[distortedloop]

doglesby said:

Finally, the name is Steve Jobs, so "his Jobness" makes no sense.

Jobness, Jobsness. It was a typo, but you knew who and what I meant. You've never made a typo? ;-)

That aside, forgive the cross-posting of your comments along with someone else's; though marked as a reply to you, it was intended as a reply to several different posts.

[richcon]

[quote name='distortedloop']
>

richcon said:

>
> Actually that's a misconception, mostly pushed by business leaders and politicians who already have an anti-union bone to pick. Workers aren't paid nearly as much as some politicians have claimed (and newspapers have reported).

Spoken like a union member.

I'm not a union member. :) I'm just looking at the situation through impartial eyes, using the best information I have available.

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I did not quote the $75 per hour figure. My father-in-law worked for GM as an assembly line worker for 30+ years. His next door neighbor a similar amount of time. I am well aware of what their salaries and benefits were, and what they say actually did all night long at work. Granted, things may have changed in the last ten years since his retirement.

Nor did I say you did. That number's been bounced around, I was just pointing out that the numbers people are quoting in the news are inflated.

Of course, companies should be allowed to demand a high level of performance out of their workers, union or not.

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I have dealt with three different unions in my industry in the last 25 years. Trust me, they are no boon to any company. It's little coincidence that the only airline in the US to consistently remain profitable over the years is the one that isn't unionized.

Nothing I wrote was meant to be a defense of unions in general. There are examples of times unions acting against their own interest, such as the San Francisco Longshoreman's Union that protested mechanizing the city's port, causing the shipping industry to move to Oakland and its more technology-friendly workers.

My point is only that the problems in Detroit are not located in its unions. Sure, there are costs that can be saved by cutting benefits -- but the cost of American-made cars isn't the issue. American-made cars are already cheaper than imports. People just don't want to buy American-made cars anymore, not with gas prices where they've been.

If the unions really did insist on a contract with no accountability, where management can't enforce anything or fire anyone, then the Big Three should have simply told them to go screw their collective selves. Union contracts don't mean anything if the company refuses to sign them. If you're right and the Detroit simply caved to union pressure, that's on them. But I suspect there's more at play here than that.

By the way, I'm a personal fan of Southwest Airlines (who I assume you're referring to). Fly 'em next week, in fact.

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We're really getting off topic though. Are you really trying to suggest that Steve Jobs could turn around the auto industry....?

Who knows? This is an "alternate reality" article anyway.

[distortedloop]

Yep, Southwest.

richcon said:

If the unions really did insist on a contract with no accountability, where management can't enforce anything or fire anyone, then the Big Three should have simply told them to go screw their collective selves. Union contracts don't mean anything if the company refuses to sign them. If you're right and the Detroit simply caved to union pressure, that's on them. But I suspect there's more at play here than that.

On unions, it's really not as simple as management not signing a contract if the union's demands are too much. Unions have a lot of Federal protections and regulations mandating how they are dealt with. There's even an entire Federal agency (NLRB) devoted to that task.

Strikes, walkouts, binding arbitration, pickets; it gets ugly when the two parties don't come to terms. Pretty easy for some unions to shut down a business or severely cripple them if negotiations break down. I think we may see more pain in the entertainment industry as the screen actors prepare to strike, just as the writers shut down most of Hollywood last year with their strike.

The rest of your points I don't disagree with.

[Alan]

The last and only time I flew with Southwest the pilots were very young and presumably inexperienced and presumably not well paid. Usually that leads to turnover which is not very good for safety, but really I am just guessing here.

Regarding unions, I am not a big fan of them, but the problems with the automakers is not due completely to unions, it is owing to their design policy. When I buy a car, I buy a design policy result. If the designs are fundamentally made to break easily then it doesn't matter how much the unions are paid.

I am not an expert on the Japanese but they do have a history of taking a good idea or design, like a car, or a sword, and honing it to being a very well made thing of beauty. This is a very generalized statement but there is enough truth in it to maybe make a statement of what Apple or I guess you could say Steve Jobs has done with the various things he has touched. He may not be fun to work with and other things, but as a consumer I am not concerned with the politics of a company.

It has been my experience that the politics in a company either suit you or they don't. If you like the direction the company is going in, it is usually connected with whether you are doing well yourself with the tide. At that point if you don't like it then there will always be reasons why the boss is this that or the other thing.

I used to work in a place that was well known worldwide in their particular field. The boss was someone that I got along extremely well. He scratched my proverbial back and vice versa. I left there when I had outgrown the place, but I know other people that hated the guy and said nothing but bad things about him. I knew he was a screw but I just got over it. I knew that he kept the business afloat and the standards high so it would stay afloat. If he tried to "do me" I pointed it out to him in a gentlemanly fashion. I went to his retirement party at great expense.

[Alan]

Here is a newsclip on a Ford plant in Brazil FWIW
Ford's most advanced assembly plant
http://info.detnews....dex.cfm?id=1189

I still don't think I would buy one because the designs are still too frangible for me.

[Tom_Diola]

Apple has only 20,000 employees.
Those Car Manufacturers have many more than that.
Apple doesn't have the Unions to deal with.
I think imho that unions have served their usefulness and should be disassembled.