| Author | Message | ||
     Ft_bstrd |
Though GM and Chrysler have no-strike clauses because they took U.S. loans, Ford does not | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Brag about not taking the government money? We'll see about that. | ||
| Kc10_fe |
Deals done already. | ||
| Kc10_fe |
Wrong one sorry. I hate to say this but car plants are not exactly skilled labor like it was years ago. Maybe the plants machine guys, engine builders, the millwrights, OEs and electricians but they have seperate unions. Cars are more like drivable snap tite models | ||
| Kc10_fe |
$300 million in bonuses for management is just awesome! Screw the little guy tho! | ||
| Court |
Screw the little guy? Any clue as to how many jobs Ford has created while GM and Chrysler wallowed on the federal teet? The " little guy" at Ford has been both the hero and benefactor. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Screw the little guy? Always about what someone else has got. | ||
| Orman1649 |
Creating jobs is all well and good but how many more jobs COULD have been created (or how many less benefits would have been stripped away) if management/executives across the US decided they were only going to take 50% of the bonuses they took last year. Compensation for management and executives is out of control. Look at the numbers over the past 30-40 years and you will see through the 80s & 90s the gap in pay between the working man and the suits | ||
| Hootowl |
I tend to agree that executive compensation far outstrips the actual value those folks bring to a company (unless their job is to shit a golden egg every day) but it is their company, and their shareholders are obviously fine with their level of compensation. If they weren't, the board (who determines compensation) would be replaced at the next shareholder's meeting. Don't see too much of that. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Just imagine how many jobs $1.4T could have created. The guy who works the line isn't worth the $300M. If he were, he would leave Ford and go get it. Instead he has to threaten to disrupt work to force the employer to give it to him. Not a real mystery why jobs are moving over seas, is it. Ford is profitable mostly because the "management" has made successful strategic decisions not because the line worker knows "righty tighty, lefty loosey". | ||
| Jayvee |
Look at the Board members... Some companies, the Board is mostly white men that own a boat-load of the stock, a token black, woman, and chicano, the a few CEOs of other big corporations. They interlock like a big ol' boys network. And collectively they own the most non-institutional-owned stock. This may also be factored into why we "Dont see too much of that." | ||
| Hootowl |
I guess don't buy a Ford if you aren't happy with the way the company operates. Fatty has the right of it. | ||
| Slaughter |
OK... let's say I can make a $25/hour wage and the CEO of my company makes a half million $$ in salary and bonuses and lives in a small house and drives himself to work. Lets now say I could make $100K per year and the CEO of my company makes a gazillion $$ in salary and bonuses and flies to corporate meeting in the corporate jet. Which is the better job for me? | ||
| Sifo |
You can't let the CEO have a jet! Take the other job! | ||
| Fordrox |
Slaughter... the one that provides enough for you to provide for your family and makes you happy. of course we all want to make as much as possible, but at times that comes at a cost. | ||
| Xl1200r |
We all know my taste on unions... That said, I'm not sure I'm too upset about what they're asking for, though I'd suggest that performance-driven raises and bonuses would be a better bet than flat, accross the board cost of living increases. I'm not sure that the union is right in being so demanding after such a short time of profitability when the past few years have been abysmal. I'm admittadly torn. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Brag about not taking the government money? Ford's credit arm took money from the Feds. It's not quite the same as what GM and Chrysler received but it was still a federal loan. | ||
| Court |
