Roger and Me : flint plant closings

[@airdriver]

I remember this happening. What's sad is that everybody blamed the "lazy, overpaid pampered union workers" for the auto industry's hard times and not the greedy, short sighted, incompetent, blindly ambitious executives or managers.

[@Cnw8701]

The unions didn't fight back hard enough to keep all the jobs in America, and to keep the quality high for the products they were selling and producing.

[@johnhatchel9681]

UAW ruined Flint.

[@brixtonsaint]

the power of unions is the failure of management. if the management had done their job correctly by listening to visionaries like John DeLorean in the sixties when he suggested firstly it was time to stop ripping off the customer by having them buy a moderately updated gas guzzler when the rest of the world was looking at producing economical cars. There's a zillion reasons why the US and UK car industry is on its knees in the former and dead in the latter. Complacency by management is the main1

[@unbridledenthusiasm]

Don't blame GM's downfall on unions, blame it on the inferior cars they've continued to produce.

[@rapidwienfinastearenan]

or, hello, the elephant in the room, the executives ?!?!

[@salvatoremaglione6398]

​@@rapidwienfinastearenanThe real fault is because Reagan Administration cut tariffs and wanted free trade even if it meant jobs being shipped overseas and Americans becoming unemployed and destitute.

[@BradleyTn20]

Haha.. The description says "From the Roger Moore film".. I didn't know James Bond made a documentary.

[@antdogg422]

That GM tower how it went down scared the living shit outta me!

[@antdogg422]

Timothy Dalton became the new James Bond in 1987

[@86cookiemonster]

Explain the job security and low wages. Honda is none union, and there are multiple people, in the Ohio marysville plant, that get paid 90 grand a year. I have a cousin who has been working there for the last 10 years. And there are tons of people who have been there longer. Unions have their uses. But most cause more harm than good. Look at the facts, as much as it pains me to say it, Honda Toyota none union, going strong, GM Ford union doing bad. Simple logic.

[@boland44]

Unions had no power in The Soviet Union.

[@IUEC38]

@gopconservative78 Yeah, human suffering and the destruction of our manufacturing sector is hilarious if it happens to hurt your political opponents. Never mind the insurmountable deficits and economic pain this has caused the entire country.

[@bananian]

@railmogul2 and NAFTA and Toyota building plants in California.

[@jackiechan511]

Why did GM get out of the bus making business. GM buses especially in the 80s were meant to last. Just look in Toronto Canada where GM buses are still running to this day.

[@antdogg422]

Deputy Fred Ross reminds me of my GRANDAD!

[@rockvilleraven]

The only way to build a high quality vehicle in the US is to have a company like Toyota or Honda build a plant here and use non union labor. The Big 3/UAW way doesn't work anymore. The auto making industry has shot its self in the foot so many times, its none funny. Some examples: An engineer at Chrysler developed brakes that could last 90,000 miles, he was fired. Japanese cars were crap in the early 60s, someone came up with the TQM system running a plant and all of them bought into, their quality began to turn around. It was Ford, Chrysler and GM who rejected it. And the last one, someone at Honda bought one of the early Saturns, took it apart and said, if it was a Honda, it wouldn't' meet their standards for quality.

[@matt8787fat]

+rockvilleraven You are an idiot and thank you for helping destroy my state. We still have our auto industry here in MI but thanks to idiots like you its a shell of what it once was just like america! And i am a proud union worker as was my dad, 4 uncles, 2 aunts, 1 grandfather and my mother in law who still is. Long live the UAW and GM. Instead of being jealous of our pay and benefits fight for your own! Maybe you are just a gutless little bitch!

[@IUEC38]

@rpy75 And who is Roger Moore?

[@helenpeters2116]

White men make such brilliant managers.

[@larryhutchinson5557]

🌎: Larry Hutchinson for President of the United States of America 2024

[@ROCKINHARD772009]

Your dead wrong...Remember that about you...

[@scottm8579]

There are a number of reasons why GM left Flint. Everyone blames Roger Smith. They're right, but not because of greed. He mis-managed the company straight into the ground. Ignoring the compact car boom. Giving in to the unions demands. Designing awful cars. The list is endless.

[@OperaLights]

How did he "give into the union's demands" if he closed 16 plants and laid off 40,000 workers?

[@scottm8579]

@@OperaLights It's rather complicated. You should read about it. But I can try summarizing. General Motors became a massive success and made hundreds of millions of dollars since they started in the early twentieth century. Their success angered their employee's and they started a union. Millions of people joined the union and it became very successful. The union negociated really sweet deals with General Motors. Deals that included what's called a pension plan. Pension plans are basically a sum of money that given to someone who retires from General Motors. So just imagine, thousands of employee's retiring from GM and getting thousands of dollars in retirement money from the company. It destroyed GM financially. They went bankrupt in the 1980's and were bailed out by the Federal Government.

[@Kittylover074]

@@scottm8579 You can't blame the mass loss of money based solely on union pension funds.

[@operator91210]

@@scottm8579 that's not entirely true. They did have some pretty hard times in the 80's but they didn't reach bankruptcy levels to require a bailout. Chrysler did in '79 but not GM. Now in 2009 that was without a doubt a contributing factor but not the sole reason

[@stevenburns8817]

partially agree with you, but what do you mean by "ignoring the compact car boom?" Smith became chairman on 1/1/81; a year later gas prices were falling, stayed low through the '80s and the company had to suddenly react to consumers' renewed preferences for larger cars. In 1980 GM spent $300 million to renovate the Chevrolet Flint Motor Plant to build 4-cylinder engines. In Oct. 1983 its closure was announced because of plunging demand for small engines. That's how fast things can change.

[@ukipwarrior]

too right too many unions

[@IUEC38]

@gopconservative78 Ad hominem: the dead give away that you've no meaningful defense.