Kudos to Jim Cramer

[napbob]

I currently am running a roofing business, as business is plentiful in post-hurricane Houston. It is more physically intensive, dangerous, and requires far more skill than any job held by a member of the UAW. My employees (at all levels of the totem pole) work their asses off for better pay than most companies offer, but nowhere near the money that UAW employees demand and recieve. There are serious injuries on a daily basis. We have no retirement plans. We can't even offer medical insurance. Yet there are about 300 employees that have left their families across the country to work for me. They never complain

 

Are you bragging that your employees have no retirement plan, medical ins. and have serious injuries everyday? Where do I apply? Oh, no thanks, I graduated high school. What a retard.

[feegsit]

You know, I read things like that union critic wrote on other forums, and I end up doing a slow burn. I can't speak to your experiences, but around the auto industry here, and the major suppliers of glass, steel and tires, there's a phrase used by human resources in ending the employment of people who can't physically handle the job: Not Suitable For Industrial Employment.

 

I see people post on line about being overpaid to turn a screw - what a load of crap. You've got most jobs requiring you to be on your feet just about 100% of the time, eight hours a day.

 

Then there's the "paid for turning a screw" mentality. Yea, right. More like position the part, grab a threaded fastener, position it, maybe by hand, maybe with a four-and-a-half pound to ten pound air tool that may or may not be hung on a tool assist, drive the fastener down, then get the hell out of the way for the next car. Thirty to forty times an hour. Eight hours a day, with, if the car is selling well, a mandatory one hour a day of overtime. Five days a week. Unless the car is selling really well, in which case two successive eight hour shift Saturdays out of every three Saturdays are also mandatory overtime. 50 weeks a year if you're less than five years with the company, with both weeks of vacation set for you - one week in July, one week between Christmas and New Years. Let's also not forget that your work shift may be the afternoon shift, 4 PM until 12:30 PM, for God knows how many years, until your seniority moves up enough to get you on days, so you miss seeing your family five of seven days, 50 weeks a year, then 49 weeks a year (five to ten years seniority).

 

And there are equally demanding jobs in engine and transmission manufacturing plants as well. If most of the union critics have the fortitude to hack it, which frankly I doubt. Not Suitable For Industrial Employment. I wasn't, and I was in a stamping plant with automatic stamping presses that you operated by switches and buttons, but being on your feet, and stopping the press to get in and clear jams out of the way, or reload blanks or coils of steel. Even with double hearing protection, ear plugs in the ear, ear muff type protection over the ears, the constant drumbeat of the stamping presses banging out parts was excruciating. I couldn't hack it for more than nine months. Even with double hearing protection, after two and a half decades in Ford's Dearborn Stamping Plant, and a total of thirty-five years with Ford, my Dad suffered some permanent hearing loss. His pension is an "entitlement"? Bull****. He earned every penny, as did his colleagues. I doubt if any union critic could last thirty to thirty-five years. I know for certain I couldn't. After nine months, I my "Not Suitable For Industrial Employment-ed" own ass and quit. Overpaid? My ass.

 

And these critics would begrudge them a fair income why? Because you've got a degree and they don't? You already have a major benefit to an education. You get to work in a clean, relatively noise free environment at a job that doesn't beat your body to death, even after decades of ergonomics and OSHA. And that's with a union - God forbid you try most of the suppler jobs, equally difficult, at lower pay and benefits without the UAW.

Good Post! Most people don't understand what its like to work on the assembly line, so its easy for them to "spout off" about how the autoworker has got it made. I hear this BS all the time. I tell them ya gotta be there to know what its like. The people with the biggest mouthes are the people who are afraid to work in car plants. Too bad, it would be an experience they'd never forget! They'd get humble.... real quick.

[sprinter]

That's how the public is misled. They think we're all rolling in dough with the $74 an hour we make, when that is nowhere near the case. The transplants don't have a pension liabilty. They can report that it costs them $48 an hour while the Big 3 is only marginally above that. My neighbour across the street works for Toyota in Cambridge ON and makes nearly the same money as my other neighbour that works at OAC on the line. We all live on the same street in houses that are within $10G of wach other, it's not like I'm in a castle and he's in a shack.

 

You have to think about where the media leads you. They loooove to quote the $74 an hour figure. But they don't explain how they arrive at that figure.

