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US car bail-out talks 'collapse'

Khayembii Communique said:
In the process of the sustainability of human society through production, their job is utterly unnecessary, as it has been historically shown many times that workers are capable (in fact, more so, as generally when factories are appropriated by its workers their productivity increases) of self-management.
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This is just laughable. You mean to say that workers won't vote to give themselves more benefits and pay with fewer working hours right? Like, ya know, the UAW did? The same pay and benefits that are going to drive the company into bankruptcy?
 
RightOfCenter said:
If I were on the company's board of directors I'd say probably not, but I'm not so their bosses are the ones who decide.
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Why would a board of directors award executives--time-and-time again--for doing such a lousy job at managing their companies? Year after year after year. That is beyond my level of comprehension.
 
RightOfCenter said:
This is just laughable. You mean to say that workers won't vote to give themselves more benefits and pay with fewer working hours right? Like, ya know, the UAW did? The same pay and benefits that are going to drive the company into bankruptcy?
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Fact is that it takes education and experience to manage a corportation like GM, and a lot of it. The idea that the collective can self-manage might work OK for a farming community, but a global corporation is another issue entirely.
 
This is just laughable. You mean to say that workers won't vote to give themselves more benefits and pay with fewer working hours right? Like, ya know, the UAW did?
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No, I'm saying that they would.

The same pay and benefits that are going to drive the company into bankruptcy?
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Union agitation isn't driving the company to bankruptcy. Poor economic planning, a massive bureaucracy of management, and paying ridiculous amounts of money to their upper- and mid-level management is.

Although you are right in the sense that a company isn't able to compete in a capitalist economy while paying workers the full value of their labour, which is why capitalism should be done away with.
 
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Middleground said:
If that is truly your opinion, then I don't understand why you have issue with the unions.
In your own words:
They are (the union workers) if someone pays them that much (GM, Chrysler, Ford).
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The point your missing here is that the car companies -aren't- willing to poay the unions that much because they are able to pay other people less.
 
The point your missing here is that the car companies -aren't- willing to poay the unions that much because they are able to pay other people less.
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No, I don't think I missed that.
 
Khayembii Communique said:
No, I don't think I missed that.
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Yes you have, in that you seem to still think that the unions (that is, the workers themseleves) get to dictate the 'fair value' of their labor.

That's done by competition in the labor market.
 
Yes you have, in that you seem to still think that the unions (that is, the workers themseleves) get to dictate the 'fair value' of their labor.
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No, I never said that Unions dictate a "fair value".
 
Middleground said:
How much per hour does Toyota pay their American employees comapred to Ford and/or GM?
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I believe it costs Toyota around $35 per hour, per employee(this is hourly wages,benefits and other costs. For GM(or one of the big three, I can't remember) it is around $81.
 
WI Crippler said:
I believe it costs Toyota around $35 per hour, per employee(this is hourly wages,benefits and other costs. For GM(or one of the big three, I can't remember) it is around $81.
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According to this, it's not true:

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.

So the "wage gap," per se, has been a lot smaller than you've heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants' factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.



Assembly Line
 
So you agree that market conditions set the fair value of a particular position.
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No, I believe that the only "fair value" is the full value of their labour.

Market conditions don't set "fair" values, they set economical values.
 
Middleground said:
According to this, it's not true:

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.

So the "wage gap," per se, has been a lot smaller than you've heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants' factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.



Assembly Line
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So they're guessing?
 
Khayembii Communique said:
No, I believe that the only "fair value" is the full value of their labour.

Market conditions don't set "fair" values, they set economical values.
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Define "full value of their labor" and explain how this is not set by the labor market.
 
Middleground said:
According to this, it's not true:

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.

So the "wage gap," per se, has been a lot smaller than you've heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants' factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.



Assembly Line
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I don't get what your arguing here. I said the cost per employee, not the hourly wage. And if thats the cost per employee, then it still counts as putting them at a disadvantage marketwise.
 
Define "full value of their labor" and explain how this is not set by the labor market.
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"Surplus-value is the social product which is over and above what is required for the producers to live.