>>>>Compensation for management and executives is out of control. Prove it. If the sole source of your proof is "so much money" you need to study Economics. I'd suggest starting with one of the books on Compensation of Athletes from our Sports Management Program here at school. Some folks, and it's not their fault, they just neither know nor understand it. . . see something like $25,000,000 per year and cry foul. I was listening the the NBA basketball player on all the talk shows this morning . . Drew somebody and he's touting some new product he's endorsing. Apparently they are on strike or locked out and he's telling that "my kids school and clothing costs don't stop when I stop playing". The announcer then went on to explain the difficult times the family was going through "getting by" on $14,000,000 a year with no post season play or bonuses. Let me ask you something . . . If I am a talented construction guy . . . and I, by joining a firm and using that talent, agree to work for a base salary of $1 per year and a bonus of 10% of what I bring in . . and I bring in a $1,000,000,000 job (say like the TrAIL Project) and get a $100,000,000 bonus . . am I overpaid? Last Friday's Wall Street Journal had a photo of a good friend on the front page . . he just took a new job with a starting salary of $65,000,000 per year plus "incentives" which were undisclosed. He's working for a private family and the family spokesman called it a "great deal getting him at that price". What would you have done? My point is . . .it's absurd to look at nominal numbers and presume, just because they are large, that they are not "fair" or "reasonable". For the record, I do agree with you about folks (say the Federal Department of Labor who pays nearly 2,000 new employees in the last 18 months over $165,000) who do nothing to earn or warrant the pay . . . I'm still pissed over seeing secretaries in a Hedge Fund getting $1,000,000 "Christmas" checks because "they only make $187,000 a year". It's relative I suppose. (Message edited by court on September 29, 2011) | ||
| Imonabuss |
Currently about 65,000 employees at GM (was 91,000 before the government "fixed" the company). Current hourly rate $58/hr. Let's assume 10,000 are "useless" management and 55,000 are the little guys (who cost the company $120,000+ each). The 55,000 are an annual bill to GM of $6,635,200,000. That's right, $6.63B. Now the CEO of Ford has been there for 5 years earning the $300M. His company has 54,000 hourly workers, same pay rate as GM. Except he hasn't laid off the empoloyees that the GM guys have. Let's assume that a more fair wage would be $500K a year (although only getting 4 times what a line worker makes seems quite a bit unfair considering the stress , etc that he is under and the fact that he has made decisions that have smoked the rest of the industry). Let's see, what is Michael Vick making, or what about an average senator or lawyer? OK, let's say a more fair wage for that CEO would have been $4M per year, about the same as a top college football coach (Hmm, are we fair yet?...still seems harder to run GM than the Crimson Tide at $5.5M...). So for his 5 years he gets $20M, giving $280M to split up over five years, or $56M per year to add to the $6.63B annual hourly wage pool. So I guess the hourly guys could get an 0.8% wage increase. Of course he might leave, and you could have the GM leadership who laid off 26,000 workers, and wrote themselves a bonus anyhow. The impact of the dollars top leadership makes is insignificant. Add to that the fact that his pay will be taxed to a staggering level, and you realize that the only real impact is the use of this as a political football to get pay and control for those who REALLY don't deserve it...the politicians and lawyers. | ||
| Sifo |
Imonabuss, Shame on you bringing math into the discussion. This should be all about emotion. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Here is another example. I was working on a project I was a software architecture lead. The project was on the same trajectory as everyone else in the industry was on, and the same trajectory our outside compliance validators wanted. Long after everyone else (maybe 25 different people with the authority to demand something different, and 100 or so people that could suggest something different) had written it off as "we do it this way because it is done this way".... I was sitting at the Lebanon Ohio YMCA doing work on my own time instead of paying attention to my kid in gymnastics like I will no doubt wish I had done 10 years from now. I just couldn't let it go, it was just going to be too expensive, and the whole approach was stupid (even though that is how everyone does it). I poured over details of the "rules". I poured over actual practices of auditors. I poured over solution after solution trying to come up with something better... After about a month of this, grinding away on my own time, I figured something out. Another two months of swimming upstream against our people, auditors, and compliance people to get them to understand what I was proposing. Building my own prototypes on my own machines on my own time to prove that yes, actually, it does work. Finally, it all came together. The formal estimates for the collection of projects addressed dropped enough to pay my yearly salary for the next 15 years (literally). I told my legal department to patent the idea (they chose not too... it would have been work to defend, and it is WAY outside our core business). Three years later, about the time the "normal solution" projects would