 

I also have no doubt that the company also feeds this propaganda out to the media. A public backlash is always beneficially in their favor.

[Len_A]

I also have no doubt that the company also feeds this propaganda out to the media. A public backlash is always beneficially in their favor.

As a publicly held company, at least two of them don't have a choice - that crap comes out as part of the financial reporting. That's one more reson Cerberus wants Daimler's share of Chrysler, so no more info comes out from Daimler's end. Sometimes I think going private is the best thing for all three Detroit car companies.

[tbldbxorntnap]

You are playing fast and loose with the facts young man......at least 90% of painting spraying is done by robots......the 10% of manual spraying is done in state-of-the-art down-draft spray booths...most sprayers don't even mask-up...and those jobs are bid on...people aren't forced to do them.....and they get a substantial amount of extra environmental break each hour....

most of the accidents in the plants involve skilled trades....failure to lock-out causes most...there are many, many more occupations that have higher fatality rates than automotive workers...

the only manual spot welding was for repair, the rest was done by robots....

there were some jobs that were tough...but most were not....after all the plant was not filled with supermen..come on, be realistic.....

I think he's refering to middle eighties and back when refering to manual spot welding like we did at NAP , oh sure we had fixtures to load the parts in to be welded by auto, but they had those manual guns hanging above to place the additional welds the fixture couldn't , I'm glad those day's are gone was tired of going to medical to have slag removed from my eyes and going home with holey t- shirts.

[davdog]

 

125k for a house? What's that work out to on a 30 year fixed? Maybe 750 a month?

 

You need to get out more Len, in most of the country you couldn't get a garage for that much.

 

How can you possibly compare the cost of living in Detroit with the cost of living in Chicago?

 

62k a year with housing at 125k?

 

It's no wonder right now in the auto assembly business is kind of like when that first dinosaur looked up and saw that big meteorite coming?

Edited November 13, 2008 by davdog

[xXBucktoothgeekXx]

I currently am running a roofing business, as business is plentiful in post-hurricane Houston. It is more physically intensive, dangerous, and requires far more skill than any job held by a member of the UAW. My employees (at all levels of the totem pole) work their asses off for better pay than most companies offer, but nowhere near the money that UAW employees demand and recieve. There are serious injuries on a daily basis. We have no retirement plans. We can't even offer medical insurance. Yet there are about 300 employees that have left their families across the country to work for me. They never complain

 

So I have great standing when I strike down the UAW. They don't have a clue what an honest day's work is. They don't have a clue what an honest wage is. Most of all, the UAW doesn't give half a shit about hard working Americans. They simply have no perspective from which to relate.

Let me guess....you run a roofing business in Houston. You have about 300 employees that have left their families to work for you. How many of these 300 are Illegals? Hell NO, they wont complain. You have no fucking clue as to the skill level required to work in a UAW shop. And just an FYI. the JSP was put in place as an incentive to keep our Companies from taking our jobs overseas. I dont expect someone of your obviously limited grasp of our situation to understand. Non Union folks make decent wages because of the blood and sweat and tears that fell over from generations of us that were NOT afraid to stand up and demand labors fair share of the pie. Average labor costs rolled into a new unit is about 8.5 % of the total cost. That includes those dreaded legacy costs.. So blow your anti Union shit up someone elses ass.

Edited November 13, 2008 by xXBucktoothgeekXx

[Versa-Tech]

I know this will come as a huge surprise to many....

 

Let me express my dearest apologies to any UAW workers that I have offended. My comments were scathing and less than justified. You guys work your ass off every day to provide me the cars that I choose to buy over any other manufacturer. I have been way out of line in my generalizations. I have been insensitive to the harsh conditions in which you work. I have been utterly immature in my judgments. I ask for your forgiveness. As a previous automotive "Big-Wig", it was easy for me to rain down my inexcusable hatred upon you. I have now realized how wrong I was. I still don't agree with every policy of the union, just as you don't agree with every policy of the OEM.

 

Please accept my sincere apology.

