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Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

I say yes. Three million jobs dumped at this time would cause severe pain to the economy.

Also, we need a significant manufacturing base.

What say you?

Re: Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

I say yes also.

But there's going to have to be concessions made on both the UAW and Upper management.

I think that both sides have run amuck on this deal threw the years. The UAW needs to look at things like the money that's paid during the Changeovers and new hires coming in with full benefit packages worth 50 Dollars an hour or more. It won't bust the union to start shaving costs.

Upper Management can contribute by getting a handle on all the dead weight they have running around in Corp. I think that they don't really need someone to sharpen their pencils or fetch their lunch on management payroll they can do it themselves and they also need to take a look at their own salaries and bonuses that can be up to 350 times more than the highest paid line worker makes.

Whatever is done it won't be easy. I know this because I come from a Large family on the west coast and most of them are Stone Union men, Teamsters, UAW and Ironworkers. Besides being Italian they are all hardheaded and set in their ways regarding Union and Management. So, it's not going to be an easy task!

But if something isn't done than you will see more layoffs not only in the auto industry but the thousands of companies that support them and then you can add a couple million more Home Foreclosure's to the ever growing list.

Just my opinion....

Re: Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

IU say let them go Chapter 11 and resture to also include replacement of the management team in place. In reality only 1 of the 3 can survive.

With Toyota, Nyandai and Kia, Nissan all having or building plants in America, they are hireing American workers. It is sad considering that GM and Ford have been around what 100 years?

Re: Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

Yes, we do have foreign companies making cars - and those Japanese plants are also sending all of their profits back to Japan - where Japan is subsidizing its auto industry. Korea and the European countries are doing it, too.

And the next time we go to war, we will have to nationlize those foreign owned plants and hope that we can get them up to speed to manufacture the necessary tanks, etc.

It is very likely that a reorganization bankruptcy will fail - who will finance the reorganization? The American credit markets are still not functioning - that is why they are in trouble already. If they could borrow the money from the banks, they would not need to come to the government.

When you add up all of employees from the factories, the support services, the suppliers, the dealers, and the people in the manufacturing towns who provide services to the employees who will lose their jobs, nearly 1 in 10 American jobs is tied to the auto industry. If you kill that income, we are going into the toilet.

For some reason that I don't understand, people are under the delusion that we cannot go into another great depression. We ****ed well can - and we ****ed well may. When economists like Krugman say that this is the worst financial crisis in 70 years, they are not exagerating.

And beisdes, I confess that I don't understand why it is only America that seems intent on allowing all of the jobs that created its middle class to go over seas.

I reckon that as long as we have minimum wage jobs for our high school graduates and can keep buying cheap chinese computers, we will be like the frog that is put into the pot of cool water and doesn't recognize that he is in trouble until the heat slowly builds up to the point that it starts to cook him.

Anybody feeling warm yet?

Re: Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

Actually the foreign car companies here in the US are beginning to Cut Back and Layoff Also. They could build a thousand plants here in the US (Which they won't) but if there's no market they will just pack it in and go home.

Re: Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

I say they need to file for a special Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Forget the fear of loss of consumer confidence, it's has happened already. The airlines hads similiar problems and they had collateral industries to consider as well but they are surving and taking the necessary internal steps to the right their ship.

I have worked in the auto industry for 38 years and I have represented auto dealers as legal counsel for over 14 years. The issues are not so cut and dry as one might think on the surface. It is a very very complex situation and I can tell you from first hand experience that the warning signs were posted over 30 years ago about the disaster that laid ahead but nobody gave a sh-- because everybody was making money and rock n rolling!

They should have left Chrysler (Mopar)go under in 1980 no matter what Barney Franks might say.

This is a wake up call for all Americans that turned from a fair wage for a job well done to an entitlement culture based on what's in it for me and a flagrant abuse of a credit based lifestyle.

John R...

Re: Okay guys, do we save Detroit or not?

Ah, come on, John, stop with the "entitlement" b.s. The legal industry has been my largest source of clients for the last dozen years or so and I know ****ed well that you do not allow your clients to set your fees.

So why should a working man be any different? Why should he not have a hand in determining what his fair wage is? It is true that he sells a slightly different product, but only slightly. In truth, a fair wage is whatever the hiring party is wiling to pay. It is only now - now that the market has changed, now that America allowed a free market for automobiles from countries where out own cars have been kept out of the markets - that a complaint about the automaker's fair wage has been raised. And even now, you ignore that wages have been reduced to rates that are competitive with the foreign manufaturers in America.

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy is intended to keep the enterprise operating while it reorganizes with the hope of improving profitability. Continue operations require willing lenders to finance continued operations - can you not see that if there are no lenders to supply the needed money now, they will not suddenly come out of the woodwork to finance a bankrupt company? And when this industry goes down, it will not be coming back.