The measure of value is labour time, so surplus value is the accumulated product of the unpaid labour time of the producers. In bourgeois society, surplus value is acquired by the capitalist in the form of profit: the capitalist owns the means of production as Private Property, so the workers have no choice but to sell their labour-power to the capitalists in order to live. The capitalist then owns not only the means of production, and the workers’ labour-power which he has bought to use in production, but the product as well. After paying wages, the capitalist then becomes the owner of the surplus value, over and above the value of the workers’ labour-power.

In all societies in which there is a division of labour, there is a social surplus; what is different about bourgeois society is that surplus value takes the form of capital, and surplus value is in fact the essence of production in capitalism.– Only productive work, i.e., work which creates surplus value, is supported. All “unproductive labour” is eliminated.

The capitalists may increase the amount of surplus value extracted from the working class by two means: (1) by absolute surplus value – extending the working day as long as possible, and (2) by relative surplus value – by cutting wages.

Attempts by individual capitalists to increase their profits by introducing machinery or speeding-up production by technique fail as soon as their competitors copy the new technique and restore their market share. The end effect of these improvements in production may be to increase the productivity of labour, but unless the rate of surplus value is increased proportionately, the rate of profit will actually fall.

Having been accumulated as capital, surplus value must then be distributed to landlords, bankers and other parasites, and expended via taxes on the various expenses of maintaining the social fabic."
MIA Encyclopedia
 
It's been said before.

I'd rather have less per hour than unemployment.

Shouldnt the union be negotiating? Not flat out refusing? Thought that's what they were there for.
 
This doesnt really answer my question.
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No, but that is essentially the krux of this discussion. I'm not going to teach you Marxist economics because 1. I don't want to waste my time and; 2. You don't really care.
 
Khayembii Communique said:
No, but that is essentially the krux of this discussion. I'm not going to teach you Marxist economics because 1. I don't want to waste my time and; 2. You don't really care.
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I see.
Well, since you wont explain it, I won't cosnider it with any degree of seriousness.
 
I see.
Well, since you wont explain it, I won't cosnider it with any degree of seriousness.
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Like I said before, the krux of the discussion is surplus value; me explaining Marxist economics would probably take a little while and would derail the entire thread, so I just posted what is relevant.
 
Khayembii Communique said:
Like I said before, the krux of the discussion is surplus value; me explaining Marxist economics would probably take a little while and would derail the entire thread, so I just posted what is relevant.
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The cruix of the discussion is unions not willing to accept the idea that they do not get to set the value of their labor*; rather, the value of their labor is set by the labor market as a whole.

Globalizing markets creates a larger labor market which then drives up competition; as a function of that, wages fall.
Reality trumps ideology and force of will.


* I guess I should be more clear:
They CAN set the value of their labor in saying they are not willing to work for less than X. However, no one has to employ them at that rate, so...
 
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RightOfCenter said:
Are you trying to assert that the work of someone on an assembly line is as important as the work of a CEO?
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IMO, I think someone on the assembly line is just as, if not more, important than the work of a CEO. They (the assembly line) are the backbone of a company and without that, it would fold over. Most CEO's these days seem more interested in building up their own bank account than building up their company.
 
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americanwoman said:
IMO, I think someone on the assembly line is just as, if not more, important than the work of a CEO. They (the assembly line) are the backbone of a company and without that, it would fold over. Most CEO's these days seem more interested in building up their own bank account than building up their company.
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Although I couldn't agree any more with the last sentence, the role of the CEO is most important, IMO. Although I will say that a hierarchy of importance has little value, as everyone in a company plays an important role. However, the CEOs are responsible for making the right decisions in leading a company to profitability and success. The current big 3 CEOs and their executive teams are certainly not Lee Iacoccas. In fact, they have been total disasters. It's beyond me why they were deserving of multi-million bonuses besides their inflated salaries. And it has yet to be answered, but asked a few times: if any of the big 3 were losing profitiability because of their union workers, how could they afford all of those incredibly-inflated and ginormous executive bonuses? We are talking millions upon millions of dollars here, not free passes to the movies.

Where's the outrage????
 
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