The mindset that destroyed General Motors was amply demonstrated the other day when one of Rick Wagoner's more obsequious friends managed to get space in the NYT (not a hard thing to do under the circumstances; the NYT is always happy to give op-ed space to the friends of the powerful and the rich) to attack Obama for Ricky's dismissal. William Holstein, author of a fawning ode to Wagoner's supposed "genius" entitled Why G.M. Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon, knows just where the blame lies and it isn't with GM's glorious, brilliant, charismatic, etc etc etc leadership.
Mr. Obama cited a “failure of leadership” as a reason for forcing out Mr. Wagoner. While not every decision Mr. Wagoner has made was wise, over all he had been putting G.M. through a wrenching restructuring that tried to undo decades of management acquiescence to the United Auto Workers.
(emphasis added)
There yah go. It's the goddam union's fault GM is in all this trouble.
Sonsabitches have been stealing GM blind with their outrageous demands. I mean partial health benefits, $25/hr wage scale, pensions? Who duh fuck they think they are? management? We put stale cookies in the commissary fer chrissake, what they want? Rick is a star. Look:
Mr. Obama indicated he did not believe G.M. had moved fast enough in
facing up to global competition. But the company is coming close to
achieving the cost structure of Toyota’s assembly plant in Georgetown,
Ky. — largely because Mr. Wagoner and his team stripped thousands of
dollars out of the cost of every vehicle. Fully one-half of the
company’s unionized work force has been laid off or taken buyout
packages, and the U.A.W. has agreed to a two-tier wage system in which
new workers make only $15 an hour. Just a few years ago that would have
been unimaginable.
(emphasis added)
Yessirree Bob, he whipped them dam greedy employees into shape. Made skilled workers accept less than the entry-level wages of a plumber's helper, laid em off, bought em off, cut their pensions and their health benefits to nothin. The man's a goddam saviour. You oughta be kneeling down to him, not firing him, you putz. He just won Car-of-the-Year for the Malibu, fer dawg's sake! What were you thinkin?
Well, Bill, considering the Malibu should have been retired 20 years ago because nobody wants the fucking thing, maybe your examples tend to prove my case better than yours. Yah think?
Making the workers the whipping boy is an obvious and pretty lame attempt to shift the blame for GM's shiftless, stodgy, antiquated corporate culture, a culture that refused to bend to the demands of time, refused to change, refused to build green cars, and fought every attempt to force them to adapt with higher mileage engines, cleaner fuels, and smaller ecological footprints by spending gazillions on lobbyists and advertising. A culture that year after year deliberately sabotaged efforts to improve public transportation or lower our reliance on fossil fuels. A culture whose greed and laziness always meant more to them than our national interests or what consumers wanted. A culture that literally drove millions of Americans to buy foreign cars because American carmakers wouldn't listen and refused to give them what they needed because it was easier not to.
The problem here is that Obama appears to have fired Wagoner not because he was going in totally the wrong direction but because his auto bail-out team (led by corporate raider Steve Rattner) convinced him he hadn't gone far enough in the wrong direction. Hadn't fired enough people, closed enough plants. You know, the usual Wall Street answer for every financial problem: cut the payroll. Because the usual Wall Street players NEVER consider that maybe cutting the $ten sof millions$ spent on lobbyists, fr'instance, might be a smarter decision than cuttingthe number of people who make cars. That maybe if the CEO and other executives took commercial flights instead of keeping private jets, that might be a more prudent use of company money.
But Obama's got the usual crew around him and the usual crewis coming up with the usual answers. Maybe they're there because that's what he wants to hear.
I'm still waiting for Obama to order GM to stop building the plant in Brazil.
GM's biggest problem was and is their infatuation with anything new. New models, new finance plans, new this new that. They are just not able to run a company that does a few things and do it well. Always looking for the next big thing that will lead them to the promised land of neverending profits and bonuses. It is almost as if they are bored with their jobs (managemant) and need a perpetual infusion of newness to make their lives enjoyable. Content within reason is what has made Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen what they are today. GM has a history of introducing new models advertising and promoting the hell out of them and when they begin to seel, move on to the next "NEW" model and leave whatever they were just promoting on it's own to wither and die. IMO
Posted by: lahru | April 01, 2009 at 03:14 PM