[1993Stang]

Biggest economic reality we have is that the same suppliers that Toyota, Honda, Nissan and the rest use for production in North America, will collapse under the economic reality of thin profit margins and survival on cash flow, if any of the Detroit 3 go down. I don't dispute what you're saying about the burden of legacy costs, and although those are addressed up to a point in the last contract, until the last of the employees covered by the legacy costs dis off (or at least significant numbers do), they're somewhat stuck with those costs. Bankruptcy, in theory, would dump the defined benefit pension cost on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the quasi-government agency that supposedly insures defined benefit pension plans, but that's collapsing under the weight of so many bankruptcies doing just that - dumping the pension on the PBGC. There WAS talk of a government infusion of cash for the PBGC two years ago - before all this bailout talk started.

 

$15 an hour and things like buying a home are relative. Areas that built up over decades around manufacturing, and product engineering, like GM, Ford, and Chrysler, especially in what are now 50+ year old suburbs, are still not cheap places to live and not extravagant by any standard. I bought my first house in 1991, a 1080 square foot brick ranch (and I mean brick all the way around up to the gutters) with a detached garage. Bought it for $78,000 in 1991 and replaced the 34 year old furnace and added central air before I moved in, plus replaced the entry doors and the storm doors. Didn't have central air when I bought it for $78K, in Dearborn Heights. If I was one block north, in Dearborn proper, it would have been about $5000 to $7000 more. Those houses today, on that block, after all these foreclosures, goes for over $125,000. Still. It would be about fifteen minutes drive from Ford's Rouge Operations, where the F-150 is built and where an engine plant churns out 4 cylinder engines for Focus and Fusion, plus the steel mill that used to be Rouge Steel. Twenty to twenty five minutes in the opposite direction to Ford's Wayne Assembly, where the Focus is built. Not an upscale neighborhood.

 

$15 an hour won't buy that house, nor will it afford a new car from any makers. And home prices aren't going to come down much more. Almost every major auto parts supplier (the Lear, John Controls, Bosch, Metaldyne, TRW, Durr, etc) plus Toyota and Nissan engineering complexes, plus all the major machine tool builders, all have engineering facilities in southeast Michigan, and that's going to keep real estate from going too cheaply once the foreclosures are done with. In the long run, the Detroit area is still going to be similar Chicago and other large metropolitan areas, and that's more expensive to live than where the transplants located much of their factories. Low tier wages won't go far, and I think the turnover will be high, and much of those employees are going to be living in the more run down neighborhoods. And I for one don't know how long it takes to move up to the higher tier wages and a lot of formerly union jobs have been outsourced within the plants now.

 

People keep harping about the "UAW lifestyle" is just a lot of sour grapes that borders on bigotry. I grew up in a "UAW lifestyle". There was nothing even close to extravagant. Three kids and two parents in 980 square foot house, Mom sewed much of our school clothes except for blue jeans, Dad took a third of the backyard for vegetable garden, and the kitchen was full of steam every August as Mom canned vegetables like crazy. Dad did all of the car repairs (back in the day when a guy could do a lot of his own repairs), with me playing "gofer" for the tools, and all the home repairs and improvements. And if Dad didn't work any overtime, with the higher costs of housing,utilities, property taxes, home and car insurance, and everything else, we were like most UAW families - pretty darn close paycheck-to-paycheck if there's no overtime to work. And my Dad thankfully didn't lose any fingers or limbs working in Dearborn Stamping Plant, but his hand had bones broken in it three times in twenty years from accidents that came from reloading his stamping press with huge coils of steel. And this applies to the steel workers of the two steel mills in the area, the refinery workers at Marathon Oil, and the chemical workers at BASF here in the Detroit area as well, plus the power generation workers at DTE Energy. And I can still think of at least five times in the last six or seven years that an on-the-job DEATH was reported at one of the Detroit auto plants. One of my wife's bridesmaids father dies on the job. All the talk of second homes and boats and RV's is not without notice, but those things were bought with lots of overtime pay, and the profit sharing when that started. No one, and I fucking mean no one, bought any of that with a 40 hour pay check. Here in Michigan, you don't get a lot of overtime, you don't buy any toys. Press comments otherwise are not just distortions of the truth, they're outright lies.

 

Ask any of the Norfolk Assembly or even Atalanta Assembly personnel that took an opportunity to relocate to this area to maybe work at Dearborn Truck, just how "cheap" living in this area is. That's the basis for the contracts, not greed.

