Paradox said:
Apples and oranges, I doubt Hyundai employee's have as good benefits,
I guess "benefits" is a relative term. With the UAW, it seems to mean
"whatever we can force the company to give us TODAY, regardless of the
what will happen tomorrow."
As for Hyundai workers, it's not like they're working in sweatshops for
slave wages.
alot
easier to sell cars cheaper if you don't have alot of overhead. Unions are
what have done GM in, forcing more and more benefits without looking at
whats happening to the company that is supporting them. There is a rule
about biting the hand that feeds you.
Absolutely. Unions like the UAW exist more for their own sake than for
the workers or the companies. It's about power, not workers or product
quality and it comes back to bite them in the ass periodically. BTW, I
don't think you can let GM management off the hook, either. The workers
didn't make the decisons to continually build crappy products and bet
the farm on gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. The shortsightedness and
environment irresponsibility of GM is amazing.
As for quality issues, you get what you pay for.
Hmmm. Hyundai quality ranks right up there with Honda and Toyota, the
two best, but their prices are substantially lower. The reasons are
obvious; their costs are lower and they actually care about quality.
There's a big difference between the general asian attitude of "How can
we make it better for the price?" and the GM attitude of "How little do
we have to do to fool people into paying too much for it?" It seems that
asian companies are geared toward the thinking buyer, whereas GM has
always bet there will be enough of a "herd mentality" in the marketplace
to maintain their momentum. They were wrong.
There's a quote from Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., former President of GM that
really sums it up well. He state emphatically: "General Motors is not in
the business of making cars. General Motors is in the business of making
money!" GM has never learned that if you concentrate on the product, the
profits will naturally follow.