Delphi files for bankruptcy
 

Here's the story

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051008/bs_nm/autos_delphi_bankruptcy_dc

This makes me wonder if this will have an effect on the automotive biz in general...

I am a supplier to Delphi so yeah, it will have an impact on everyone associated with them. Part of the problem is that the UAW membership refused to negotiate to keep the company afloat. Now, I hold management responsible just as much. As a manager myself, I am accountable for our district meeting goals and budgets. If we don't, I take the heat from the C.O. Of course, the guys that work for us are thankful to have jobs and not like some UAW members who feel they are entitled to high wages because Delphi or GM owes them. PPPHHHTT!
They closed Buick down, didn't they? Dumba$$!!!!
If they close plants or downsize, I will have to lay a few of my employees off for sure.
You guys that don;t live in a UAW town might not understand what I am getting at. Those that do, will.

Damn Wayne, sorry to hear this. The old ripple effect. Back in 1980, when the envrionmentalists, through political activity, pretty much shut down our forests, both the plywood & paper mills of this small town closed...the town was changed forever. The Delphi bankruptcy is bound to hurt many good people.

And you wonder why the Toyota company management smiles all the time........

I'm from the Detroit area, and my grandfather was a UAW steward. My idea about unions has changed completely in the past 10 years. At this point I view them as organized criminal outfits who's only goal is to shake down the workers.

And when thousands of people lose their jobs, will the a55holes who are pulling six figure incomes at the union headquarters lose theirs? F-no they won't. Scumbags.

Well said, harddrive. Whether it's the UAW, Teamsters (who are self-destructing anyway) or the Teachers, modern unions are a bunch of no-compromise extorting leeches who will demand the world, and usually get it, until they destroy the employer. Then, when they have sucked the company or agency dry and it fails, it's the employer's fault for "mismanaging" things.

I think we will get a response from Superman shortly, explaining that the UAW was just trying to help Delphi out by running it into the ground.

We are a nation wide supplier to Delphi as well. Now I understand why their numbers began to really fall off about 2 months ago.

It was inevitable. I'm expecting the same thing from other auto-related companies in the near future. Pretty scary, if you ask me.

If Union members would only get it together...I mean, when strikes happen, and the membership doesn't get paychecks? What if the union leadership didn't get paychecks as well? I suspect the negotiations would then become more honest...
More and more in the past, with smaller biz operations, you'd see ownership close the plant over caving in to union demands that would result in the same thing happening anyway. It was bound to trickle up to "big biz" sooner or later...the old straw that broke the camel's back.

Unions are not ONLY issue!
 

While unions of late are not viewed in positive terms,they do have a purpose to protect their members & provide assistance in other areas than wages.I work for a Canadian Co. that purchased the original Procter & Gamble Soap Plant known as Ivorydale in Cincinnati.This was a major divesture of assets & employees for a minimum outlay from the purchasers.These "outsourcing" ways do help companies increase profits,but at the cost of decent jobs & wages.The thing that caught my eye in the Delphi article was the request from the company to reduce wages from $27 to $10-12 per hour! If that is accurate,that is over a 60% cut in pay!!!Could anyone here take a pay cut like that?I'm not a manager but a technician that does what a manager used to do.I make about $23/hr,have not had a raise in over 5 yrs. & am told that holdovers from P&G make too much $$$$.Our bottom managers make 100K+,but you never hear about them taking pay cuts or benifit cuts.Corporations of all kinds are out of touch with reality.If there are not decent wages in manufacturing,the middle class is doomed to dissappear,them all that will be left will be your management class @ $100K & the worker class @ 25K-35K.Hard to live a decent life on those kind of wages.Even with high skills & service time of 15-20 yrs,they keep telling us we are only worth $16/hr tops!!People do become accostomed to a life style of sorts,rich & poor,just hard to swallow when it is always the little guy that gets to "sacrifice" for the good of the company.Take a look @ what Delta took back from their maintenance people last year to keep the Co. afloat & it still didn't help.

Chris

If factory workers were making $27 per hour, it is no wonder that the company is bankrupt. You can certainly blame that on the union. Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered.

Flintstone,
So your opinion is that factory workers are not worth $27/hr?These are people that produce things that we use everyday,work rotating shifts,miss lots of family functions etc,etc.What would you think would be a fair wage to give up these types of things that most normal people take for granted.Someone has to do it or import everything!

Chris

NO. They are not worth $27 an hour when there are people in China willing to make the same part for $2 an hour.

