i read this article earlier today and it really got me thinking how far and how fast this nation has sunk.

http://news.yahoo...._generations_of_gm

Samarui, you will see GM be around for quite some time. They may stop selling some brands, but you will see them around.

paying some uneducated local hick to stand around and watch machines do work at 30 dollars an hour is whats killing the american auto industry, gotta love unions.

I don't see an end to General Motors as a whole... but certainly seems to be that the Union is dying.....and so it should. No disrespect to any unionized workers but today's working environments do not require unions... and consequently the archaic design of Unions do not support growth or success of todays businesses.

Posted by oddspot I don't see an end to General Motors as a whole... but certainly seems to be that the Union is dying.....and so it should. No disrespect to any unionized workers but today's working environments do not require unions... and consequently the archaic design of Unions do not support growth or success of todays businesses.

I agree. Look at what happened to the draftsman union! They resisted the change to CAD systems instead of embracing it so companies like Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Lockhead-Martin, Budd, Bombardier, and even GM, Ford, and Chrysler just stopped hiring draftsmen and started hiring white collar workers to be trained and work with CAD.

However, I do like to point out that CAW which is at Oshawa Car Assembly, is much more willing to change how they do business. They are working on converting Oshawa to a flex assembly line so they don't have that annoying retooling period.

Posted by Agent Skelly I agree. Look at what happened to the draftsman union! They resisted the change to CAD systems instead of embracing it so companies like Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Lockhead-Martin, Budd, Bombardier, and even GM, Ford, and Chrysler just stopped hiring draftsmen and started hiring white collar workers to be trained and work with CAD. However, I do like to point out that CAW which is at Oshawa Car Assembly, is much more willing to change how they do business. They are working on converting Oshawa to a flex assembly line so they don't have that annoying retooling period.

There's tons of examples of good work by the CAW and/or UAW... they don't do bad work. Just like GM, Chrysler Brampton also successfully ran a rolling car launch on an existing assembly line. Challengers run down the same line as 300's and Magnums and they added the car without shutting down the existing operation. Very impressive.
The structure of a Union in my opinion, was useful if not necessary at times when workers rights & working conditions were poor as was regulation....many many moons ago. Today...the goals, objectives and methodologies of unions are directly conflicting to that of business as a whole.

Posted by oddspot I don't see an end to General Motors as a whole... but certainly seems to be that the Union is dying.....and so it should. No disrespect to any unionized workers but today's working environments do not require unions... and consequently the archaic design of Unions do not support growth or success of todays businesses.

i disagree with some of your statement, but also understand some of it.

I am a member of the united steelworkers, Local 5, Ticonderoga NY

Posted by Samurai i disagree with some of your statement, but also understand some of it. I am a member of the united steelworkers, Local 5, Ticonderoga NY

I think he was talking about UAW, not unions in general.

Steel, Paper, Forestly, etc are a rather specialized skill and I can see then unionized due to that fact.

However, Auto manufacturing isn't that quite specialized anymore. Any bozo off the street with the smallest amount of training can do it.

Posted by Agent Skelly I think he was talking about UAW, not unions in general. Steel, Paper, Forestly, etc are a rather specialized skill and I can see then unionized due to that fact. However, Auto manufacturing isn't that quite specialized anymore. Any bozo off the street with the smallest amount of training can do it.

i disagree.
auto manufacture still has a level of specialization. i worked in the interior systems part of it and, yes, we would hire just about any bozo off the street, BUT they had one day to learn the job or they were gone. You would be amazed at how many people could not hack the work.

Posted by Samurai i disagree. auto manufacture still has a level of specialization. i worked in the interior systems part of it and, yes, we would hire just about any bozo off the street, BUT they had one day to learn the job or they were gone. You would be amazed at how many people could not hack the work.

Not to derail, but what did the work entail?

Posted by metawaffle Not to derail, but what did the work entail?

I worked fro Textron Automotive on a line building instrument panel assemblies for the Chevrolet Venture and Oldsmobile Silhouette minivans. The technical name of the was GMT 200 APV Line.
I was a waterjet operator.

not commonly realized, but the instrument panel is one of the most cost intensive pieces of a car to engineer and manufacture. The pieces of it are made in a plastic injection molding machine and assembled at one end of the line. There, the skeleton of the instrument panel takes shape. Hallibrand nuts are added and a coat of wax is added to certain surfaces. From there, the skeleton is hung on a hook to the drycasting station. Here, two drycasters take powdered vinyl and form the skin of the instrument panel. There are two guys here working back to back and they hang the skin on the skeleton as it passes down the line. From there, the skeleton and skin hit the foaming station. The stuff inside a dashboard begins as a binary liquid stored in two totes above the foaming station. Lines run from those totes to a foam gun where the liquid is mixed in tip of the gun. The loader will load the skeleton in one half of the foamer and the skin is place inside up in the lower half. He hits the ready button and moves on to the next machine while the foamer brings the gun in behind him. He pulls the trigger and sprays a bead of material on to the skin. As soon as this material hits atmosphere, it begins to catalize and foam. The foamer hits another button on the machine and the two halves close to allow the foam to fill in the spaces between skin and skeleton. At this stage there are five foam stations and everything is running like a clock, a rhythm.

After a set period of time, the machine opens and the unloader pulls the dash assembly out of the foamer and hangs it on a hook, or hands it directly to the waterjet operator. That was me. I ran two waterjet tables simultaneously and out of three shifts, was the only one who could. At this point, the waterjet is employed to cut out the patters for the vents, passenger side airbag, and excess foam and skin. It is also where flaws or bad foams are found and stopped. The panel is placed on the table and clamped using air solenoids. Once I hit the go button, the table slides in and the waterjet goes to work. The model that I worked with was older and used something called block logic. I learned quickly how to program it and could on the run, which annoyed the guy that actually was the technician. Hey, we were not union, so i got away with it. Anyways, the waterjet follows its course and at the conclusion, slides the finished instrument panel out to me where I pulled off everything that the jet cut. I had a garbage can right beside me for the scrap and on the other side of the table I had two pickers... that was the next station; The Pickers.

