"Generous" Motors

Here's a great Washington Post article about the continuing downfall of General Motors.

The article supports my earlier post about how the UAW has driven up costs for GM and helped drive the company into the ground:

"They called it 'Generous Motors.' If you were lucky enough to get an assembly line job at one of its plants -- or those of Ford, Chrysler and some of their major suppliers -- you could earn half again as much as neighbors with the same skills and education, along with 'free' health insurance; a month's paid vacation; and, after 30 years on the job, a generous pension and whatever health services were not covered by Medicare. At some point, the company even agreed to guarantee all workers full pay and benefits, even if there wasn't enough work for them to do."

The benefits sound like the same ones that are demolishing the socialist French economy and its ridiculous policy of "employment for life".

But the UAW is not the only ones at fault. GM management must share the blame. They have long focused too much energy on being a finance company and not enough energy on being a car manufacturing company.

Also, any attempts to improve have been destroyed by corporate politics. GM created a truly revolutionary car brand, Saturn, then allowed corporate in-fighting to starve Saturn of the funding required to improve and expand.

Either way, GM and Ford need to join the other American manufacturing companies who, by embracing Six Sigma and other "lean manufacturing" processes, are making themselves competitive in the global economy.