Chrysler is closing all its plants until Jan. 19th. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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Chrysler is closing all its plants until Jan. 19th. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Ford is also closing most of their plants for longer than the usual holiday shut-down. I suspect that GM will be next and still little Nero in DC fiddles while Michigan sinks into a depression.
GM is giving its workers at Kansas City’s Fairfax Plant 5 weeks off. From the first of the year to Feb.09 more or less. And this is the plant that is producing its best selling car the Chevy Malibu. The writings on the wall and the Republicans aren’t reading.
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/935256.html
Maybe, the Republicans are reading the writing on the wall. Maybe, they just want to hurt people, after all, the auto workers are not exactly aristocrats.
and it just gets worse.
merry christmas uaw:
and gm is stopping construction on the new engine plant in flint michigan, the one that was going to build their next generation 4 banger that was scheduled to go into the new volt and cruze models scheduled for roll out in 2010.
but things aren’t going to bad overseas:
gonna be a lot of fallout from these actions, all of it negative.
Even Toyota will stop building its plant in Mississippi which means the Toyota Pirus will still be built in Japan.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Toyota-suspend-building-new-plant/story.aspx?guid={D8632B3D-86C7-4059-BF42-594977F8C7C9}
As the dollar caves, building cars in the South or China doesn’t help. And if no one’s buying you can’t build a car cheap enough to sell.
yup, yup…gotta preserve those bonuses and incentives for the Execs.
Lord knows, if the factories continued running, the money for the bonuses would have had to go and pay the workers. Heaven forfend, we can’t have THAT happening….
This contraction is picking up speed. The unemployment claims over the next two months will easily top the 533,000 of last month. The Republicans sit and stare while another million jobs are lost by inauguration day. The bailout would have eased some of this pain. Quickly and easily.
They don’t care!
Perfect approach for the Shock Doctrine.
If you haven’t yet – go read the book. It was published last year, but the insight is very much applicable in today’s turmoil. The (lack of) actions of the Congressional Republicans are well understood once you’ve read it…
in all the discussion surrounding the big 3 and they’re impending demise, very little attention is paid to their overseas subsidiary’s and market share/profitablity. the sunday lat, back on dec 7, had this interesting article about gm’s foreign operations:
when you combine those numbers with this:
now l grant that they’re hurting big time and that the consequences of a massive failure are unacceptable, and l do support a bailout with conditions. however, these things never get talked about.
since l’m neither a corporate nor a bankruptcy attorney, l can only assume that because of NAFTA, shell corporations, etc, that these other assets and the profits made are in some fashion off limits.
this whole scenario of shutting everything stateside down smacks of holding a gun to our heads. if l was a cynical person, l’d be tempted to think that somebody’s trying to pull a fast one.
for Obama’s future failure.
No conscience.
Just politics.
Frankly…I think that the Rats won the election.
By losing it.
I am beginning to believe that they threw it on purpose and are now fighting from the bottom because they think that they have a move that will put them on top again in 2010 and 2012.
Watch.
This explains a lot.
It explains McCain’s apparently miraculous recovery from a sort of rigid, humorless, stammering insensibility to his usual charming, affable self after the election was over.
It explains that AWFUL “mistake” of picking Sarah Palin to run as VP.
It explains the apparently unruffled feathers of our lame fuck of a president and his Rovian accomplices.
It explains this blocking of funds for the auto industry.
It explains the “sudden” unmasking of Governor Rod Istoledabitch as not exactly a straight arrow.
Bullshit.
Fitzgerald is a plant. He is the hand that you are SUPPOSED to be watching in this little magic act. Bet on it. Just as he was during the Scooter Libby dumbshow. Whatever happened to that Rove/Cheney indictment idea again?
Bullshit.
Bullshit redux.
it explains a lot.
Watch.
it ain’t over yet.
Not by a long shot.
In martial arts, there are whole styles of fighting that center around winning from an inferior position.
Watch.
AG
Arthur, sometimes some of what you write is illuminating. Please try to structure some thoughts as paragraphs, though.
Why?
Can’t you understand what I am writing this way?
I do write in paragraphs sometimes, when I think that it will assemble my thoughts in a more easily accessed way.
Other times I don’t.
Why?
For the same reason.
I mean…I’m not wasting any paper, right?
It’s no more expensive for me to be somewhat…expansive, right?
So why do some people seem to resist this style?
My own answer?
Because it’s different.
So it goes.
Loosen up.
Change happens.
Later…
S.
For me, AG’s posts in this form read as poetry.
assembly line workers in my life. They were both, by their own admission, overpaid and underworked. One told me of drunken afternoons on the job when plant tour guides would call visitors’ attention to how happy the guys were in their work.
You want to protect people who are getting screwed?
Take up the cause of the chambermaids who clean up shit for minimum wage. Take up the cause of busboys and waitresses.
The UAW hasn’t earned your support.
so you don’t believe in Unions? You story reminds of the Regan story about the Cadillac driving mother of three on welfare. I think the UAW, SEIU, UFCW, Teamsters, Steelworker Unions represent their members in manner that corporations will not walk all over the worker.
