Chevrolet Volt, too little, too late and too expensive

And how is that working for you at the moment?

Where is the problem with collective bargaining? It's just the workers asking for what the market will bear and to quote someone , frankly none of our business.
Union contracts? So the union signs those contracts alone, not management? Interesting.

 

With all the interesting comments about union/non-union, one thing I rarely see mentioned about unionized labor is this:

They go on strike for weeks, for a few cents raise an hour (on average) - or whatever it is they are striking for. Reasons given range from "we have to save union jobs" (heard on local radio within the last year), to "making management listen", to - whatever.

What you never seem to hear is a cost-benefit analysis of the strike - from striking workers. Say you are going to strike for 4 weeks, lose 4 weeks pay at your $25/hr wage, maybe getting a couple hundred strike wages from the union (although seems local strikers aren't even getting that anymore), all for a .25/hr wage increase. How long does it take to make up that lost pay for that .25/hr increase? Realizing that the contract may only be good for 2-4 years?

In round numbers, that's a $4000 loss of earnings over a 4 week period ($25/hr * 40 hours). Let's say you get $200 a week strike pay - that's $1000 to the plus side, so now you're down $3000. Gross pay, of course (not net). So, it will take you 12,000 hours to make up that lost $3000 for a .25/hr increase. That's 300 weeks, or 5.76 years - for a .25/hr increase on a contract that will only last 2-4 years, generally.

Ok, maybe there's other benefits - maybe. Maybe an extra day off - maybe. Maybe I won't have to pay an extra $20.00 a month for health insurance - maybe.

Then there's always the "pride" or "solidarity" issue. I'll give you that those things may be important from time-to-time. You know, show 'em who's the boss kind of thing.

Seems someone isn't always doing the math to determine what they really get for what they are losing. Sure, pride has some value, but there seem to be some workers and some plants/employers that strike all the time (at least in our neck of the woods). Sometimes only a few days, sometimes for several weeks, whatever. Every 2-3 years, one of the local aircraft plants has some labor issue in renewing contracts.

Honestly, with what I've seen, you have to wonder how this benefits employees or employers. Seems the only ones getting benefits are the union hierarchy/oligarchy themselves.

Without a question, there was a time when labor unions were necessary and needed. But I really wonder with all the labor laws, safety laws, etc. how necessary they really are today. If you can make more somewhere else - go for it! Make all the money you can! (do it legally, of course).

There seems to be a real backlash these days against those "overpaid" bankers, or whatever, and their "bonuses". I understand the ire and sentiment. And while it seems all nice and good to tell "those" people what they can make - do you really want the government to tell you what you can make?

Seems that a 75 year experiment in just that effort came tumbling down nearly 20 years ago. Even China allows more "free market" economy and has evidently come to the realization that those kinds of economies aren't in the government's best interests (which is because it isn't in the people's best interests).

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - George Santayana

 

One other comment:

Yes, GM did make what they could sell, and what the public wanted. Geez, does it take a genius to take a look at their previous sales numbers and market share to determine that? Cheaper, smaller, more efficient vehicles have been available as years, and if they could be sold like "hotcakes", companies would ramp up demand to make them.

Those boys answer to their shareholders - can you imagine a stockholder's meeting where the stockholders rail against the company that "you need to make x instead of y, so we can make more earnings per share!", and a company refusing to do so? Said company's stock will hit toilet very quickly with that. So if that were the case, GM's stock would have been worthless 2 decades ago, not just recently.

It wasn't until gas nearly tripled in price over a 2 year period, and doubling in price in just a few short months last year that vehicles that used more gas fell into disfavor.

Sales plummeted. And due to the realities of retooling (and the limits of being able to retool with those union contracts), they simply can't shift over to making something else quickly.

Oh, and if slack sales are an indication of gas guzzling, bad for the environment vehicles, I guess that Toyota and the Prius are also bad news? Since their sales are off 55% recently?

Three statisticians went out hunting, and came across a large deer. The first statistician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second statistician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third statistician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "On the average we got it!"

 

unions do serve a purpose. without them you could be in my situation where a new contract negotiated with our client will result in a 30% pay cut and we have no say in it other than to look for another job and many are.

then again, we have unlimited overtime available too... guesss that is the benefit of working a slave job at slave wages, they can afford to pay time and a half

 

Sorry to hear about your situation - but a few thoughts, looking at this dispassionately:

• Be thankful that so far, you have a job. I know it may sound trite, but there are a lot of people looking and can't find anything.
• You have every right to seek employment elsewhere, if your current employer is going to cut your pay. If enough of you do that, and in a short time, it will make any employer stand up and take notice. Doesn't do them any good to lose 25% of their employees and not be able to make production. If they can afford to lose 25% of their employees and still make customer's happy, then they probably had too many employees. Sorry, but I said I would look at this dispassionately.
• If you think of coming back with "they will hire someone else cheaper", then maybe it is a case of being paid too much for the work being done. Not being mean, or cold-hearted, just looking at this from a logical standpoint.
• Sending job's overseas? On a personal note, I think there do need to be some limitations on that, more than there are now. A lot of work visas should be cut, and there should be some laws that encourage localized employment over foreign employment. Lest someone think I've gone too far, there are issues with tariffs, etc. While I'm certainly a "free market" believer, there are limits and certain realities to deal with. that doesn't mean propping up something that shouldn't exist (does it REALLY make sense to pay people more than market price to NOT grow wheat, etc?)
  Unfortunately, not all of this is due just because of labor costs. There are some complicated tax laws dealing with this issue that allow US corporations to have overseas headquarters - and pay taxes for the country in which the "headquarters" claims is it's "home". Thus, they get the benefit of making gajillions, but since it's made "somewhere else", they don't pay US taxes on it, even though it's a "US based" corporation. Not all of that overseas migration is due to JUST labor costs.

I wouldn't know about that. I have a college degree, a masters and a few certifications. I work in IT. Until about 10 years ago, I NEVER worked less than 65-70 hours a week. It was generally more like 80-100 hours a week. I get paid a salary. I don't get paid overtime. Never. I just got to keep my job for working like "a slave".

And no, I wasn't making tons of money. The localized economy doesn't pay lots for IT jobs. However, the cost of living makes up for that. In fact, I could have probably gone to work at GM or Ford and made as much or more doing assembly line work, and probably had better benefits. However, having grown up around several aircraft plants locally, I found that that type of work is not my cup of tea, and dealing with the inevitable layoffs every 3 years or so wasn't in my interest either.

So, it was MY decision to stay with the job (well, that and a poor local job market in IT during those years), whatever it was. I could always just pick up and go elsewhere, if I wanted to. Believe me, there were lots of times I wanted to. As an Air Force brat, I grew up all over the country (some in Canada too), coast-to-coast, from the Gulf to the 49th parallel, and there are simply some places I'll live, and others I have no desire to. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, I'm now "stuck" in a place and area I would rather not be, but since family and job are here, and it ain't all bad, here I am....

 

well, my job wont go overseas since we specialize in supporting companies that say "tech support will never be provided by someone in India or anywhere else but the USA"...

now, many of you will think that there are not many of those kinds of companies out there, and if looking at very large ones, you will be generally correct. but there are still a few holdouts.

to be honest with ya, i fully expect some concessions in our salary structure to be implemented. there is a LOT of dissent amongst the ranks, and our location would be greatly hurt if a significant number of the more tenured employees were to jump ship. the new contract is 2 years in length and our center has been specialized and now only handles the one client over the past year.

granted, the job market is poor right now and other options are limited but with the cut, there is simply a lot more options that would cover the requirements. i have often thought about going elsewhere, but wont do it unless i am looking at a minimum 15-20% pay jump because this job does have several things going for it (location, flexibility and scheduling) which made it difficult to find a position like that. now with a much lower jumping off point, more options are available and i would be willing to make concessions on the location, etc.

as far as the local area tundrwd, i was also in the air force on a missile silo at McConnell. sorry, but had enough. too cold, too windy, too whatever.

 

For me, the big concern is one of security. A surprising number of our largest corporations, utility companies, strategic manufacturers, have gone offshore to take advantage of that dirt cheap labor, especially in a skilled field (Engineer, programmer, etc)

However, there is no control over what happens once that decision process is shifted offshore. Some surprisingly sophisticated and subtle back doors are put into various systems as a result. You can look them up, no need for me to do so

Ever spend any time at the radar sites such as Pinetree Line, Mid Canada Line, DEW line?? Just curious

 

Ah, titan missiles. I'm hopeful you took appropriate precautions around the fueling ops?

 

David-

I ask about your exposure to titan facilities as the fuel was hydrazine, and the oxidizer was dinitrogen tetroxide. The fuel and oxidizer are extremely toxic and mid-term exposure can produce carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic results

 

only very minor exposure, i was on the launch crew. it was common to have minor leaks and such and part of our job was monitoring everything that kept the missiles at readiness including trace vapors, etc... so nope... didnt have a key or anything like that... basically monitored a few dozen hydraulic and pneumatic systems. the only i did was make sure the 18 ton doors opened on cue.

i did not fix anything... but did write up a lot of work orders.

 

Capot .... kaputt .... finished ....

Verstehen sie? Ich verstehe nicht!

Au secours!!

Je me suis perdue ....

