GM Govt. Bailout?

[TLyttle]

Abolish the unions? Sure, go right ahead, put labour back 130 years, back to 14-hour work days (6 1/2 of 'em), your house is owned by the Company, and you buy your meagre groceries at the Company store, hell of a fine idea! Andrew Carnegie lives! He made so much money off the worker he had to put together a corporation to get rid of it. I'm all for that, alright...

If Management was fair, there would be no reason for unions.

BTW, just heard on the news: a long-term employee of GM said that, 25 years ago, there was one supervisor for every 120 workers, now it is one supervisor for every 18 workers. Gee, could that be the problem???

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by TLyttle

Abolish the unions? Sure, go right ahead, put labour back 130 years, back to 14-hour work days (6 1/2 of 'em), your house is owned by the Company, and you buy your meagre groceries at the Company store, hell of a fine idea! Andrew Carnegie lives! He made so much money off the worker he had to put together a corporation to get rid of it. I'm all for that, alright...

Kind of doubt it, especially in western Countries. In the US, at least, Union workers do not necessarily make more money than non-Union workers in the same field. They also don't necessarily enjoy more job security.

Might interest you to know that Carnegie had to import workers from Central and Eastern Europe. Native born Americans refused to work in his mills. Probably because they were unsafe and because of the "turns system", where you showed up for work every twelve hours and if the Foreman liked you he let you work for a turn.

Originally Posted by TLyttle

If Management was fair, there would be no reason for unions.

Unions, no doubt, are great bogeymen for the average worker. Each time that my employer was almost organized they ended up giving the Rank 'n File either more vacation days or better wages.

Originally Posted by TLyttle

BTW, just heard on the news: a long-term employee of GM said that, 25 years ago, there was one supervisor for every 120 workers, now it is one supervisor for every 18 workers. Gee, could that be the problem???

You know, every business I ever heard of that was in distress hired more bosses. I don't know why - whether they expected a Strike or needed to "motivate" Staff or what it was the number of bosses increased. I saw this at my first job out of school, where the number of bosses were doubled. Six months later they shut down production. I also heard about this at one other manufacturing firm, they hired more "suits" and then a year later folded up.

I've heard a rumor that they're gonna do this where I work now.... uh oh!

The weird part about GM and their boss head count is that a lot of "Supervisory" tasks have been heavily automated out of existence by MIS and ERP systems. Paper pushers, for the most part. My first job out of school wouldn't exist today because your average Secretary with a bit of Visual Basic could have replaced me.

What are they doing there? Probably on the payroll in case of a strike or because of some silly re-organization or maybe because of the Effect I mentioned before.

Another reason, which is kind of sinister, is that GM may be abusing them by using their salary status to milk more hours out of them, while not treating them like Exempt employees. I saw this trick at my first job. The net result was that the "Bosses" got used for Fill In positions and because they were overworked made dumb decisions that gummed up the works.

When things are going to hell that's when you have to think the most and be the most deliberate. Panic will kill you.

Gene