 

Your father sounds like my Dad, he worked at Stamping, had four kids to support, lived in Dearborn Proper, paycheck to paycheck, worked in the old foundry, never a new car and I mean never (always fixed his own old Ford Trucks or cars), constant worry about strikes. I too bought my first house in Dearborn Proper in 1993 for $75,000 (15 minutes from the Rouge) and continued his legacy and the 3 before him by working at the DAP. It's a shame to see downtown Dearborn with all the for Lease signs especially when the downtown is fairly new. The middle class is getting squeezed!!!

[1993Stang]

Your business and service to the Houston community notwithstanding, you are so full of shit. Typical anti union rhetoric. Yes, roofers jobs are damn difficult, as difficult as an assembly line job. Do you have the experience of working in any assembly plant, nonunion transplants like Toyota included, working even one day on the assembly line? Because if you don't, then you have no business judging them.

 

B.S I just talked to a friend that is in Texas today. He is taking out loads of debris at about $70-$80/hr. He is loving it!! And he is legal. He in fact said shit, now I know what Assembly line people go thru the robotic feel of something over and over and over in the heat!! He's working his ass off but he knows assembly sucks!!

[1993Stang]

I know this will come as a huge surprise to many....

 

Let me express my dearest apologies to any UAW workers that I have offended. My comments were scathing and less than justified. You guys work your ass off every day to provide me the cars that I choose to buy over any other manufacturer. I have been way out of line in my generalizations. I have been insensitive to the harsh conditions in which you work. I have been utterly immature in my judgments. I ask for your forgiveness. As a previous automotive "Big-Wig", it was easy for me to rain down my inexcusable hatred upon you. I have now realized how wrong I was. I still don't agree with every policy of the union, just as you don't agree with every policy of the OEM.

 

Please accept my sincere apology.

I should be spilling my hated on you. Bastard Big Wig as I earned my Master's Degree while busting my ass on the line while you sat in an air conditioned office bullshitting about OEM's. Before you all got your cushy assed jobs, you should of earned it by humping on that line!! All you salaried folks do is compare yourself with the U.A.W. There are a lot of educated people on that line that are there for the same reason, to make a living!!!

[lquidspine]

You are playing fast and loose with the facts young man......at least 90% of painting spraying is done by robots......the 10% of manual spraying is done in state-of-the-art down-draft spray booths...most sprayers don't even mask-up...and those jobs are bid on...people aren't forced to do them.....and they get a substantial amount of extra environmental break each hour....

most of the accidents in the plants involve skilled trades....failure to lock-out causes most...there are many, many more occupations that have higher fatality rates than automotive workers...

the only manual spot welding was for repair, the rest was done by robots....

there were some jobs that were tough...but most were not....after all the plant was not filled with supermen..come on, be realistic.....

True enough Nap 90% of the spraying is now done by robots, some people choose to not wear their mask also true. Now I can not speak for all plants but DTP no longer does bids on sprayers, the simple reason why, when they cut prep time and environmental breaks back with the C.O.A's in 05 no one was interested in signing up for that job anymore.

 

I was not trying to say the auto industry has the highest mortality rate but I would be willing to bet it is a near leader in , carpel tunnel syndrome, back injuries etc.

 

In a new body shop there is no more spot welding, but I did not hire in last year I have been around little bit, yes I have done allot of spot welding from re spot lines to KD lines, and sub build up spot welding as well.

 

I am not as young as you may think there Nap.

 

 

To Versa your apology seems sincere and is accepted by me at least, I don't try to say that every autoworker is the hardest worker in America. Just as their are lazy workers no matter what the job is, but to generalize all workers in one sector is not right no matter what the work is.

[Len_A]

Your father sounds like my Dad, he worked at Stamping, had four kids to support, lived in Dearborn Proper, paycheck to paycheck, worked in the old foundry, never a new car and I mean never (always fixed his own old Ford Trucks or cars), constant worry about strikes. I too bought my first house in Dearborn Proper in 1993 for $75,000 (15 minutes from the Rouge) and continued his legacy and the 3 before him by working at the DAP. It's a shame to see downtown Dearborn with all the for Lease signs especially when the downtown is fairly new. The middle class is getting squeezed!!!

I wouldn't be surprised if my dad & your dad knew each other. My dad bought a lot of used cars too, and I was the tool gofer when ever the brakes or the exhaust needed work. Plus one transmission rebuild. Plus suspension work. LOL! That's where I picked up the mechanical aptitude I needed for industrial sales.

