prices always go up a couple % a year for any car maker

Not for the last 6 or 7 years, prices have actually dropped when inflation is taken into account. The domestics have never really recovered from the price wars started in 2001.

That's fine as long as they don't increase the price on the G8.

"other commodities"

.......and by that they mean "greedy overpaid unions".

GM should do another workers discount deal to make up for the price increase like they did a couple year ago.

Why do they show the new Mailbu, when this is one of the few vehicles that is NOT affected? The Torque Report confuses me sometimes.

Anyway, 1.5% isn't bad. I applaud GM for turning themselves around and beginning to make great cars again.

Why do they show the new Mailbu, when this is one of the few vehicles that is NOT affected? The Torque Report confuses me sometimes.

Anyway, 1.5% isn't bad. I applaud GM for turning themselves around and beginning to make great cars again.

.......and by that they mean "greedy overpaid unions".

Ding !
Now the UAW is banging on the doors of casino workers. Why ? More $$$ since they've helped bleed Detroit dry. Here in CT there has been plenty of press over it. Not sure how a union is able to wiggle onto Indian territory in the first place.

And no, i am not putting down Unions or their members as a whole. There are still trades where having a Union in place is important. But for the most part, OSHA and modern technology and laws eliminate the need for an overpaid babysitter.

they need to quit raising costs on cars.. soon a friggin malibu will cost as much as a house.. screw that.. and i agree with Remy on the "other commodities" theory

let's hope commodities means better engineering staff.

My God the nose of that car is ugly. And here people dog on the new Accord...

Unions? if you want to bag on Unions maybe you should read up some of the history of how they started! My current job has a union, and our Union works very hard to protect us from the greedy management, and their hair brained schemes, currently our management feels that it is more effective to require mandatory overtime than to actually hire the number of workers they need. Our Union has managed to protect us from some of the over time, limiting to 10 hours a week or less of mandatory overtime for us, instead of the 25 hours a week the management wants us to work. They have also managed to keep a decent medical plan in place instead of no medical plan which is what my employer would like. Unions exist to protect their employees, ensure safe working conditions, family benefits, and more, the wages we make are a Tertiary concern to our Union.

If you really want to know why companies are having such a hard time in todays world and having to raise prices and cut employee benefits. Why don't you look at the top, where clueless CEO's make 10's of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to make a few arbitrary decisions once in a while. Many of these CEO's are incapable of even getting that right. They have done far more to hurt the companies they work for than the piddly $45,000/year wage my union has secured for me.

And for the record I don't work for an automaker, I do tech work.

Too many times, the people who cause the problems, never see the effects of the problems they cause. Instead its the people barely making it that get the brunt of those decisions. It is a real slap in the face when people blame things on worker unions, when the real problem is at the top.

These guys got enough problems without some morons in the media blaming them for a failing company and congradulating the ceos when the stock values go up just a hair.

"Unions exist to protect their employees, ensure safe working conditions, family benefits, and more, the wages we make are a Tertiary concern to our Union."

Maybe a hundred odd years ago. Now they serve to try to force companies into paying low or unskilled workers wages WAY above the value that they give to the company. Unfortunately, companies refuse to take a temporary hit to their profits and just ditch the union workers and hire new people. That's why this whole Writers Guild strike is such a joke. Every company (in the US anyways) always caves to union thugs - so why pretend that they won't?

I know some will get mad that I used the term thugs - but that's how they behave. They demand things that inflate their wages WAY beyond what they're worth and use threats of lawsuits, boycotts, etc to try to force companies to give in. There's a much better solution (and this is how most businesses in the US are run) - you apply at a company, they say "Ok, we'll hire you and this is what we'll pay you and here are any side benefits such as stock options, health care packages, etc..." and then you decide if you want to work there. Novel idea, I know! Instead we have this myth spread by pro-union people that these jobs don't exist and that it's impossible to find a new job. Unfortunately, the real world proves this myth wrong.

"They have done far more to hurt the companies they work for than the piddly $45,000/year wage my union has secured for me."

You say you do "tech work" -- what kind of degree do you have and what exactly do you do? (My original major in college was computer science and most of my family works with computers, so I'm curious as to what you do).

I'm a little person in my company, but I can accept why management makes more money than I... it is because they make some pretty serious decisions that will affect the company operationally, financially, and morally.

I make $xx,000 a year to do tech work as well, but beyond dealing one-on-one with a client, I don't have an enormous impact with the company. Simple.

A company should be able to provide a medical plan based upon the level of skill of the employee it hires. People who assemble automobiles do not need full-coverage medical insurance (with vision, dental, etc.) They do not need to be making fat paychecks to do menial labour.

