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Oakville is an upscale community where most Ford workers can't afford to live, unless they bought houses there 20 years ago or more. They mostly live far to the west; many in Hamilton, where real estate is cheap because of industrial pollution. Jobs are continually being outsourced to cheaper paying companies, and so the exodus to the west accelerates, while the white collar types from Toronto move into Oakville. They have no love or need for heavy industry. The local community does not benefit when virtually all of the workers commute in and spend their money elsewhere. All they get is traffic congestion and pollution.

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so we ran a couple of CMax through the paint shop months ago , doesn't mean anything ...

 

Flexibility is what it is all about. If you look at the sticker on a new car, you will note that the shipping cost is as high or higher than the labor cost to assemble the car. It takes about 20 man-hours give or take to assemble a car. That is 20 hours pay for one person. Therefore, any talk of re-locating to save on labor costs is hooey. If they can build many models in the same plant, they can build more cars closer to their final destination to save on shipping costs. That would mean building the same model in multiple plants. Labor is just one small item in the total cost of a car. Air bags, for example cost more. Sales taxes are more. Demonizing labor is just a propaganda tool.

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Flexibility is what it is all about. If you look at the sticker on a new car, you will note that the shipping cost is as high or higher than the labor cost to assemble the car. It takes about 20 man-hours give or take to assemble a car. That is 20 hours pay for one person. Therefore, any talk of re-locating to save on labor costs is hooey. If they can build many models in the same plant, they can build more cars closer to their final destination to save on shipping costs. That would mean building the same model in multiple plants. Labor is just one small item in the total cost of a car. Air bags, for example cost more. Sales taxes are more. Demonizing labor is just a propaganda tool.

 

Ford don't believe in having the same product in multiple plants anymore, that was the old days.

Now you build everything in one plant and run 3 crews.

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Ford don't believe in having the same product in multiple plants anymore, that was the old days.

Now you build everything in one plant and run 3 crews.

 

What do you think "flex" means? It is short for flexibility. They want to build multiple vehicles on the same platform to reduce down time for re-tooling, and build more vehicles in the same plant. Years ago, they did it to avoid duties before the Autopact. Now that there is no Autopact anymore, it is the same story. It was easier in the old days because they used humans in body instead of robots. It is easier to train a human to do multiple tasks than it is to program a robot. Everything has to be in the precise position or damage goes down the line or the line goes down. Maybe someday robots will be better on the line than humans, but that day is far off. If you add up the cost of purchasing and maintaining robots, plus all of the breakdowns, and down time for re-tooling, it would, I think be cheaper to go back to human spot welders.

 

Assembly plant locations are chosen to be close to as many dealerships as possible. If you can also build multiple vehicles, then this is increased, and shipping costs are reduced. It also helps to be close to where steel is produced, as steel coils are expensive to ship. It is not feasible to re-locate a plant to some out of the way place to save $10 per hour on labor. You would lose more than that in additional shipping costs. If they are trying to bolster the economy of a depressed region hoping to reap new customers in the future, maybe the cost would be worth it in the long run, and they could say they did it for the cheap labor to get other plants to take concessions, but cheap labor is not the real reason.

Edited by Trimdingman
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Put a plant down south in an old cow pasture and top pay is $15 an hour and they could care less about shipping cost.

Just ask Hyundai , Toyota, Nissan , etc.. It's working good for them !

 

They don't have a union. They are building original plants; not closing one and building another. North American automakers are outsourcing a lot of work, and bringing in lowly paid new hires. Tennessee is not a bad location. You won't find any final assembly plants very far away from large affluent populations. Look on the sticker. See how much it costs for freight. A typical plant with 1500 workers per shift puts out around 650 cars in 10 hours. That is about 0.4 cars per worker, or 25 man-hours per car plus a small fraction for off line overtime. Compare that with the cost of freight. It costs as much to ship a car to the dealer as it costs for labor in a final assembly plant to build the car. That is what I call super efficiency.

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No union and business is booming for them

 

We are doing well, also. Labor cost differential is a red herring. It is not a real factor. I think it is a game of chess being played with the government. Reduced wages and job cuts hurt government revenues.

Edited by Trimdingman
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Government cares nothing about us , if they did they would not give company's incentives to put there plants in third world countries to help relations with that country!

 

Where did I say that the government cares about us? I think that we are being used as pawns in a great chess game between private industry and government. Industry's way of punishing the government is cutting jobs and wages, thus reducing tax revenue and increasing social pay-outs. Government punishes industry by increasing taxes and regulations. We are the pawns in this secret chess game, and we are also the scapegoats.

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Where did I say that the government cares about us? I think that we are being used as pawns in a great chess game between private industry and government. Industry's way of punishing the government is cutting jobs and wages, thus reducing tax revenue and increasing social pay-outs. Government punishes industry by increasing taxes and regulations. We are the pawns in this secret chess game, and we are also the scapegoats.

 

Well said

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