 

When we moved from Dearborn Hts to Westland in 1998, my new neighbor, whose house got finished a month after mine moves in, nad damn if he doesn't look familar to me. Turns out he was a plumber/pipefitter from Dearborn Stamping and I sold a bunch of valve packing and sheet gasket to him, and my dad knew him from bumping into him in the cafeteria.

 

Now, my nice 1998 $212500 ranch, and new construction around here, as you know, means no landscaping, no windo treatments, no sprinkler system and no fence - spent another $10,000 on that, now isn't even worth $170,000, and that's if it sits for sale for a year. We did the traditional 20% down, 30 year mortgage and refinanced twice to take the lower interest rates. We owe about $156,000, so do the math. After you pay the real estate agents commission, we would lose all our equity. And we're full of "for lease" signs around Westland, too. If sad and frightening at the same time.

[1993Stang]

I wouldn't be surprised if my dad & your dad knew each other. My dad bought a lot of used cars too, and I was the tool gofer when ever the brakes or the exhaust needed work. Plus one transmission rebuild. Plus suspension work. LOL! That's where I picked up the mechanical aptitude I needed for industrial sales.

 

When we moved from Dearborn Hts to Westland in 1998, my new neighbor, whose house got finished a month after mine moves in, nad damn if he doesn't look familar to me. Turns out he was a plumber/pipefitter from Dearborn Stamping and I sold a bunch of valve packing and sheet gasket to him, and my dad knew him from bumping into him in the cafeteria.

 

Now, my nice 1998 $212500 ranch, and new construction around here, as you know, means no landscaping, no windo treatments, no sprinkler system and no fence - spent another $10,000 on that, now isn't even worth $170,000, and that's if it sits for sale for a year. We did the traditional 20% down, 30 year mortgage and refinanced twice to take the lower interest rates. We owe about $156,000, so do the math. After you pay the real estate agents commission, we would lose all our equity. And we're full of "for lease" signs around Westland, too. If sad and frightening at the same time.

We moved more downriver and new construction also and a lot higher property taxes. Our same house is selling for $185,000 when we purchased a very low fixed mortgage at $250,000 back in 2001. Hopefully things will change. But I think most people have put aside the fact that when they move into houses they stop thinking of them as investments instead of long term family homes like our parents once did. I knew when we bought our home it was for the long term (30 years or more) I will never look back and my children's happiness is priceless. Sure when we finally sell I hope I can retrieve most of what I put into it but just knowing that it will be all mine and not the banks is o.k. with me providing that loss of employment doesn't ruin it.

 

I'm sure our Dad's knew each other because you have your Ford family a lot more than your own family when you worked back in the day. Funny, but no new cars here either 2 Fords with over 100,000 miles on them but one thing is sure now, that nobody can say that the U.A.W. does not build a quality vehicle (we are proving it now). The new Chevy commercial was definitely pointing this out during the CMA's on t.v. last night. A truck being passed down from generation to generation. One guy had 2 million miles on his truck Should of said Built Ford Tough. Quality is Job ONE!!

[Versa-Tech]

I should be spilling my hated on you. Bastard Big Wig as I earned my Master's Degree while busting my ass on the line while you sat in an air conditioned office bullshitting about OEM's. Before you all got your cushy assed jobs, you should of earned it by humping on that line!! All you salaried folks do is compare yourself with the U.A.W. There are a lot of educated people on that line that are there for the same reason, to make a living!!!

Just to clear something up, I was a designer, not management. I busted my ass 12 years before I had the money to even go to school. I know what's it's like. You have to understand that as a designer, there is nothing worse than having penny-pinchers ruin your work. There was a general resentment among my team for the blue collar workers. We felt that their wages were a huge factor in the destruction of our ideas. It wasn't justified, but that's how we felt.

[Len_A]

Just to clear something up, I was a designer, not management. I busted my ass 12 years before I had the money to even go to school. I know what's it's like. You have to understand that as a designer, there is nothing worse than having penny-pinchers ruin your work. There was a general resentment among my team for the blue collar workers. We felt that their wages were a huge factor in the destruction of our ideas. It wasn't justified, but that's how we felt.

And it couldn't have helped to be two-thirds to three-quarters of the way done with a programs and have some penny-pincher, bean-counter come in and change the parameters of your program and send you back somewhere close to square one, or worse yet scrap it entirely just before it comes to fruition.