But that's my view on it. I'm not a Union worker, and I agree, it would be nice to have your employer pay for a majority of your bills, but sometimes life is life. Stop living beyond your means, and it will be amazing at how much money you'll accrue over the next few months.

I support end user internet connectivity, not exactly a glamorous job.

Auto workers work hard, under conditions that are detrimental to their health, my step dad worked for a union shop making auto parts at this point in his life he is in his early 50's and can barely walk without assistance. Many of the complaints his union dealt with at his shop were negligent safety violations by his employer. But I suppose that's fine by you, who cares if someone gets their leg crushed to the point of having it amputated because an employer is to cheap to replace a $50 metal guard panel on a machine, or if someone has a good sized chunk of their scalp pulled off because the machines are packed so tightly together on the floor that it's dangerous to walk between them when your physically exhausted from a 10~12 hour shift that you were required to work regardless of what you wanted. The union I belong to was formed almost 100 years ago because the on the job fatality rate was almost 50% the union I belong to was started as a pensioners fund for widows.

In the US there are serious socio economic problems related to the increasing maldistribution of wealth. In fact we are rapidly approaching a distribution of wealth curve similar to the one that caused the great depression. At that point of time the wealthiest 1/10th of 1 percent of all Americans had more income than the poorest 42% combined. For instance the average wage for a CEO of a large company in the US last year was 10.7 million dollars, the average raise in that group was over 5%. The median salary for a union worker was just over $35,000 last year with an average raise of well under 3%. So the average CEO of a Union company makes roughly 305 times what one of his employee's makes, and that figure is getting more distorted as time goes on. Actually in 1980 the average CEO made 42 times what one of his employees made, take that how you will. Now add in your COO, CFO, and other positions and you have a huge number of upper level executives, I found the home page of one major company that lists all of it's upper level brass, There were 57 names, this is a company that did a gross business of roughly 10 billion last year, according to Forbes.

Anyways there are a lot of things going wrong with the economy, The fact that companies are getting increasingly top heavy is a serious problem, It is happening in 2 ways, the first is the rate of wage growth that is out of control, the second is that when these companies start to have finical problems they do not reduce the number of their top level executives they reduce the number of workers at the bottom.

A healthy company has to be built like a pyramid, the bottom level of employees actually produce a surplus regardless of how overpaid you may think they are. Let's create a theoretical company to show how it works. Let say at this company it takes 10 workers to support 1 supervisor. These groups then support a manager, we will say that our manager coordinates the activity's of 10 supervisors. And that every 10 of those managers supports an executive, and every 10 of those executives support one member of the top brass. That gives us 10,000 workers to support 1 member of the Top brass. Those 10,000 workers, also need to support 1000, supervisors, 100 managers, and 10 executive's. The only group that actually generates a profit though their labors are our workers. lets say we pay each of them 35K the median wage of a union worker. then each supervisor makes 2x what a worker makes so 70K, each manager makes 2x what a supervisor makes so 140k, each executive makes 5 times what a manager makes so 700k and each member of the top brass makes 10x what an executive makes. So 7 million. That means that our 10,000 workers make 350 million, our supervisors make 70 million, our managers make 14 million, our executives make 7 million and our lone member of the brass makes 7 million, that means our workers need to produce a surplus of 98 million just to pay the wages of their management. Or $9,800 per worker. Now lets say that this company falls on hard times, and they restructure they fire 30% of their workers, and 20% of their supervisors and 10% of their managers. Now we have 7,000 workers. Having to support, 82.6 million in management or $11,800 per worker. As things get worse for this company they will continue to mindlessly erode the worker to management ratio until there is no longer an adequate surplus being produced by the workers and the company fails.

As far as the brilliant decisions that these top brass make, they often consist of tricks like moving jobs to other countrys where they can pay $5,000 instead of $35,000 for their labor, trying to boost the surplus in production to regain profitability, while ignoring that unskilled foreign labor often results in a much lower quality product, that drives away their consumer base (if you don't believe me go out and buy a VW that was built in Mexico). They also ignore the fact that moving to foreign labor reduces the amount of spendable wages available to purchase their products in the US which is largely their primary or even their only market. Other ingenious ideas that have come up in big business in the last 20 or 30 years, are the idea of the disposable employee, which is to say the belief that it is more cost effective to have short term employees then it is to build the type of life long relationships with your employees that companies had in the 1950's and 1960's, the Irony is that it's very expensive to train an employee these days, and most jobs require at least some on the job training even if it's only intended to bring you up to the rules and regulations at your new work place. One of the places I worked recently estimated that it cost them $35,000 to hire and train an employee, this same workplace also figured that they had a turnover rate of roughly 35% per year in their employees, largely due to low wages. Now I may not be a rocket scientist but it seems to me that having to completely replace your workforce every 3 years means your loosing an average of around $11,660 a year in training costs per employee. I fail to see how that is cost effective compared to offering a competitive wage that is only about $4,000 a year more than their current wages, (they pay 29K a year and the company they are loosing many of their employees to pays around 33K a year.) Another one of my favorite ingenious ideas that these CEO's came up with in the late 80's and early 90's was that it was more cost effective to rent a building then it was to own one. Many companies actually sold their buildings, and set up rent agreements with the companies they sold their buildings to. Several of the companies that did that in my home town have now had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy new property and build new cooperate buildings to house their work staffs. And I have not even touched on the sheer genius it takes to run a company like Enron or MCI WorldCom into the ground.

