GM Europe, has this week announced new measures for outsourcing of some of its work around Europe.GM want to cut its workforce by 5136, a very precise number that shows some thought has already gone into the exercise.The Trade Unions have been aware for some time that there were parts of the organisation that were targeted for outsourcing and indeed have agreed in the past to support such measures in return for greater job security.
This new round of cuts in the workforce, have it seems taken the European Trade Unions by complete surprise and a dip in profits is being blamed for the decision.The truth of course is that this is another cut from the knife of “Lean” and will mean another group of workers left without adequate pension provision at 65 and as such dependent on the State?
It could be that these firms that win the outsourcing contracts will provide adequate pensions and other benefits, but I very much doubt that this will be the case and I will have my hat duly salted just in case. If they did, the fuss would not be quite so great.
Another real crisis for GM?
Or Just another step towards their goal of!!! Just what exactly?
Only agency or outsourced workers to produce GM products?
GM only to be involved in the marketing of the products?
Just what is the goal of GM and other large companies?
Lean really is Mean and we need to open up the debate, before it is too late and we are all working for minimum wage with no benefits.
24 February, 2008 at 1:38 am
GM needs to outsource. It’s bloated over the past 50 years, and the union has all but made it impossible for the company to manage. Like the fall of Rome, this ‘fall’ was inevitable, and the only way that GM will exist in the future.
Is lean mean? Or is it more likely that you just want to keep GM paying you while they post huge losses and drive themselves into the ground? If you’ve been so short-sighted that the only way you can now provide value is to work in fast food, then I’ll be happy to turn you down when you ask me if I’d “like some fries with that”.
24 February, 2008 at 1:39 am
Oh, I see you ‘moderate’, which means that either you only post those opinions which mirror yours, or those you feel you can slam without allowing adequate response. I hope you have the guts to have a real debate.
25 February, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I was not ignoring you, I have only just read your comments.
You miss the point of the debate, it is not so much that the Unions want to stop outsourcing, indeed if you take a close look at what is happening you will see that all of the outsourcing, in the US, Candada and Europe, has been with consultation with the Unions.
The point is that real work and real wages are being devalued, people are retiring with little or no income and as such are then being subsidised.
Also “Lean” is not kind to workers, and many take early retirement and redundancy packages because they are being driven at work.
Auto workers are not lazy or work shy, they are men and women who give a fair days work and in return want a fair wage and a fair crack of the whip.
25 February, 2008 at 10:00 pm
It’s not ‘lean’ that’s unkind to workers, but the short-sighted management which thinks the best way to meet quarterly goals is to lay the very people off who were helping you improve the system.
I have nothing against automotive workers. Most workers want to do a full days work for a full days pay. However, all of the Big 3 have rooms full of people that AREN’T working, because of union rules. When car sales are down, resources have to be adjusted. Some of those resources are labor. But because GM has to continue to pay certain segments of the workforce, they aren’t allowed to be competitive.
On outsourcing: Outsourcing is a good thing. You do it yourself, I’m sure. Do you wash your car yourself, or do you go to a carwash (outsourcing). Do you cook all your food yourself, or do you buy pre-baked cookies, chips, pasta, meatsauce (outsoucing). Do you operate your own farm, or do you buy pre-packaged milk, pre-cut/cleaned vegetables (outsourcing). Do you pump your own gas, or do you go to full-serv (no, not outsourcing, but you just took someone’s job).
Outsourcing allows us to focus on our core competencies, those things at which we can be most competitive. Many companies are outsourcing payroll, HR, benefits, security, IT, customer service call centers. All things that have traditionally been thought of as ‘cost’. When labor costs exceed those we can make a profit with, we have to outsource that too. And finally, if we can’t actually make a profit, we have to outsource the entire manufacturing process, since we can only make money on assembly. The next natural evolution is to outsource assembly too, and we’ll just be the sales force. Where are your precious jobs then?
