Blame the UAW? →
GM sold 4.4 million vehicles in the U.S. in 1992 and employed 265,000 UAW members.
GM sold 4.5 million vehicles in the U.S. in 2007 and employed 73,000 UAW members.
A company can’t make productivity improvements as astounding as that and lose money on labour. Something else is shaking the timbers. Maybe we should question the competitiveness of salary workers? How do they compare with their Japanese counterparts in compensation and achievement? Or more precisely, who’s controlling the money?
Since GM sold as many vehicles in the U.S. in 2007 as they did in 1992 and employed 192,000 less UAW members, profits should be way up by any accounting standard. Unless of course, profits were siphoned off into investments overseas, dividends, bonuses, or unaccountable black holes of financial rigamarole. (In 2005 GM paid Fiat $2-billion to get out of a “put option” that would have required GM to purchase Fiat.)
