come in and learn it right there. There is no school you go to to learn to pull the levers and turn the switches on the machines that make the cars.

And Unions, as has been stated, make a nation less competitive by encouraging people to just seek Union Membership, and not higher education. Like I have said before, I have never met or heard of a Union member who graduated at the top of their class or finished college. Why? Because Union families do not need to be educated members of society, as far as they are concerned life is get up, go to work, know nothing, elect conservative politicians and listen to their propaganda, and go to sleep.

And I see this everyday: I work at a consumer electronics chain. The customers who never return products, the ones who are always the happiest, are the professionals: those with 4 year degrees. The experience higher education gave them made it simpler for them to understand products, terminology and such.

But the ones who can't understand what "HDTV" means? The ones who cannot understand what benefits a dual core processor in a computer provide? Ha, and the people who think the electronic industry is changing to fast when we are soon to be replacing DVDs with Blu-Ray or HDDVD (when DVD has been around for 10 years?). These people are Union Workers at the Ford Truck plant in Kansas City, MO. I can recognize them almost instantly every time.

Honestly, the culture that Unions breed is self-destructive. It takes away any need by the individual to seek higher education, and it builds a mindset of "always was always will be." There is nothing that is 100% for certain. I hate to use this line so soon after it was used by a madman, but there are no absolutes.

"And what way is that? Shipping all jobs overseas and screwing older people with no other job training out of retirement / benefits?"

So just because you didn't bother to learn how to do anything a company should pay you your entire life? Also, when low-skill (or no skill) jobs are sent overseas or replaced with automated technology, it provides NEW jobs - yea, you may have to put down the beer, turn off the football game and LEARN SOMETHING, but their are jobs there - and generally they pay more too. Do you realized that it used to take something like 2/3 of the country working as farmers to produce the food we need? Now we have 1/10 or less working as farmers (so they're free do do things like invent new technology and work for companies that use new technology instead of putting around on a tractor) and we not only make enough food to feed ourselves, but we export a lot of it too (thereby bringing more money into circulation here).

Also for another thing the reason jobs are sent overseas is because Americans want high wages and low prices.......and that doesn't fly in the business / economic world. If you want to be paying people in Kentucky $20 and hour to make Nike's, then you're going to be paying like $200-$300 per pair of shoes. Obviously those shoes aren't worth that much, so you wouldn't buy them at that prices (unless you're an idiot rapper). As a result, they find people who don't demand excessively bloated wages for an unskilled / low skilled job and they can sell their products for a price people are willing to pay.

Another person said "Are union workers overpaid? Yes. But, if they made cars that people wanted to buy, then GM wouldn't be in this mess."

That's not entirely true. We've seen through history that the UAW keeps eternally demanding more and more ludicrous wages and benefits for people who don't do anything a trained monkey couldn't do. Before you start complaining about how I'm some bigot or whatever, both of my grandfathers used to work for the big three (one at Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge the other at GM). I don't believe that the one at C/P/D was in the union, but I know the one at GM was and there were many instances where because of union demands he was paid FULL WAGES to not work for several months because if they'd said "we don't need this many people, sorry, but we've got to cut some" the union agreements would've raped them financially that it was a better deal to pay him to sit at home (and he was not alone in having this happen). The greed of the union was ruining GM long before people started hating their cars.

I've never been a fan of unions. I work for a third-party supplier of tooling to the big three, Honda and occasionally BMW and Mercedez but the guys on the floor aren't unionized. Recently we restructured and removed all the mindless labor jobs. We reduced our workforce by half but our productivity has increase 50%.

The reason productivity is up is because we only have skilled trades people. Because we aren't unionized we didn't have a problem letting people go. Of course we offered them severance and wished them good luck. The guys we have left are the best of the best. Most of them have college educations and the ones that don't have been trained in house and are very skilled.

If Canada and US is to compete with Mexico and China we need to move away from a large dumb workforce to a lean highly trained and efficient workforce.

Unfortunately the UAW and CAW prevent this. I honestly believe that if the big three didn't have this larger overhead that would be able to make competitive cars. Having money used up by wages limits money going into R&D. If you take a look at domestic vehicles, they seriously lack R&D. If you look at the technology in them, most of it was acquired through partnerships with European or Japanese companies.

Finally, I laugh at the UAW's complaints that jobs are going to Mexico. The only reason jobs are going there is because there are NO unionized workers to worry about in Mexico. THE US AUTO SECTOR JOBS WILL KEEP GOING TO MEXICO.

