30,000 Jobs Lost and…
GM CEO G Richard Wagoner Jr.’s annual compensation package is nearly 5 million dollars. I know GM is in trouble well beyond millions of dollars but my feelings align with the adage, “The captain goes down with the ship.”
Thankfully, due to UAW regulations, GM must continue to provide salaries to all 30,000 workers dissolved from proposed plant closures. So why is GM doing it? Most speculate it’s due to materials cost and poor managerial decisions, such as ignoring mounting demand for anything but GM’s cash cow, the SUV. In the recent past GM faulted high labor, healthcare, and pension costs for their problems. There’s no denying that UAW labor is more costly than overseas, yet by that same token, local money is flipped in local communities thereby boosting local American economies. GM can dance all they want but until they fix PR and design vehicles with market demand equal to Toyota and/or Honda they’ll never be able to fix their financial difficulties.
Right on.
That’s all.
Congrats on the bonus, Dick.
On a side note I like how aggressive the AFL-CIO has gotten. Check out their new corporate watch site: http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/
Gee, like anyone could have predicted this would happen.
Okay, that’s sarcasm.
Seriously, GM needs to get serious about their aging designs and looking at alternative fuel vehicles, or at the very least, hybrids. The competition has a leg up on them in both categories.
Like you said, they’ve been too focused on their cash-cow SUV market, they’ve let the rest of their product line suffer. Heck, they didn’t even bother jumping on the muscle-car revival that’s improving both GM and Chrysler sales this year.
GM is an aging dog, and unless they learn some new tricks, this dog is going to be put to sleep.