I don’t agree with your assessment that outsourcing is done in consultation with the Unions. If it has, leave the union and keep your jobs. And no one is devaluing work. But to remain competitive, we either have to produce more with the same resource. Otherwise, smaller, more competitive companies (and countries) are going to eat our lunch.
25 February, 2008 at 11:09 pm
It may be that in the US the agreements between the Unions and Management has allowed for large chunks of the workforce to be paid whilst idle, but you will see that this has changed over receent years and these agreements and arrangements are being eroded.
At GM in particular, thousands of workers have taken redudancy packages and early retirement as part of the rationalisation of the company, again with full consultation with the Unions.
My main beef is that there are very few blue collar jobs that pay reasonable wages outside of the Auto Industry and when these jobs have been devalued and we are all on minumum wage, who buys the products?
The situation in the US is far more serious than in Europe, because not only are the redundant workers giving up a job, they are also giving up health care benefits for future workers as well.
Who will pick up the cost of this?
Manufacturing will evolve into a “Lean Machine” and I am not one to try and hold back the tide, my worries are based around, where it is leading us.
Companies need to make profit, why else would they be in business, but workers are entitled to share some of the benefits of Lean and not just take the worst of it.
26 February, 2008 at 12:15 am
OK, there is nothing wrong with these agreements eroding, they were destructive from the start. The fact that the workers have taken packages means that they were smart.
If your main beef was wages, you should have led with that. Lots of waste between there and here.
Who are you to say what a reasonable wage is? There couldn’t be a more subjective question. Reasonable has to do with what your lifestyle entails, and what you’re willing to do to gain advantage in the workplace. If you don’t prepare yourself, you can’t compete.
You keep saying jobs are being devalued. That means nothing, it is merely rhetoric. A fact of capitalism is that in order to be competitive, you have to improve. This means being more efficient, or doing more with the same resources. This is not rhetoric. If you owned a business, and you have to compete, you have to get better. It is a fact, and it always will be.
Now you get into the issue of health care. Obviously an Obama or Hillary supporter. Health insurance is not a crisis. The cost of health care may be a problem for some, however, it is illegal for emergency rooms to turn anyone in need away. Either way, a new tax to cover everyone won’t make health care more accesible, it will just add another voice (that of the government) to the decision making process. And it will make everything more costly for everyone.
I’m not looking for anyone to pick up the ‘cost’ of this. If you need health care, it is your responsibility to get it. If you need food and shelter, your responsibility. If you need retirement funds, yours again.
So where is this leading us? Right where it should, to a more competitive situation. Those companies that can adapt, will, the other dinosaurs will not. The workers at the companies that survive will ’share’ the benefits by being able to work. That is what they’re giving, that is what they’re getting. That is their benefit. (They can get more benefit if they invest more, say time to improve their education, their money in investments). They’d have more of all of it if it weren’t all taxed away.
Go LEAN MACHINE!
28 February, 2008 at 6:07 pm
The problem Bob is your starting point which is as if the world was the US. I have to tell you that around the world the baddy capitalists often do it differently. The fact is that this means that your starting point is that there is no alternative and that what the corporations say and do over the years is right. Corporations from your standpoint are always right and follow the logic of capitalism. But this assumes only one logic – that of rabid US free markets as if the stupid unions have pushed the historically meek and easily pushed around, bosses to the brink. Just think, you seem to say, what might have been if health care costs no longer applied, if the great GM , Ford and Chrysler hadnt allowed the union bullies and the lefty stupids corrupt the workings of the market and the one best way. But if that where so, why is it that in continental Europe the auto corporations still bleat and moan about labour costs and this in societies where they, the auto companies, have, by comparision with the US, no social costs – 20$ per hour in teh UK adn what- 30-40 in teh US? The point is that when companies say that “we have to cut back, slim down/lean out, because of costs” we can say that in fact the issue isnt about worker care or costs but profiteering. You may say, that it doestn matter what I or organised labour thinks because teh corporations do their own thing and go where they want. really? Well why do they almost invariably go to very high cost Germany and keep plants in Sweden open when they close them in teh UK (Luton- GM) and Ford-UK (Halewood) or Antwerp? The point is that in yruo scenario if the auto companies want a race to the bottom in termsof social costs with all the attendant consequences this has for workers’ health you would say, so be it. My point is that we can see historically that this is no so adn that companies in fact do not just go to the cheapest locale in search of the cheapist labour. They often TRY to do so, but other factors intervene. After all, while GM adn the others slash labour dierct and otehr on costs, why dont they jsut cut them completely?