How many companies pay workers normal wage and all the normal benefits to sit around and watch TV because they don't have anything for them to do? Well, at least 3. The unions makes them maintain a certain number of employees, if they don't have anything for these people to do they still are required to pay them and keep them employed. The last number I saw was around 5,000 workers, full pay, full benefits.

Go UAW! They are bleeding the American auto makers and making sure they don't have a job in the long run. In the mean time they are hurting the country.

Remy and Allen hit it pretty much right on the head.

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I'M not a UAW member and I have a college degree, build my own PC's (Q6600), have an HD-DVD player and a 720p projector (soon to be 1080p) along with a Paradigm / SVS sound system. Oh yeah, I have also never owned a domestic automobile.

I was just...longdxcommuter stated it better:
"I agree that is someone works at a company for their whole career, they should be protected in retirement."

And I don't believe it's the UAW that has caused GM to have craptastic products in comparison to the Japs since the mid-80's...it's simply corporate greed. Not re-investing in new designs and simply building everything to the 1/100th of a penny.

GM bean counter:
"How much for the cheaper relays?"
Engineer/buyer/whatever:
"10 cents a unit."
GM bean counter"
"Boss, I just saved us $500,000 this year on the Lumina alone."

The managment decides what cars to build and tells the engineering staff what they want. If you don't have a clue what your doing your not going to be able to tell someone to design something good. If the engineering is not there it doesn't matter who puts it togeather. If you design crap thats what you end up with. I guess management can give themselves another big bonus and then down size again.

I have worked in GM Assembly plants for many years, both on the GM side and the supplier side. I Am not a big union fan, but my experience has shown me this: I see many people complain about workmanship at the assembly level and at the design level, GM’s biggest enemy is not their workforce doing a crappy job of assembling vehicles, for the most part they do what they are told to and work with what they are given. GM’s biggest enemy is their own engineering and design teams, it is very dysfunctional. Everything is engineered down to the last penny, in other words , as cheap as they can possibly get away with. Purchasing awards contracts, not to who can build the best parts, but the cheapest parts, then when the supplier gets more efficient at making the parts, GM asks for cost reductions in the parts. Not much reason for suppliers to bother improving the parts, if GM is going to take all their savings. Many of the parts break during the installation process just because they are not robust enough to survive the installation process. Sometimes this may not get detected until after the customer has the vehicle because of the nature of the design. Engineers sometimes get bonuses for removing cost from the product, their focus is not on a better product, but on cutting cost. In the design world at GM “Cost is Job 1” GM is also not very good at using lessons learned from a previous model. They will redesign a vehicle, and decide that they need to re-invent the wheel each time, opening a new can of design worms each time. They do not believe much in the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy. I have seen many union workers come up with ideas that would improve the vehicle and the assembly process, only to be blown off by engineers who will not deal with the cost, even if it is only pennies. Some people think these assembly people are pretty dumb, but after they install x-thousand parts on a vehicle, they can also become one of the best resources for issues that surround that part, but they are largely ignored. The unions may be part of GM’s problems, but my guess is that if they designed better, more reliable vehicles, and most importantly, vehicles that people actually want to buy, this would overshadow most of their union issues. Examples, the Cobalt, the 2dr is aimed at kids and the 4dr is a car only rental agencies could love, neither come close to say the Mazda 3. The new Malibu is ugly, may have better quality, but will not attract foreign buyers. The latest version of the Impala should have been renamed back to the Lumina – Bland, Pontiac is mixed up and does not know what it wants to be, the Vibe has done well for them, but is in dire need of a upgrade/face lift. The torrent is a dud. Buick is lost, the new Enclave may do well for them, but the Lucerne has not, and the Lacrosse is a boring, not even close to the concept vehicle shown. I think it was a re-designed Century and they just plastered the Lacrosse name on it. Cadillac will do well with the next generation CTS, but the DTS and STS are as good as dead, it is yet to be seen what will replace them, and the crossover is going to be very old before it gets a proper re-design and or make over. The full size trucks will do well for a while and as long as fuel stays somewhat reasonable, but there is now a lot of overlap with the mid size trucks, Acadia/Trailblazer/Rainer/Enclave/Envoy/Outlook, do they need this many ? GM’s mini-vans just need to disappear completely, they are the cheapest blandest on the road, with no innovation in them at all. Do not blame the union for all of GM’s problems, a lot of GM’s trouble lies in their products, and the UAW Employees have no input in this at all. These problems belong to Design/ Engineering, Marketing/Purchasing and upper management.