Anyways you really are free to believe what ever you want about the causes of Americas economic woes.

Down with the unions! what a joke they are! :-P

What about Japanese automakers? Do they have unions to deal with? I'm talking about NA factories.

travis thanks for your long winded response, the chevy malibu is rubbish... and unions are proboably a good thing if your a member and not at the bottom of the food chain.

My two cents. I have worked in both a union shop( IAM,FOP) and in non union companies. I have had experience both positive and negative with unions. However, I caution to make a blanket statement against unions as a whole. Unions sprouted up in the turn of the century to combat poor work conditions and brutal management tactics. For those who think that unions have overstayed theie welcome, only need to look at the coal mine accidents of the past years. The majority of those happened in non union companies who choose to pay fines for years instead of upgrade safety equipment. Unfortunately, several miners paid the ultimate price for this lax safety. My experience with unions conconcentrated in the airline industry and with law enforcement. They were effective in keeping management abuse in check, assisting in safety training, and verifying that there were adequate staffing levels.

Have there been abuses by unions? Absolutely, but the problems experience by the Big Three cannot be completely attributed to just unions.

Yes, unions help to make sure workers are paid fairly for what they do. I mean, how could you say it's NOT fair that people get paid on holidays when they aren't working? The aren't attributing ANYTHING to the company while on holiday, but they feel they need to get paid for it anyways. Oh, and you should DEFINITELY still get health benefits after you retire. BULL CRAP!!! I hate the whole, "I gave this company 30 years of my life, and once I'm done they aren't giving me anything." Did they NOT PAY YOU FOR 30 YEARS?!?!?! If you honestly worked for the same company for 30 years, and got nothing for it, then you're retarded. I'm pretty sure if you were staying there for 30 years, they were paying you for that time. If you retire, you're NOT contributing to the company anymore. Why should they still continue to contribute to you? These are the main people GM is giving their money to. Retired workers and there pensions and medical insurance. Oh, but that's only fair, and that's exactly what the unions should make sure the companies do.

Keep saying bull like this is what is fair, and then keep wondering why jobs keep moving over seas. Good luck with that.

@mark

Thats fine you work 30 years near or barely above poverty level. You hit 65, they want to get rid of you because you're too old to work. Now where do you go?

Savings, no how can you save money when you can barely afford to live?

Social security? Those on it now can barely afford to live. The current administration pissed away the surplus after they claimed they would not.

Why should the CEO make 400 times more a year than the guys at the bottom, and get stock benefits, and get health, and get retirement. Yet the guys on the bottom should work for nothing, and have nothing when they're done.

You want to talk about overseas, well compared to europe are entire healthcare/retirement/vacation situation is crap. They get more vacation time, more benefits, and make more money. Yet some how their companies haven't collapsed or moved away.

Now what do you think happends to these people with no money, no retirement, nothing? Do you think they just disappear? If the country, and the companies in that country do not take care of their citizens, then eventually, there will not be a country.

How can people consume when execs of companies won't distribute the wealth down to the little guys.

You're ignorant arguments would have us living back in the middle ages where the kings and lords did as they pleased everything they wanted, and the rest of us including yourself got to work the fields for barely enough food to survive.

Good luck with that.

This comment is partially a test to see if I CAN comment and also to see if anyone else has had their comment "submitted to review by the owner of the site".

I am going to take one more try to explain this one.

First thing the Chevy Malibu seems to be a half decent attempt at making a good car, Chevy should be lauded for their efforts to become competitive again.