3 March, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Have you been reading my messages, or reading from some left-wing playbook? I said nothing about capitalism around the world. I’m talking about the US, as were you. It appears that when you begin to lose a debate, you reframe the reference so you can make the correlations you want.
Remember, you said that your main ‘beef’ was that there are few jobs outside the auto industry which pay a reasonable wage. To make this assertion, you have to define a reasonable wage (which you can’t). I assert that people make their own opportunities, they aren’t given to them by government or unions.
So where did I say that corporations ’say and do it right’? And what does that even mean? You’re having a very hard time making a real argument, aren’t you? And who is assuming the ‘one logic’ of rabid US free markets? Is that you or me? I don’t see it in any of my writings, but you imply that my arguements are based on your ridiculous quotes.
Answer this for me: What does health insurance have to do with employment? At one time, when companies needed another means of enticing workers, and health care was much cheaper, it made sense to offer this insurance. Now, it seems like it has to be an entitlement. Why? Because the costs are getting larger? Of course costs are getting bigger and bigger, because the pockets paying for it (the insurance companies) are bigger. If people were paying health care costs directly, it never could have gotten so far out of control (basic economics of supply and demand, you can look that up if you don’t get it).
Why does Europe moan about labor costs? Maybe because labor laws don’t allow them to shed labor as demand goes down. That’s one of the principle reasons there is so much more automation in Europe (principally, socialist France). Sure, we use automation in the US, but not to such a high degree.
The rest of your argument has nothing to do with mine, so I just assume you’re posturing for your audience.
10 March, 2008 at 9:03 am
Bob,
I have been away for a week so I have not had the opportunity to read or comment on your diatribe.
You are quoting from another poster, but that is OK, as for losing the debate, I think you are foaming at the mouth at the thought that your precious Lean Production has been questioned as being not in the best interests, in the long run, of employees and the wider economy of the world in real terms.
In the short term of course there are gains for employers and big business, but in the long term, what are the benefits?
I made a point about the US in my post, because it is a good example of how Lean will leave a good number of good, hard working people without the means to lead a good and long life, with health care and pension benefits being crucial, this is what a “Reasonable Wage” will achieve, the reason that a figure can not be put on this, is because in different parts of the world, it means different things, but basically a good warm roof over our heads, three square, a good education and living without fear that we can not afford to get the health care we are entitled to.
You ask a question, what health insurance have to do with employment?
In Britain, very little, in the US, everything, GM’s costs for health care are in the region of $1000 per vehicle. This added cost is not met by the Japanese plants in US or other transplants, so there is pressure on GM and other US based companies to outsource in order to offset these costs.
So when jobs are shed, they are transferred then to the lower wage outsource plant, the obvious question, even to you, is, how is the health care payed for? By whom?
You can make all the arguments you like about how this came to be, but make no argument as to how this problem is going to be solved, just bury your head in the sand and hope that big business and supply and demand will prevail.
You have a lot to learn about world economics.
15 April, 2008 at 7:45 am
Hi.
Bob misses the point of the Blog, so I have spammed him out, I am sorry to do this but the idea of the Blog is for people to come on and give their views about what is happening to them at the sharp end and I don’t want to get into a who is right or wrong argument.
Ken