have completed, the next version of the "rules" came out. Guess what... they gave guidance describing exactly what I came up with as a recommended solution (I wasn't the only one that came up with it, but I was one of very few). So what am I worth? Did my company screw me? Am I screwing the person that cleans the break room because I make so much more than they do? I agreed to do my best in return for $x, I did, and my company paid it. My best turned out to actually be really good that time (I ate the bear). Other times, the bear ate me, and my decisions hurt customers and business (hard lessons I will NEVER forget). At the end of the day, I like my job and my company, and could probably get a small raise if I wanted to change, but I don't. When I was working for GE, I really loved my job (geek heaven). But there came a point when I could double my salary by taking another job with another company. So I did. Less than that offer (I had plenty), and I wasn't interested and stayed at GE. Seems like the system works reasonably. I've seen people over paid in private industry, and don't understand how they got there, but I've never seen them stay there long. Somebody in a high position that clearly was a bad choice has about an 18 month trajectory... you can almost set your clock by it. I can't say the same about government and academia though... I see just as many "what were they thinking" people placements there... but they never seem to correct... once they get there, they stay there forever. Never worked in a union, so I can't speak for that. | ||
| Orman1649 |
I have no actual "proof" as it were besides the change in average compensation spread over the past 40 years between say…the guy sweeping the floor/turning the bolt/programming the software and the big wigs. I can't find the site I was looking reading a while back right now but just to try to get an idea of what I'm talking about say in 1970 the average executive was making 150% the average worker. In 1990 the average executive is now making 400% of the average worker. Jump ahead to 2010 and the average executive is now making 1000% of the average working. Its not purely the numbers, it’s the change in ratio. I have a pretty good paying job with decent benefits working for a very large aircraft manufacturing company. Every year I see a few more benefits being stripped away in an effort to cut costs. Every year I see the big wigs that cut my benefits feed themselves bigger bonuses, bigger salaries, and more perks. The spread gets bigger and bigger every year. I think I work pretty damn hard and my worth compared to theirs doesn't shrink every year. This applies to any industry whether its sports, film, television…the guy in front of the camera isn't worth a million + an episode while the guy behind the camera is making 50k a year. What are your opinions on all these executives in the banking industry? They destroyed the companies (with the help of the politicians) and were rewarded with massive bonuses. Yes, the people who took the variable interest loads they could barely afford were morons but they are only 50% at fault. | ||
| Orman1649 |
This isn't exactly what I have seen in the past and my numbers were wrong in my previous post...but you get the point.  | ||
| Sifo |
I've never understood what the compensation ratio between worker and CEO has to do with how well you are doing. The bottom line is that everybody who is working is doing better now than in past history. Actually those who don't work do pretty well too. This is nothing but demonizing the rich. BTW, today's CEOs deal with far more complex issues than their counter parts of year past. It's now a world market place that changes faster than ever. The ones who can make the grade are worth a boat load of cash. There are plenty that suck and still get rich, but that's much like the worker level too. The bottom line is that as Imonabuss points out, it really has little effect on what low level workers get paid. | ||
| Court |
>>>I've never understood what the compensation ratio between worker and CEO has to do with how well you are doing. Think of the ratio between the mean air pressure in your tires and the heat range of your spark plugs . . . There? Got it? Folks who are envious, jealous or incapable relish using meaningless contrasts to make meaningless points. The bright side is that they too are meaningless and beyond their 9 second news blurb . . . well, no one much cares or listens. I've never, when queried about salary in an interview, responded . . "I'll take a reasonable percentage of the CEO's comp, thanks". Somewhere on that continuum between hog wash and bullshit is where most this stuff lives. . . | ||
| Orman1649 |