These folks did the fine inspection work and pulled all the excess material out of places I simply did not have the time to do. They were the final say on whether or not it was put on the subline. It was very easy to bury the pickers and sometimes we did simply for the grade school fun of doing it.

After the pickers, the panel is placed on the subline where the vents, airbags, back plates and wiring harness are installed. From there, it is placed in a rack and transported out the warehouse for the trip to Doraville, GA where the Assembly Plant was located.

we were required to put out 425 instrument panels a night or we worked saturday.

Thanks, Sam, that's interesting stuff. Was it as mind-numbing as it sounds, though?

Posted by metawaffle Thanks, Sam, that's interesting stuff. Was it as mind-numbing as it sounds, though?

i worked on a good crew and hung around with the people from drycasting and foam.

We've got a Textron plant out here, about 25 minutes south of me in Port Hope, too. I know quite a few people who have worked there.

Posted by Agent Skelly I think he was talking about UAW, not unions in general. Steel, Paper, Forestly, etc are a rather specialized skill and I can see then unionized due to that fact. However, Auto manufacturing isn't that quite specialized anymore. Any bozo off the street with the smallest amount of training can do it.

Actually a little of both. Definitely what i refer to applies to the UAW... but I'm not educated enough to blanket that statement to ALL unions. I know there are some legitimately specialized unions... to which the union structure serves well. I also know in a lot of cases its just a bunch of people who don't actually do anywhere near the same job in the same industry, banding together as a union for what I consider to be an attempt at controlling a workforce. My father used to run the Canadian division of a big corporation... and all of the distribution employees (shipper rcvrs) were members of some needleworkers union. I have no logical explanation for such.

I do have a question though... for anyone who knows tons about the inner workings of unions... how does strike pay work? I understand the basics but in reality if you go out on strike... how much are you being paid and what are you responsibilities while yo're on strike?

Odds

where i work, we have a no-strike clause in our contract.

Posted by oddspot Actually a little of both. Definitely what i refer to applies to the UAW... but I'm not educated enough to blanket that statement to ALL unions. I know there are some legitimately specialized unions... to which the union structure serves well. I also know in a lot of cases its just a bunch of people who don't actually do anywhere near the same job in the same industry, banding together as a union for what I consider to be an attempt at controlling a workforce. My father used to run the Canadian division of a big corporation... and all of the distribution employees (shipper rcvrs) were members of some needleworkers union. I have no logical explanation for such. I do have a question though... for anyone who knows tons about the inner workings of unions... how does strike pay work? I understand the basics but in reality if you go out on strike... how much are you being paid and what are you responsibilities while yo're on strike?

Strike pay comes from your union.

We can't strike where we work, but we pay for others that do, which is why our damn dues went up like 5 bucks. We're paying for a huge strike fund for other USW shops.

Usually you have to file paperwork with whoever administrates the fund. There's a certain allowance that each local is allowed to get from the fund and there's an allowance, if I remember what I read correctly, that each worker gets per week or month or whatever their disbursement period is. Extra benefits can become available based on need if you petition the union or fill out some extra forms. Also your health insurance can be paid through the strike fund, depending on whatever your state's COBRA law is.

Strike benefits pay something around 100 dollars a week for a member of United Steelworkers, according to the USW website, until the 8th week, then it goes up to 115 dollars, with a 100 dollar bonus for Christmas week. Also there's information on obtaining other additional funds, based on need.

What they normally ask you to do is help out in some way, like if there's a picket line or something, they want you to show up. Or help a union brother or sister if they need it, or they might hold a collection of funds for people who are less well off or people that have large families, things of that nature. Well, I qualify that by saying that our union would do that, because that's just what we do when someone's sick or injured or someone dies. Other than that, this is what you pay union dues for. It's a slap in the face if you ask me, considering people like me pay 42.50 a month for next to nothing.

Shael

Posted by Shael people like me pay 42.50 a month for next to nothing.

you mean '...for nothing.'

hey look at that I learned something already... i didn't know it was the unions that paid for the strike pay. cool

but according to my basic math, the idea of striking to fight for wages etc.. seems to be a financial loss if the strike lasts any period of time. So if a union member normally making 20 / hr --- 800 a week goes on strike he's now down 700 dollars a week.

If he's on strike for say 3 weeks... he's out 2 grand give or take. If the union is battling for $1.00 per hour increase that's 40 bucks a week... which roughly amounts to 2 grand per year.

I just did that math in my head so i'm not sure how accurate I am with any of that...but it seems to me that the idea of striking to protect anything... is at best a break even scenario.

Honestly though correct me if i'm wrong, because i do want to learn from the union members here as much as i'm against them for the most part.

Maybe part of my sourness is because i'm somewhat of an arrogant independant prick lol and a capitalist ... so i don't like anyone to be in charge of my decision making or destiny (especially income) ... and especially not a team of people working in another state or province who just happened to have been part of the same 'union' .

I'm with United Steel Workers as well, Local 1005. I was laid off in Nov. of last year as was a bunch of my family. My father is also a union member of 1005. The union is covering both of us to go back to school for retraining. I'm not entirely sure about the strike pay up here in Canada, I'll have to dig out my collective agreement to see about that. But I'm very grateful I have a union that is helping my family and I.