American Axle voting on new contract

hey Mike you worked twice in your life for half, hmmmm no wonder. You must have done grade 6 twice to get your diploma.

Maybe they'd all like it if we'd wipe their butts for them as well?

Oh wait. No butt wiping unless it's in your job description. That would be a breach of union regulations. If it's not then you have to submit a request for the earliest butt wiper to schedule you. This may take a few days so be prepared to become one with your poo till then.

Welcome to the Global Economy. Thier standard of living goes up and ours goes down. Yes it sucks but it's better than nothing at all. Nothing we can do about it short of closing the ports and the borders and let's be real, that is not going to happen. Take the deal or the factory will move to Tennessee, Mexico or China where the labor is much cheaper. Keep on striking and you make inevitably easier for them to make the decision to move and shut down the factory for good. Take what you can get now before it's too late!

That reminds me of a story - and I swear to God it's true. About three years back there was some work being done on our road by a reckless homeowner. He was trying to tap into the city water main on his own. He botched it. Then the city had to come in to fix it. The had the backhoe, 4 guys, shovels, construction cones & barriers, and everything ready to go. Yet they stood there for almost 5 hours while the street was flooding and our homes were without water. Why?? Well, they needed the guy who sets up the barriers and cones to get there! I offered to help, but they declined my assistance. The city never responded to my letter of outrage.

pwner wrote:

Maybe they'd all like it if we'd wipe their butts for them as well?
Oh wait. No butt wiping unless it's in your job description. That would be a breach of union regulations. If it's not then you have to submit a request for the earliest butt wiper to schedule you. This may take a few days so be prepared to become one with your poo till then.

i would vote no!! i sure hell would not take 1/2 a pay cut!! let them go under i had a union job we put them out of bussiness if they don't wanna pay the fair share!!! and now i work for cheap ass Steelcase they all want you to think they are "not makeing money" if they are not makeing money they would not be open!!!

WOW!!! I don't know HOW I could make it working for a measly $18.50 an hour!! What a b**** that would be.

cdc sounds bright,,, duh!!

Threats of going to Mexico, decrease in pay by 10 bucks an hour, nothing like treating your employees like s*#t! If we move all the manufacturing jobs to Mexico, can you imagine the look on all the illegal aliens faces coming into the country looking for a job here in the good ole USA. Boy will they be surprised to find they will have to go back home to get one of our manufacturing jobs!

Very well said, unions are a large part of the problem here, once upon a time they served a purpose for employees and the need for improved working conditions. This strike is ridiculous to say the very least. Unskilled workers complaining about their wages and this outrageous buyout. It's only a matter of time before the automakers leave completely. A 10 year old could do the job, a 10 year old probably will do the job with far less whining.

time to get to work wrote:

And you wonder why jobs are not only leaving MI, but the country also. Wake up and smell the coffee people!! Unions had a place in history and did some good things, but times have changed and they are only here to fill their own pockets on the backs of people too ignorant to see differently. How much do the executives of the UAW make each year? About as much as executives at actual companies who produce a product.
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Give me a break. I have worked for GM for 28 yrs. The work is hard on your body and mind. We may not take home work but every day we walk out of there felling like shit. All management does is sit around and look like they are doing something usefull. Supervisors right out of college can't make a simple decision. They need hands on experience to know how to run a department. If it wasn't for unions we wouldn't have any jobs in this country worth a damn. Keep on buying Toyotas and Hondas and see if the profits stay here in this country. We deserve the bonuses and health care packages not management.

GW in Byron Center wrote:

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Most salaried workers must dig out after they take any vacation time. Thanks to the AA strike impacting our business, I am basically being made to use up my vacation time now, so the accounting (labor) numbers look better, and yes, when I get back I have to catch up. I am blessed to have a job. However, we have not had raises here in five years due to the business climate, which in part is in the state it is in because of $27/hr non-skilled labor driving up costs! Accept it and be thankful.

Labour costs for most companies is around 5to7% of there cost so even if the workers take a cut in pay it really does not help big companies that much.

Anonymous wrote:

Very well said, unions are a large part of the problem here, once upon a time they served a purpose for employees and the need for improved working conditions. This strike is ridiculous to say the very least. Unskilled workers complaining about their wages and this outrageous buyout. It's only a matter of time before the automakers leave completely. A 10 year old could do the job, a 10 year old probably will do the job with far less whining.
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Keep it going and we'll see the days when 10 year olds will be doing that kind of work again

Oh boy wrote:

Threats of going to Mexico, decrease in pay by 10 bucks an hour, nothing like treating your employees like s*#t! If we move all the manufacturing jobs to Mexico, can you imagine the look on all the illegal aliens faces coming into the country looking for a job here in the good ole USA. Boy will they be surprised to find they will have to go back home to get one of our manufacturing jobs!