In a company there are 2 groups of workers, Productions, and Management. People with production jobs actually produce a surplus from their labor, as an example 2.5 years ago I was working in a call center, having just finished my B.S. and needing some income while I looked for a better job. In that call center I made $6.50 an hour + a performance bonus of up to $1.35/hr based on call metrics and volume of calls handled ( I only missed that bonus 2 or 3 weeks out of about a year I worked there ) So I was making $8.85 an hour x 40 or $354 a week, there was no medical. I took an average of 650~700 calls a week. The company I worked for charged the company they had me contracted to, $3.25 a call. So they made a gross of around $2200 a week from my labor. After you remove my wages, about $1850 remained. Now from that surplus, and the surplus of the other productive employee's the non productive employee's IE Management draw their wages, the expenses of the company like power, computer equipment, phone lines, T1 data lines and the like are also payed from this surplus, after all of those expenses are met what is left is a net profit or loss. Employee's in Production positions are exploited by the companies they work for, by the very nature of a company this has to be true. So the real issue then becomes what is fair? How much of the income you generate as a production worker, should the company pay you? Is it fair for the company to provide unsafe work conditions? what if they provide old chairs that cause you to have back pain? old computer monitors that cause eye strain? non ergonomic keyboards that cause repetitive stress injuries? Should they pay for health care? what about a pension? a 401K? What about unreasonable work demands like 60+ hour weeks? should they be able to order you to work those? What if you have a family emergency like a sick child or love one in the hospital should you be able to take time off to care for them? Or should your employer be able to fire you?

How about this you worked for a company making a little less than you might have elsewhere for 30 years, because they promised you every week that they would take care of you when you retired, that you would get a pension, and medical care, Is it like you payed for those by taking a little less actual income? Should the company be able to just back out of the agreement you had when you working for them, if it becomes inconvenient for them later on?

The truth is that labor relations are a very complex subject, there are a lot of arguments that could be presented concerning the Pro's and Con's of being part of a Union. However I will maintain that a good union exists to protect it's members from unreasonable abuses at the hands of management. And that the wages of those workers has very little to do with the reason many company's are having so many finical difficulty's these days. IMHO it's just common sense that when someone who is making 10.8 million dollars a year is not pulling their weight it's going to hurt a company far more than when someone making .035 million dollars a year, has similar short comings.

"Chevy should be lauded for their efforts to become competitive again."

Yes, they should. However, since American companies are terrified to stand up to unions, American car companies will probably never be competitive again. Unfortunately in the modern world, businesses are almost always run by people concerned only with numbers and rarely by people concerned with principles. If GM was run by people with principles, next time the union thugs came out demanding that high school dropouts should be paid more than the $40-something an hour they already make GM would say "Fine, then - reap the benefits of your greed" and shut the company down. That's why I was so happy to see that Bugatti is run by a man of principle when he said that they would only sell Veyron's to serious car collectors - not brain dead rappers and sports stars. Would it cost them sales? Sure, but he'd rather keep the brands image intact.

"However I will maintain that a good union exists to protect it's members from unreasonable abuses at the hands of management."

Unless you're being forced to work somewhere, there's no such thing as "abuses at the hands of management". Why? Because you're CHOOSING to work there and you can CHOOSE to leave any time you wish.

I don't mind if you want to go work back in the middle ages just because of no unions, but I'll stick with the job I've got where I get treated fairly, get decent pay, and can set my own money aside for when I retire. I don't expect this company to pay for me when I'm not doing anything productive for them. Oh, and by the way, I'm receiving all of these fair things while NOT being in a union. If I were in a union, the demand for retirement and all the other crap would have put this business out a long time ago, just like they are probably going to do to GM. If your conditions aren't good enough, go elsewhere. And you can NOT tell me somebody working at GM right now does not make enough to be able to put money aside to fund their own retirement. I'm not saying unions were never needed, and they've never done anything good, but they are just getting way out of hand today.

Some interesting arguments for and against unions. As for my own views on unions, well I could toot my own horn if I really wanted regarding my research. Ultimately, if I had to dumb it down & make a long story (very) short, here's my take:

>unions were a benefit to workers many decades ago. In todays economic/corporate world, unios have agendas not shared by many of whom they 'serve' (and I use that term loosely). There should be no place for unions in developed nations today. If you live in China/etc, then you can try and make a point.

The Malibu LT pictured here is, the LS is not

I don't ever want anybody else negotiating my wages

I certainly don't want to pay somebody to negotiate my wages

If you like price increases, get ready for the 35 mpg standards... You're in for a doozie.

Did Chevy raise prices on it's cars to pay for it's inflated marketing budget?

I don't know how it is in the US, but in Canada an average autoworker that works on the line makes about $30/ hour plus benefits for a job that might be physically tough but requires a little or no brains. With a 7% unemployment rate there is absolutely no reason why a highschool dropout is making that kind of money - not saying that all workers are drop outs, but you really don't need a degree to operate a pneumatic wrench, or put stickers on a windshield. Give the CAW/UAW the middle finger, drop the rate to $12.00 or so, limit the benefits and bring back the price to 1990 levels and GM might become competitive again. Just for reference from 1994 to 2004 a Nissan Maxima SE went from $34K to $36K, a Pontiac Bonneville SSEi went from $31K to $48K. Let's not even talk about the resale values.