In Ford Decision To Build Mexico Plant, UAW Is Only Getting What It Asked For

[akirby]

Fuzzy wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he?

[akirby]

Also - if you're able to do more than one job and others aren't that makes you more valuable. And your supervisor would know this.

[fordmantpw]

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.

Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.

[fuzzymoomoo]

Also - if you're able to do more than one job and others aren't that makes you more valuable. And your supervisor would know this.

Indeed. What we're concluding here is there are more relative measures than absolute ones.

[akirby]

Indeed. What we're concluding here is there are more relative measures than absolute ones.

 

There are two pieces to performance: What you accomplished relative to your goals and what you did relative to your peers. If you're deciding raises and bonuses you look at the first one. If you're deciding who gets laid off you look at the second one.

[RichardJensen]

 

The same way every other business in America does it. Your performance is rated against everyone else once or twice per year. It's the same ranking system that determines salary and bonuses.

 

If the defect rate for a completely assembled vehicle is less than 1% (which going by IQS reports that include grouching about the way things work seems appropriate), then this is what we're looking at:

 

240,000 vehicles -> less than 2,400 defects in a plant that employs ~3,000 people -> less than one defect per employee per year -> So what's your baseline for judgment? One defect per year?

 

How are you going to track those defects? Those numbers above are extrapolations based on statistical sampling. You're going to have a hard time identifying a good employee from a bad one based on statistical sampling, given the number of potential problem areas, the number of employees, and the likelihood that certain problems are only going to be reported once in a survey.

 

Are you going to survey every single buyer of every single car in order to determine exactly which assembly line worker improperly installed a seat that one time resulting in an annoying squeak, in order to document that mistake and either fire him, withhold pay raises, or refuse to offer him work elsewhere if the plant closes? Assuming, of course, that you can definitively establish that a production defect is attributable to a particular employee and is not the result of another employee on the line either tweaking an already installed part or making it impossible to install a part properly--much less wear and tear by the owner of the vehicle, dealer prep issues, etc., etc.

 

Cars are so exceptionally well made today that it seems almost impossible to assess assembly line workers on the basis of their finished product.

 

Absenteeism is about the only criteria that would be easily measurable and have some bearing on your value to the company.

Edited April 8, 2016 by RichardJensen

[akirby]

You're making this way more difficult than it really is. A supervisor deals with employees on a daily basis. They know good employees from bad employees. They know who can learn new tasks and who can't. They know who shows up early and leaves late. They know who gets along with others and who doesn't.

 

If they're told to cut 10% of their headcount, they know who needs to be cut and who doesn't.

[fuzzymoomoo]

Factory defects aren't necessarily a good gauge either. If a car has a defect off the line, it is repaired and sometimes they do a batch hold to check things with a fine tooth comb. Other than attendance and stuff the supervisors can physically see, there really is no good metric as it pertains to the value of a person on an assembly line.

 

Edit- or what Richard said

Edited April 8, 2016 by fuzzymoomoo

[akirby]

I've done way more than my share of arguing today so I'm just going to let this one slide.

[strtrkstooge]

I've long believed that Unions are ticks that suck the life blood out of municipalities, states, feds, and companies. They bankrupted the city of Detroit in more ways then just the auto industry and many other cities cant bring in enough to pay for all of the unfunded liabilities. I place the lion share of the US auto industries decline on the unions. If you have to pay more than the foreign competition for wages and benefits, you will have to charge more for your product. Publically owned companies are simply doing what the market allows them to do.

[fuzzymoomoo]

Uh, check your facts bro. Unions had little to do with the decline of Detroit. Corrupt politicians and a city that was too big to sustain itself were the main causes.

 

For as revered as he is in Detroit for whatever god forsaken reason, Coleman Young was not a good dude. He should not have been mayor for as long as he was.

[jasonj80]

Uh, check your facts bro. Unions had little to do with the decline of Detroit. Corrupt politicians and a city that was too big to sustain itself were the main causes.

 

For as revered as he is in Detroit for whatever god forsaken reason, Coleman Young was not a good dude. He should not have been mayor for as long as he was.

The lack of willingness to change and Us vs Them mentality is what doomed Detroit as well as GM and Chrysler. Coleman, Mcnamara and Patterson are all on the same page, the one that really should of went to prison had their wife elected governor then booked it for Cali when she was done. Even as powerful as they were they couldn't make drastic changes because the Unions were so strong and if they went against them they would be voted out, even when they tried with the required binding aberration, cities/counties couldn't cut when it was necessary because of boards stacked against them, this still plays true today. Evans was elected because he was the Unions choice for County Executive he was going to do the least amount of cuts to them, though like a good politician he lied to them got them to support him, then F***** them HARD. If you want to meet some of the worst Unions to deal with is ASFME, POAM and IAFF they truly think they walk on water, and you're pretty much always going to binding arbitration with them because what do they have to lose. Teamsters and UAW are mellow and easy to get along with comparatively.

[fuzzymoomoo]

The only problem I have with unions as it pertains to the downfall of Detroit is there's too damn many of them. They seriously have a union for everything. There's no way the city can bargain with every single one of them and remain solvent. Consolidate the unions into 2 or 3 big ones and make it easier to do business.

[jasonj80]

The only problem I have with unions as it pertains to the downfall of Detroit is there's too damn many of them. They seriously have a union for everything. There's no way the city can bargain with every single one of them and remain solvent. Consolidate the unions into 2 or 3 big ones and make it easier to do business.

Sadly it's not just Detroit that is that way, most suburban cities around Detroit have 6-10+ unions, you are basically always under negotiation with one, and then the next one wants everything that group got, plus a few other things. When there was infighting or different rules in terms of leadership those people couldn't be in the same union and a new union was created and voted on. Joke is, If you want to know everything in the Police contract, ask a Fire Fighter.

[akirby]

It's in the best interest of the negotiators on both sides to have new contracts every 2-4 years. It keeps them employed and allows them to correct things they didn't like in the previous contract. It's all a big game and the companies, consumers and where governments are involved, the residents have to suffer through it.