Yes, that's kind of the idea, but they know there's still better opportunities in the U.S.A. It just makes more money for the ceo's.

cdc wrote:

i would vote no!! i sure hell would not take 1/2 a pay cut!! let them go under i had a union job we put them out of bussiness if they don't wanna pay the fair share!!! and now i work for cheap ass Steelcase they all want you to think they are "not makeing money" if they are not makeing money they would not be open!!!

You are proud of this?? Way to go you stuck it to the man !! Idiot, You brag about putting them out of business and complain about the job you had to get to replace it?? That right there is a life accomplishment, something to be proud of. Oh by the way it is not the companies responsibility to make you rich. It is their responsibilty to offer a fair wage based on the work, skills, and required training and education to do the job.

Italian Girl wrote:

Give me a break. I have worked for GM for 28 yrs. The work is hard on your body and mind. We may not take home work but every day we walk out of there felling like shit. All management does is sit around and look like they are doing something usefull. Supervisors right out of college can't make a simple decision. They need hands on experience to know how to run a department. If it wasn't for unions we wouldn't have any jobs in this country worth a damn. Keep on buying Toyotas and Hondas and see if the profits stay here in this country. We deserve the bonuses and health care packages not management.

If other countries take up this wonderful attitude about foreign manufactures GM is screwed. GM is setting record sales numbers in Europe and Asia, guess what the money is coming back here. Why don't you send the UAW across the pond to drive GM out of other markets. That is what you preach keep the work here and take as much from the company as possible. Well hate to tell you this you also work for a global manufacture who in one way shape or form is a Honda or a Toyota in another country. But that does not play into the equation does it as long as that foreign money is covering you bloated wages. Each story has 2 sides. think about it??

joe wrote:

<quoted text>Labour costs for most companies is around 5to7% of there cost so even if the workers take a cut in pay it really does not help big companies that much.

Ya heard that one before, The union likes to us that percentage to make it seem like a small number. The key word here is cost. materials and labor. take 600,000 UAW workers @ 25 per hour working 40 hours per week. Tell me that is a small number. Either way that number only looks at material and labor, it does not figure in overhead costs, cost of marketing, facilitie costs, health care, pensions, or additional benefits. AAM said it best when they said actual hourly labor costs with benefits were close to 70 per hour.

Oh boy wrote:

Threats of going to Mexico, decrease in pay by 10 bucks an hour, nothing like treating your employees like s*#t! If we move all the manufacturing jobs to Mexico, can you imagine the look on all the illegal aliens faces coming into the country looking for a job here in the good ole USA. Boy will they be surprised to find they will have to go back home to get one of our manufacturing jobs!

We were kinda hoping you would move to Mexico as well. Take seenitnever and unionalltheway with you, they seem to think that economies strive on unskilled labor.

I love the talk of how terrible it is to threaten to move jobs to Mexico. That's not a threat, that's just one good alternative to dealing with this Union BS. Hey, if I'm American Axle, I'm going to do what I need to do to make parts. You bet your left nut that I'd rather ship my parts up from Mexico, where the people are grateful to have the work, than to deal with the spoiled entitlement attitude of the UAW, and have factories sit idle for three months. Really, I'm impressed by AA's patience on the issue. I can't believe that they're still even trying to negotiate. I'd have either hired a few of the many unemployed workers in Michigan (who would very happily do the job for half of the previous wage, btw), or bought some land in Mexico.

Heads up, Union folk: It's supply and demand. Your overpriced, undermotivated, unskilled labor is no longer in demand. Some compromise is in order.

Chip wrote:

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We were kinda hoping you would move to Mexico as well. Take seenitnever and unionalltheway with you, they seem to think that economies strive on unskilled labor.

Go back to your toilet bowl...

This forum has gotten very personal, very quickly. Looks like most people commenting in this forum against the union bash the workers greed but it seems to me the workers only vote on contracts that are approved by the company and that the time when a contract is up is the time for a company to make a change if they felt it was unfair. The company could have just left the country years ago and avoided giving all the things they did to the union along the way. Why didn't they just hire cheaper labor at the end of any contract and leave the UAW out in the cold? Another thing, the unions have no say in hiring since each employee must be hired and screened by the company and complete a probationary period during which the company can fire them before being accepted into the union so just putting in an application doesn't do it. Just a couple of observations I have made. I also wonder why anyone even bothers to build anything at all in America when we all will proudly stand up and say that the standard of living in this country is one of the highest in the world. Does kinda hit close to home when you consider that, in or out of the union, if you make a product here your job pays among the best in the world and most likely could just as easily be done cheaper somewhere else. Union or not we all like to think we do a better job than our competition would do and we earn that higher standard of living.