Then when the corporations go belly up the UAW can use it’s own funds to ensure that their workers are not “walked all over”.
You do realize that a large portion of work in the auto industry is done by workers who are not union, right? Have you ever heard the phrase “3rd party contractor”? If the auto companies file bankruptcy, at least the line workers have the union to argue on their behalf…the people who work for the contractors are not union and are going to be royally fucked, and the economy of Michigan, though royally fucked already, will be even more so.
This is much more complicated than you are trying to make it out to be.
Yup, those two workers represent all the line workers who have ever existed. Just like the lazy teacher down the hall from me is a fair representative of all the teachers in my building. Not to mention every white boyfriend I ever had who cheated on me – all two of them. Two cheating boyfriends = all white males cheat.
Hmmm…where is my husband anyway?
of the culture on their jobs. They did not live in a bubble. If you’re under the impression that auto workers are oppressed, overworked members of the proletariat, you are living in dream world.
Where did you get the impression that I think that they are part of the oppressed proletariat? I never said any such thing. What an odd assumption. I do think that they are working class guys many of whom will have few options when their jobs go belly up.
Ed J, you seem to have the view that this is a zero sum game, where people who are overpaid and underworked are so at the expense of those who are underpaid and overworked. Is that the case? If so, I think it is a fundamentally flawed way to look at the way that employees are treated in the current job environment.
Of course, auto workers are not overworked and oppressed. They got a strong union to protect them.
As I said above – is their “strong union” gonna protect them when their company goes bankrupt?
If you are implying that the union caused the bankruptcy, then, maybe we should follow the European practice and put union representatives on the company’s board of directors. Or maybe we should replicate William Edward Demings program of statistical quality control whereby management pays very close attention to the suggestions of the workers.
If I am not mistaken, Deming tried to convince Detroit bigwigs to adopt his ideas, but, unlike the Japanese executives, the Americans would have little or none of this sharing of power. Too bad, cuz the Japanese systems appears to be vastly superior.
Well, if you have known TWO, then it must be true of ALL of them.
I once knew a blog contributor that was an idiot, so I guess they all must be…
Where is the evidence for this ridiculous, anti union charge? You make a statement like this, then, you cite the source; otherwise, why should anyone pay any attention to you? How long have you worked for management?
Maybe if the chambermaids, busboys, and waitresses HAD a union, you could bitch about THEM being overpaid and underworked.
Let me see. Two assembly line workers. Times a million.
Yeah, all assembly line workers are drunken, lazy bums. Let the unions fail, put millions out of work and tumble into a depression because there were two guys that Ed knew who were drunks.
Next, Ed tells us why all civil rights laws should be rolled back based on the actions of a kid who stole his lunch money in fifth grade.
C’mon Bob, the lunch money theory explains why half the conservatives in this country exist.
Can you please point out where I suggested the “rollback” of any laws?
I’m trying to find out if all North American production will stop? The stories I have read don’t seem to say, but my guess is yes.
Unfortunately, all 3 of the car companies have too much inventory.
Hi Toni,
according to CNN online Chrysler is stopping all U.S. production for a month. A total of 30 plants closed, beginning end of business, Friday.
Thanks super. I was looking at the Canadian papers to see if we here in Windsor would be hit.
I just grabbed the paper off the porch. It looks like the local mini van plant will be shut down. I guess I had missed it, but the article also says that all of its activity in Windsor will be shut down until February 2.
Hey, only 1/3 of the continent is paid like Mexican workers. Let’s go for all of North America.
…so maybe this is part of their plan to limp into a real bailout under Obama.
(cliks ruby red heels three times and repeats above comment)
Most analysts I’ve read suggest that bankruptcy restructuring isn’t an option and if any one of these companies files for bankruptcy it will either be liquidation or will rapidly spiral into liquidation.
And given that their assets are nearly worthless if the companies aren’t making cars (most of their assets are buildings and machinery used to build autos – the land is worth something but that’s about it if they aren’t a functional business), liquidation wouldn’t end up good for anyone – even the folks buying the assets.
So, yeah – I suspect that they’re doing what they can to limp along at the moment. I imagine it will push the economy further into the crapper as they do it too. I’d like to think that would cause the idiots in the GOP to wake the fuck up and realize that this shouldn’t be a big game of chicken, but I don’t think that’s likely.
With all due respect, but do you think the party of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan, Bush and Bush cares anything about the plight of the working man and woman in a major recession or depression? Does it ever look beyond its own pocketbook?
Chrysler is in a terrible position. With no high mileage small cars, the best they’ve got is the PT Cruiser and the Caliber. The rest of their product mix is especially ill-suited for the current state of affairs.
My neighbor works (ed) for Chrysler. He works (ed) very long hours, often six days a week. Even with his being “overpaid” an all, I doubt that his house is worth the mortgage on it. I don’t think his case is unusual. This will be an extremely long month of waiting and seeing for he and his family. Merry Christmas. (aren’t we glad that the White House wouldn’t be “rushed” into an aid package for the Big Three?) BTW, where is the 700 Billion these days, and what is it being used to do??