You two are 100% correct. The ratio has nothing to do with how well each individual is doing compared to a CEO. I wasn't saying it did The problem is the ever increasing gap between the compensation. I already said I think I work pretty hard and that I think I am fairly well compensated. BUT, as I also said, the people at the top have taken away thousands in compensation from every employee (under the guise of cost savings) only to baloon their own compensation packages. You can't double health insurance co-pays and gut your education program then give 4x your savings for those programs to the exec team in bonuses and expect people to just smile about it. ESPECIALLY when its not PERFORMANCE based and you get a bajillion dollar bonus just for showing up to work like the bank execs. | ||
| Cowboy |
I like and have worked the merit system, You make what you are worth and can bargin for it is up to you , why do you need some one to control your life. | ||
| Davegess |
The real issue is that real wages for the average joe have not really keep with inflation over the last 15 years (and productivity isup over thesame period) (It is too short of a sample time to give a real answer AND the "rate of inflation" is not a real great number but it is the one we all use.) and this is troubling. If it continues we are SOL. | ||
| Sifo |
You two are 100% correct. The ratio has nothing to do with how well each individual is doing compared to a CEO. I wasn't saying it did OK, I'm with you. The problem is the ever increasing gap between the compensation. And you lost me. That is the ratio. Thanks Court. You cleared it right up!  | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
The real issue is that real wages for the average joe have not really keep with inflation over the last 15 years How does CEO compensation have anything to do with the ratio of wages vs. inflation? Sounds like the enemy is inflation not CEOs. | ||
| Blake |
I don't think Dave is saying there is any relationship. He's recognizing the issue of wage recession on its own. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Ok. Confused. Happens. I agree we should attack the influences on price inflation. The two greatest influences currently are currency devaluation and corporate taxes. Reduce the impact of these and buying power increases significantly. | ||
| Kc10_fe |
By NORIHIKO SHIROUZU BEIJING—Rapidly rising wages in China have reached the point at which foreign manufacturers need to give up on the notion of the country as a low-cost production base, a senior Hyundai Motor Co. executive said Thursday. Jae-Man Noh, head of Hyundai's joint-venture operations in China, said average manufacturing-worker wages in China—about 27,000 yuan ($4,200) a year per worker in 2009—are likely to double by 2015 from current levels. Auto makers are expected to be affected as much as other industries by the trend, if not more, Mr. Noh said, adding that wage costs for many foreign auto manufacturers already have doubled in less than a decade. He said that a rival foreign auto maker that Hyundai has researched has seen worker wages in China rise to 49,000 yuan a year per worker in 2010, up from 24,500 yuan a year in 2003. "We need to let go of our perception that the Chinese market is a low-cost production base," Mr. Noh told a group of reporters at Hyundai's office in Beijing. He didn't offer specifics on Hyundai's wage costs in China. Mr. Noh leads Beijing Hyundai Motors Co., a joint venture between the South Korean auto maker and Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. In contrast to earlier decades, when the flow of Chinese workers from the countryside pushed factory labor costs down, China's workers now are demanding higher wages and better jobs. Manufacturing wages, in fact, have begun rising "dramatically" since last year, according to Mr. Noh, with auto makers taking the brunt of it. The Hyundai executive pointed to a series of high-profile labor strikes that hit Japanese-run auto factories and others in China last year. Normally quick to break up organized worker walkouts, the government tolerated those strikes to a large extent last year, and minimum wages in some parts of China have been rising steadily since. China still offers other draws, including strong economic growth, an increasingly affluent population and a quickly growing car culture. Plus, Hyundai's average factory labor cost in China is still one-fifth of that in South Korea, Mr. Noh said. What concerns him most is the dramatic rate of increase, he said. This trend is "inevitable" as the Chinese economy grows and society improves, Mr. Noh said. Despite rising labor costs, China's auto exports will continue to increase in part because of excess auto-production capacity in the country, he said. China's central government will also continue to focus on automotive exports, he said. Go labor go! | ||
| Kenm123t |
its starts with coveting what is not yours and being jealous if you want a better pay day improve your self and get it Unions want the $ without the improvement |