And it is a HUGE dis-service for union leaders to LIE to their workers and tell them that they can earn those kind of wages.

We ARE importing everything, and its ancient history. The union leaders are playing a sick game making people believe its 1950 and they have some kind of entitlement to a job.

So following that logic,only executives & such deserve to be paid generous sums for the work they do & people without the means to go to college & would enter the real world after graduating from high school should be happy making $10/hr for the rest of their lives?I guess they can take the pay cuts then go get some foodstamps & government assistance so they can keep the lights on & food on the table!
Not saying that unions are great,but companies & workers need to be on the same page when it comes to services that employees provide for said company.Just b/c someone will work for $2/day in China,does that mean we should do the same?

Chris

Heard a forklift operator was making $80k a year working for an auto supplier. Sorry, he does not deserve $80k per year when a dock worker for a shipping company makes $15/hr tops in the South.

Everyone, top to bottom, needs to suffer at Delphi.

I sell fork lift batteries to GM plants as well as Honda plants and the difference in philosophy between the plants is amazing.

At the GM plants they have long-timers who literally sit in the battery room waiting for a truck operator to drive in to have his battery changed out. 60-70% of his day is sitting behind his desk reading the newspaper or chatting with his friends. The one fellow was bragging to me that he "earned" more than $100K due to his senority and the amount or overtime that he worked.

At the Honda plants the lift truck operators are trained to change thier own batteries and can do so in approx 5 minutes.

Just one tiny area illustrating why GM is struggling.

From AP news:

"Delphi is required to pay GM [UAW] wages of $27 an hour.... That's double the level of competing suppliers, according to S&P ratings services."


So, no, economically speaking, these workers are not worth $27. The only reason they get it is through union extortion.

Clearly they are not worth $27 per hour. In cases where a typical relatively unskilled, uneducated employee makes $27 per hour, unions clearly have embarked on a course that will not allow the company to succeed on a long term basis. Union members should realize that they are giving up job security for short term, higher wages. Unions are a victim of their own success. When the company does well, it blackmails the management into excessive wage and benefit concessions. Then when things are tough, they are not about to cinch their belts and by then, members have come to believe they somehow deserve to make 2 to 3 times what other workers are willing to do the same job for. Unless union employees are 3 times as productive as others or the company only makes a product that enjoys some sort of protection or monopoly, there is always someone who will produce the same or better for much less money. Not just outside the US, but almost anywhere in "small town USA". That is the problem with unions. Usually they prevent the company and its employees from teaming to make a good product at competitive price.

Face it, almost everyone works long hours, rotating shifts, miss family functions, etc. Most folks on salary probably work close to 60 hrs per week...and earn less than $27 per hour if you divide their salary by hours worked.

If you used similar rationale for food service employes, it would cost you 20 bucks to buy a burger at the McDonalds drive through at night or or on the weekend. The same is true for grocery stores, gas stations, farm workers, etc. As long as union workers are willing to pay 3 times as much for everything they buy, paying them 3 times as much for equally skilled work would make sense. But even that would not work unless we closed the border to imports.

If the Delphi workers were actually earning/worth $27 per hour, there would be a long line of companies competing for their skills..and Delphi bankrupcy would mean nothing.

I heard a disturbing bit on Portland area talk radio...the conservative host, Lars Larson, was on a jag about school spending in Oregon. It seems that for every $100 of school spending, $23 goes to P.E.R.S. (Public Employee Retirement System) THE OREGONIAN, (suprisingly, since it's bias is liberal)
ran a front page story on teacher retirements. The front page pic was of a couple, both teachers, lounging by the pool of their Sun City, AZ retirement complex. Both of them in their early 50's, enjoying a combined retirement pay of over 6 figures. Oh, free health, dental, and vision care as well. Yep, the taxpayers of Oregon are generous to the members of the teacher's union. :rolleyes:

One other part of the problem at GM/Delphi is the jobs bank.
They have around 20,000 company wide just sitting on their butts collecting checks for 40 hours, waiting for an opening.

My company does the vending for most of the GM/Delphi plants in Mid Michigan. My father-in-law retired two years ago from Delphi. in Flint. They were closing the alternator plant down anyway. His pension MAY be cut about in half. This probably won't affect him but I can understand how, for some others, it will be detrimental to their way of life.
Tomorrow should be an interesting day in the plants. :rolleyes:
I am sure I will get "requests" to lower our prices because of the troubles.
BTW--I know that not ALL of the Delphi employees are jacka$$es. Unfortunately, they have the biggest mouths.:p