stap12273

Well put brother. By the way, it was 735 people who were laid off at St. Thomas in 1990, not 200. I would be curious to see if the " Junior Guy" will hold the same views when he or she has 30 plus years and the gravy job. I'm sure that the rationalizations will all be brought into play then. I wonder how much the company loves the idea of us in-fighting all of the time over these issues.

I think that Ford has it all wrong. I think that instead of using people such as Mark Fields that they should be tapping the true geniuses of the automotive industry, that is, analysts such as DeRosiers and Carlos Gomez. And then after our industry is fixed, all of the pro sports teams who are in trouble can hire the analysts off of the various sports channels such as Ditka, Meyer, and Dave MacKenzie. They seem to have the answers for everything. DeRosier likely drives a " rice boat " himself. Chin up boys, the good times will roll again.

:lol: Well said STAP 130, I haven't had a laugh like this in quite some time. This guy is probably one of those senior people who walk around spreading their good cheer with the starting quote " I heard that ". I have been hearing that STAP was going to close since the day I started. These morons don't seem to understand that the company uses salaried creightons to spread their negative grapevine information to us as a means of motivation. The supervisors, in many cases, know far less than we do. Perhaps those who want to " hear it " from the horse's mouth should take an hour out of their busy lives once a month and go to a meeting where they can spend ten minutes of their high powered lives to hear Whitey's report. Everything that we hear is pure speculation. I think that these people want to see our plant go down because of their own greed, apparently 25,000 isn't good enough, they are holding out for 75,000 or more. You know, with their vast array of formal education and marketable skills they should be entitled to executive compensation. Why should we expect anything less of a group of people who have yet to do anything other than two-fifths of fuck all for 35 plus years. Anyway, best of luck to all of us, maybe they are saying ten facilities so when it turns out to be six they will be deemed as the saviours of us all. Politics suck, right brothers.

Brothers, and we are all brothers in this. Why do we continue to kick the shit out of each other. The time is ripe for the benificent Bill Ford and his right hand Mark to extract whatever concessions they can get out of us. When this dark cloud passes from over all of our heads do you think that they will give anything back as easily as we gave it up. We build the greatest cars in the world on both sides of this border so lets concentrate on the real enemies in this battle, that is, the politicians and lobbyists in the world of Washington and Ottawa. How many Camrys and Preludes would be sold in Canada and the U.S. if they came with the same protective measures attached to them that our cars have on them when they go into Japan. They have a protected domestic market. If the Camry was to cost say, 40,000 dollars how many people would by them when a comparable domestic unit would cost 25,000. I think that the question answers itself. Yet the WTO ( funded by major corporations ) deems that the autopact was an unfair barrier to the market. Lets cut the bullshit, I would put workers in either of our countries up against a Japanese worker anytime, and we would be victorious. They set up kit plants in key states and provinces as a way to yield influence in the capitals, lets get our reps to stand up for us, all we ask is for fair trade. When was the last time that an American product didn't do well in Japan? What do you suppost the Japanese government would do if we owned 50 percent of their market? I'll wager we wouldn't have that for long. Remember in the 80's when Reagan set 20 percent as the upper limit of their market share, if we could get that set to even 30% we would be in business. Lets not sell our company short boys, we have been down this road before. After all, if the Japanese are so almighty and superior, why didn't they win the second world war? Lets see if Uncle Bill can let loose the design geeks and the marketing geniuses and make cool cars while at the same time convincing people it is the in thing to be seen in our cars. In the meantime lets hope that St. Thomas and Wixom thrive and come back to their former glory, we are too close in too many ways to wish ill for each other.