[descendents]

Can't say I ever done any roofing, but I can imagine how it would be tough as well.

 

I understand what you're saying (about the misuse of taxes), and even though I consider myself a fiscal conservative, I'm not without heart.

 

If the UAW, through the dues paid by the currently-working members, took over the costs of covering the retirees/laid-off workers benefits, then I am all for providing a bailout to the Big 3, but if a single dollar goes to maintain a "jobs bank" or 53%-higher-than-the-next highest-market-price for labor, then no. Can you blame anyone who doesn't receive such benefits for feeling that way?

 

I don't (and won't) defend any nefarious dealings of the executives (Enron or otherwise) whose sole motivation is to line their own pockets.

 

I, as a taxpayer, did not get a say in negotiations of these labor contracts, and feel absolutely no obligation. Sorry, but I don't.

 

The most substantial (and best) way for me, Joe Taxpayer, to support the Big 3 is to purchase one of their products. I have in the past, and hope to in the future. However, they won't get my support when I purchase their product, and they retroactively raise the price.

[descendents]

Ranger M, why must it always be about the UAW wages? What about the bail out to the financial industry, are any of there workers taking huge pay cuts? If what your saying is let the free market take its course, then there should be no bailout for anyone. Why would you support a bailout to an industry that have people making what you make in a year, in a day.

[Versa-Tech]

And it couldn't have helped to be two-thirds to three-quarters of the way done with a programs and have some penny-pincher, bean-counter come in and change the parameters of your program and send you back somewhere close to square one, or worse yet scrap it entirely just before it comes to fruition.

You aint kiddin. It was exactly for this reason that I left mass-market design altogether and moved to Italy. At least in exotics, you could finish the work that you had revised literally thousands of times so passionately. People there truly believed in the emotion of the lines, not just the current state of public opinion. Edited November 13, 2008 by Versa-Tech

[Hellcat]

Just to clear something up, I was a designer, not management. I busted my ass 12 years before I had the money to even go to school. I know what's it's like. You have to understand that as a designer, there is nothing worse than having penny-pinchers ruin your work. There was a general resentment among my team for the blue collar workers. We felt that their wages were a huge factor in the destruction of our ideas. It wasn't justified, but that's how we felt.

 

Those of us who work the line don't like penny-pinchers either. It's the penny-pinchers who want to do "time studies" so they can add more work to your job, and it's the penny-pinchers who eliminate concept vehicles that SHOULD make it to production, and would therefore keep us working.

Edited November 13, 2008 by Hellcat

[Len_A]

You aint kiddin. It was exactly for this reason that I left mass-market design altogether and moved to Italy. At least in exotics, you could finish the work that you had revised literally thousands of times so passionately. People there truly believed in the emotion of the lines, not just the current state of public opinion.

Yea, there's something about appealing to the lowest common denominator that really frustrates the artists and artisans, and frankly, I understand the frustration. That's why I almost bust out laughing when someone tells me the design of a Toyota or a Honda "speaks to (them)". What? A cookie cutter Japanese car "speaks to them" more than a GM, Ford, or Chrysler. Ah..yea..right. Cookie cutter is cookie cutter (I know - I'm driving one, but it's a Ford product and I'm damn proud of it).

[OldFordJim]

When I was at Dearborn Stamping I heard the same bragging from skilled trades too. I don't indite the line workers because of the featherbedding done by the skilled trades - they got their's now, with a lot of the repair work being outsourced. I'm not stupid - every location that the transplants located, including Honda, is in a particularly antiunion area. I assume the "same problems" you were referring to with the transplants is how physically rough many, if not most, of the assembly line jobs are even at Toyota, Honda, and Nissan? Of course they have the same problems, and they have an interesting way of handling it, too. They use a lot of temps for the physically harder jobs. You know it, and I know it. It also complicates trying to organize a plant, because temps work for the agency that technically sent them to the plant, so they don't work for the automaker directly. And the work is still physically hard, regardless of what you say. I see my friends in my subdivision come home from their Ford and GM Assembly jobs physically beat, especially when the weather is warmer outside and the plants heats up. Yea, it's easier today than it was twenty to thirty years ago, but most of my white collar peers are a bunch of pussies who couldn't handle half a shift, and they still look down their noses at blue collar workers, in the plants and outside in the construction trades. At least I lasted nine months.

