Plant closings

[Hoginedgewood]

Is there a section to talk about GM taking buyout money from The USA and closing more USA plants?

shouldn’t that have closed Mexico plants?

is Mexico offering buyout money?

[pickmeup]

Doubt buy out but they do offer Cheap Labor .

[ftwhite]

Did GM close any truck plants in the US? I thought they had only closed poorly selling sadan plants. Not the factory worker's fault, but still a general trend they can't avoid. If I get a vote as a bailout tax payer (which I don't), I'd tell GM to work on designing better cars and trucks that have high demand so they can afford to build them in the US and still make a profit. Like the HDs and Suburbans. 

[MikeNH]

GM has no obligation to keep plants in the US. I wish they would but wishes don't get us anywhere. GM will (especially with the trucks) leverage the crap out of Chevy being a huge piece of Americana in marketing, but when it comes down to it, they're all about pleasing shareholders and making money. That inevitably means taking advantage of the very lopsided NAFTA that we can thank both sides in DC for agreeing to. 

 

But it isn't all on GM. The UAW has made the cost of manufacturing cars here untenable. You simply cannot build a car that costs the same as something from Honda or Toyota when you're paying a substantially higher hourly wage and offering world-class benefits that the workers in those other plants do not get. The benefits and pay at the "foreign" plants are hardly slave wages either- they're normal wages for a manufacturing job. 

 

It is a sad time though. For some time now even the Fort Wayne built trucks have had low 40% US/Canadian part content with a higher percentage of parts coming from Mexico. I remember seeing one Accord (last generation) window sticker with a US part content at like 80%. 

 

 

Which brand is doing more for the blue collar worker?

[Colossus]

Well said, Mike.

[Paintor]

I will leak a secret...things are so bad DoD buys Chinese tires with no English telling you what the tire pressure is supposed to be...on things that carry NUKES.

 

We’re frekin broke.