[quote=CricketOnTheHearth]I think I might have started the latest Temecula thing with my price comparison (not necessarily accurate numbers) between a Temecula house and one in India.
No diss of Temecula intended at all. I just mentioned it because it is a locale that comes up a lot on this board 😀
Flu, sorry to hear of all the krap you’ve gotten for being Asian. I wouldn’t doubt it, after hearing about Microsoft’s little trick of anchoring a couple hundred Indian programmers on a boat 3 miles out to sea, to program out there so they wouldn’t have to officially bring them into the country.
The UAW has a 1000 acre golf course?????
I’m sorry, but while I am as in favor of the idea(l) of unions as the next person, that does it for me. The UAW has become as ossified and stiff-necked as GM (mis)management itself. Both need to be freshened up (rebuilt from scratch?)
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Oh, not everyone has been an ass. But I’ve said it before, frankly, contrary to what folks may believe, I don’t take pleasure in seeing something like GM crumble….Because as I have said so many times, when that happens, we’re just a split months away from seeing a bunch of holligans start up asian bashing that happened in the 70ies, 80ies and 90ies. First it’s exports from Asian that’s the problem. Exports from Japan, exports from Taiwan, exports from China…Then media and the general masses start simplify the terms… It’s Japanese exports that’s the problem, it’s the Chinese exports that’s the problem. And pretty soon, we get some holligans that simplify the japanese,chinese,koreans are stealing “our jobs”.
Whenever there is some inequity done by some asian country some asian company, every other asian (immigrant or otherwise) ends up paying the price for this…This happens at all levels, government, your middle class assembly worker,etc.
I recall in 80ies when Toshiba sold defense trade secrets to the Russians there was this backlash against Toshiba and japan. And pretty soon anyone that looked japanese or asian was immediately suspected of espionage. I had relatives and family friends who weren’t even japanese had security clearances pulled temporarily. Coworkers that routinely escorted some of these people “just in case”.
Then during in the clinton administration, there was the repeat of this suspected espionage from a Taiwanese dude that worked at Lawrance Livermore Labs, for which the Fed did a masterful job framing him up as a spy. After a few years of imprisonment without clear charges, one judge finally dismissed the case citing this as smear campaign. You know that’s perfectly fine…Because since then, I share the same attitude with several others which is to boycott doing any defense related work… Some of us will never work in the defense industry or anything that requires us to get a security clearance, and rather stay unemployed frankly. This country has proven time and time again that Depending on how you look at it, in a couple of years, this country will have to look for talent to fill in those defense jobs. Perhaps that’s why our government is cozing up to india…because it knows that it’s not going to be able to partner effectively with Japan/China(obviously)/Taiwan etc when it comes to military technology. I just hope when that happens, our trade secrets don’t end up in the hands of some of extreme jihadist.
As far as this Asia bashing, I’m just curious why Japan and China is such a hot button when it comes to some “patriotic” americans especially about the auto industry WHEN fact is a german company (Volkswagon group) is on track to be the largest auto manufacturer, soon to surpass toyota. Where is all the german auto industry bashers, claims of unfair trade practices in the EU? EU trade sanctions to my understanding are considerably worse. Is it quite possible of contempt/jealousy that success of some of these once third asian countries? I really don’t get it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think majority of americans that I would consider bigotted…One of the virtues of living in California i suppose and why I would never be caught dead living some parts of the U.S.
But it is frustrating to me to see folks piss on other people’s successes when they failed themselves due to some poor decisions made on their own part….
Some interesting reasons why the US industry fell soo far behind sooo quickly…..Labor rules that restricted innovations. Example: Job Bank…You might have read about these things. I won’t go into details, since media is picking up on these…BUT, originally the intentions (well intentions to protect folks from going unemployed), were to provide for income when one was laidoff from work….Except if one reads what the job bank program was doing, it had a very big impact on US auto industry could (or could not innovate)….
“According to that document, the basic guarantee from the 1987 agreement is that no eligible employee will be laid off over the term of the agreement, except under the following specific circumstances. 1)Reduced customer demand, a maximum of 42 weeks over the life of the agreement (commonly known as loss of marketshare); 2)Acts of God or other conditions beyond the control of management; 3)Conclusion of an assignment known in advance to be temporary; and 4) Plant rearrangement or model changeover.”
More interesting…..
“Eligible employees can not be laid off because of new technology (robots), sourcing decisions, or company-implimented efficiency actions.
There are generally three states of layoff: temporary layoffs where workers know their return date, indefinite layoffs where workers get 48 weeks of unemployment benefits and a supplemental from their employer equal to 100 percent of your salary. After 48 weeks workers are reemployed by the Job Bank, at which time they receive 95 percent of their salary. They don’t get seniority, but they do continue to receive health benefits. While in protected status, employees may be assigned to training programs, certain non-traditional jobs, openings at other UAW locations (they only have to accept them if the job is within 100 miles of their home, otherwise they can stay in job banks), and other assignments “consistent with the intent of the program.””
Is there any surprise why the big three fell behind soo fast and why it has so much problems making a profit for each car????? I don’t know, but if I were a company that had to pay for BOTH innovation/automation to keep competitive and still support a large workforce when it no longer needed it, I’d be scratching my head how I could turn a profit….
The biggest irony to all this is that my understanding is that the job bank program is only currently “suspended”… It hasn’t been officially eliminated permanently, as i believe it is still part of what is being negotiated as part of this bailout for GM.
To me, it seemed the choices should have been made a long time ago to axe a good portion of the labor and save the entire ship with the remaining passengers, as normal companies do. GM/Chrysler in part was strongarmed and took the other route and tried to keep plugging a leaky boat while keeping everyone on it, and effectively the entire boat is about to sink….
I can’t fathom how things would look if the software industry would have had similar labor rules…Would every employer have to keep on payroll a Cobol programmer from the 70ies that didn’t/couldn’t retool/retrain plus hire 1 new programmer on the latest technology stack to actually get the work done? Fortunately, I doubt we ever find out the answer to that social experiment.