Ozric: The reason they have to skimp on engineering is because they're paying someone $25 / hour to pull a switch and push a button, and the only reason that person is there pushing and pulling is because the unions force GM to keep that person.

I bet the basic work force who does what is essentially, a monkey's job, is making 75% of what the engineers are making. Drop some of the flab off the sides from the unions and all of a sudden they can afford to buy the $.10 more expensive switch that won't break during install.

The simple comment alone of "Many of the parts break during the installation process just because they are not robust enough to survive the installation process" proves my point that union workers are over paid and under skilled. If they were really worth having working wouldn't they be able to figure out a part was broken before the car leaves the plant? I've got it, how about get a computer/machine to place the parts so they won't be handled improperly. Oh yeah I forgot for a second they can't, the unions won't let them replace a sloppy worker for an efficient computer/machine.

Gary,

your comments alone prove that you have no idea of what it takes to build a car. There are just some jobs that can't be done by machine. I would love to see a machine install an interior door panel, seat or dashboard assembly. Assembeling a vehicle is not a pull a lever push a button operation like you may think. There is a lot of manual labor involved in the asembley of a vehicle and there always will be. Like I said there just some jobbs that a machine can not do. I still think the reason they skimp on engeneering is because the build vehicles that people do not want to buy. German factory workers are unionized and make decent money, nobody bashes their vehicles or workers, they make vehicles that people want to buy. GM does not. Your whole response shows me you do not have a clue about the world of manufacturing.

A few people left in the country making decent wages and benefit's and a lot of you clowns go after them as demons. No wonder this country is in such bad shape.

Bill you make me laugh. There are plenty of people making decent (even better than decent) wages in this country, but they have educations and drive, not mindless absolutes and union jobs.

The problem with both GM(and the Big 3) for that matter is that their market share has eroded. For that, it is entirely the design,reliability, and dealer indifference that drove away a whole generation of car buyers. My parents and grandparents would never buy anything but American vehicles until the late 70's/early 80's. By then, they had experienced laughable reliability from all american makers. (Chevy Impala wagon with no shocks when purchased from dealership, Chevy Malibu (76) that shot wheelcovers off when the car hit a slight bump, Ford Escorts (various years) that were plaqued with electrical/vacuum/carb problems and the list goes on and on). By then the jig was up, and my parents buy japenese products (complaint free) exclusively.

Enter now. The Big three are making reliable cars/trucks. Is it engineering or a strong desire to play catch up in the marketplace? No, it is desperation. The buying public will not accept inferior vehicles anymore and are armed with internet forums like this and car review sites like edmunds that highlight problem vehicles.

Noya stated in an earlier post,
" And I don't believe it's the UAW that has caused GM to have craptastic products in comparison to the Japs since the mid-80's...it's simply corporate greed. Not re-investing in new designs and simply building everything to the 1/100th of a penny."

The Big Three have finally admitting that good design (Not rebates) is essential in producing popular vehicles. However, that old mentality is still prevelant in the auto industry. And for that, we can thank them for losing an entire generation of car buyers.

(The old adage. Make someone happy and they will tell a few people, Make someone angry and they will tell everybody!)

"German factory workers are unionized and make decent money, nobody bashes their vehicles or workers, they make vehicles that people want to buy."

No, German workers are subsidized by the government - they'd be making less if they weren't being partially funded by the government. (Also, regardless of that issue, did it ever cross your mind that the reason they make more money is because, unlike American companies, their companies actually make a profit?)

"A few people left in the country making decent wages and benefit's and a lot of you clowns go after them as demons."

They're not making decent money because they've earned it - if they did, no one would complain (well, except people like you then I guess). The reason people are annoyed is because they're not doing anything a trained monkey couldn't do and they have bullshit contracts that give them horribly bloated wages. Hell, for what most of them do, you could pay a highschool kid minimum wage to do the same job over the summer.....but that's not an option since they're not allowed to run their company - the unions run it (which is why they WILL go bust).

Honestly, even though it would be devastating to the US economy, I kinda hope GM does go under real soon.... just so I can laugh at the moron union guys who ran their company out of business and caused themselves to lose their jobs because they were so greedy.