 

You're not telling me anything I don't already know on the ergo assist, nut runners, etc. I've sold those to the Detroit 3, and I've seen the jobs become less physically taxing, and they're still hard jobs. Sorry I forgot to mention the mind numbing part - that's what got to me, along with the stamping plant's noise level. And I know construction jobs are physically hard -saw it first hand , both calling on the construction trades and when my house was built. And my subdivision was typical of the ones built in the Detroit area - all non union contractors. And a lot of my white collar peers, including some of my neighbors, still look down on blue collar workers, but I already mentioned that.

 

I'm full of beans? Bullshit. This has become a more college educated, more white collar economy, that unfortunately has more than it's share of snobbery, and that's even more apparent if you'd bother to go on the car enthusiasts web sites, including the car detailing web sites. They absolutely look down their noses on blue collar workers, and if, by some chance, the UAW Detroit 3 have to take pay cuts, I've seen more than my share of posters say they hope it forces Toyota's workers pay down, because damn it, no factory worker should earn more than they do.

 

Sorry, but guys like Pioneer are right - it's envy, plus a lack of respect for the fact that the industries like the auto industry, and unions like the UAW did more to build the middle class than any of these fools will ever admit. And it bugs the living shit out of me that someone like you would feel like the critics do. I guessed a long time ago that the "nap" in your screen name was probably Norfolk Assembly Plant. Yea, there's been me than our share of lazy bastards in the union, but there also been more than our share of anti-blue collar line supervisors still in GM plants, and I've seen it in front of me as recently as six to seven years ago. And that included comments of wanting telling then GM CEO Jack Smith to shove the UAW members are team members up Jack Smith's ass.

 

People who rip us UAW guys as lazy, uneducated good for nothings who know nothing about hard work should take a trip into just about any office building and watch white collar people work. I've heard and read countless stories about white collar workers sleeping at their desks, playing video games on the company computers, buying stuff online, standing around jaw jacking over coffee all the time. But that's ok, they went to college, the're entitled. A few years ago, I read a story about white collar people describing their day at work. One guy said how he fixed his desk so that when the boss walked by, he would only see his back. That way, he could nap at his desk, sitting up with a pencil in his hand like he was busy. Then he would wake up, tell someone he was going to meet a client, then go to an afternoon movie, then the bar afterwards. Yup, real hard worker.

[Hard Driver]

Full disclosure: I am not an autoworker, or in an auto-related profession, so my info is limited to what I can read in the news.

 

RangerM....this is a forum for Ford employees.

[lquidspine]

RangerM....this is a forum for Ford employees.

Don't be to hard on him this thread was started in the employee's forum, moved after the 3rd reply to Off Topic Discussion then after about the 2nd or third page was moved back to the employee's section.

Edited November 16, 2008 by lquidspine

[wixommm]

True enough Nap 90% of the spraying is now done by robots, some people choose to not wear their mask also true. Now I can not speak for all plants but DTP no longer does bids on sprayers, the simple reason why, when they cut prep time and environmental breaks back with the C.O.A's in 05 no one was interested in signing up for that job anymore.

 

I was not trying to say the auto industry has the highest mortality rate but I would be willing to bet it is a near leader in , carpel tunnel syndrome, back injuries etc.

 

In a new body shop there is no more spot welding, but I did not hire in last year I have been around little bit, yes I have done allot of spot welding from re spot lines to KD lines, and sub build up spot welding as well.

 

I am not as young as you may think there Nap.

 

 

To Versa your apology seems sincere and is accepted by me at least, I don't try to say that every autoworker is the hardest worker in America. Just as their are lazy workers no matter what the job is, but to generalize all workers in one sector is not right no matter what the work is.

 

I dont think they know that Wixom had KD spot welding full body sides til 2001, or that the Mark or the T-bird was spot welded mostly by hand. The LS had much more automation in body than the other car lines we ran. The Continental Braze booth, oh yeah that had great ventilation, only when in the space suit. Remember when it cought on fire, that was crazy. They never put money into Wixom body cuz it was paid for and they made money on it the way it was. Running 62 cars an hour on KD, really 124 bodysides it what it was, ahh the good old days. Some will never get it, unless you have walked the walk of the line, there is no place to judge.