 

Just so you are aware of the long-term effects of the fuel and oxidizer

 

we had a few chemicals that were pretty toxic that we had a minor chance of exposure too. but my job as an MFT (missile Facilities Technician) we only inspected the support system. we did not fix anything unless it happens in the middle of the night and cant keep. my job for the most part was to know what valve to throw if we sprung a leak somewhere so it would stop leaking. so other than a leak, we had no risk of exposure. we inspect at shift change. write up work orders and maintenance would fix the stuff. they got dirty all the time... we wore crew blues... heck i washed my uniform once or twice a month but then again, maintenance worked 7 to 3.30... we show up around 9 am. stay until after crew change the next day, if no issues we get out around noon the next day.

we also had detectors that would go off for any of the oxidizers that might leak. a few items were said to greatly increase risk of cancer even with minor exposure to lungs or skin to be honest with ya, the thing was over 100 feet long, about 10-12 feet in diameter and other than the warhead, it was 96% fuel tank but had no idea what its effects were other than if a certain alarm went off well had to use real O2 instead of those stupid chemical filter masks which i hated because they rarely worked worth a crap. if they got wet, they greatly restricted air flow... hated em... But the O2 suits were like 5 times more expensive so we never got to use them except for tests...for drills we would pretend to use them but not actually put them on...

in two years i was there, never had a real leak. did hear of one major incident when mechanics were working on a missile, dropped a screw driver and it punctured the side of the missile causing a leak. like WOW!! all hell broke loose. we were locked down for 3 days until the brass from Nebraska came down (it was like 200 miles... dont know why it took em so long...figured they were afraid of the fumes) to look around, but i was on the other side of the range (some of the silos were like 25 miles apart so the ones on the outer edge were like 100 miles from the base) so my "24 hour" shift (actually with de-briefs, it was more like 30 hours) turned out to be 72 hours... really sucked since we never ate silo food, we always brought our own... only had enough for one day...

 

Ok sounds like you were aware of the risks. Never been to a Titan site (Before they were decommissioned) but have been to Minuteman sites.

I wouldn't mind touring the Titan museum

Home

Much like the abandoned and mostly forgotten Pinetree Line, Mid Canada Line, and DEW line radar sites, I think it's important to remember that portion of our history. Once you see such a site up close - even if abandoned, neglected, and in ruins - it helps put everything into perspective of that time period

A lot of the guys involved in the early part of the Cold War are already dead, and the rest will be gone soon enough. Consider that the Mid Canada Line was shutdown in the mid 1960's.

A lot of folks are unaware that the early liquid fuel ICBM's were essentially flying "gas tanks." The skin was pretty thin and easily damaged. Like that dropped wrench that caused the explosion at a silo in Arkansas

In that situation, I always recommend cannibalism. Just wait for your team mates to snooze off, clobber them, heat 450 F for 20 mins to sear in the juices, then 350 F for 80 minutes

Serve with plenty of butter and bread rolls. The juices make a fine stock for soup, and for making gravy

 

I wasn't in a union in my last job. I went 5 years without a pay rise, had overtime slashed, conditions deteriated. The owner bought a new holiday house, a Mecedes Benz for his wife, a Land Cruiser for himself, replaced the airconditioning in the office where he and his wife worked but there was no airconditioning in the workshop. Can't tell you how good that was as a worker and how good it was to get out, into a job where I got paid $10,000 per year more and 2 pay increases a year, one for experience(first 2 years) and one for inflation, I now get training provided and shorter hours with more leave. Due to the training in my current job I got a reclasification and more pay but I produce more and better work for my employer. I now earn about $20,000 per year more than the guys I used to work with earn now. The old boss and his wife have another new car each and the number and size of holiday homes is still increasing.

A point to remember, if employers never screwed over their workers there never would have been a union.

DaveinOlyWA, beware of the "we will never have tech support off shore," my phone company once said they would never use an overseas call centre but Alan, Sue, Mark, and John on the other end of the line when I call for help all seem to have a funny accent but all very similar. Hmmm I wonder why?

 

ya know Jay, if you thinking of relocating to the "sunbelt" say in Montana or Wyoming, they had decommissioned Minuteman Silos for sale. saw a website once about a guy who bought one and converted it over to live in.

and Pat: being very near Ft. Lewis Army Base we do have a lot of foreign born military wives who work here, (its easy when your company has over 5000 locations worldwide) many having transfered from a different location.

so ya, its very possible to get a person with a major accent. we have this one guy... we call him Sasha (his real name hurts your eyes just to read it) he calls himself Gus on the phone. he is a Russian from the Ukraine, got most of his education in France, worked in another career in Eastern Europe until they tried to toss him in jail and that is how he ended up here. so he has a distinctive French/Russian accent which is hard for many to understand.

but i can tell you from experience, its better to have a foreign born person in the US taking your call than someone in another country taking your call even if they speak perfect "american". there are just too many language translation issues that are hard to understand especially if you dont live it on a daily basis

 

Yep, I think I know the property you're talking about

The Most Unique Real Estate In The World

Titan I - Epitaph ++ Missile Silos Part VIII ++

There are also abandoned bunkers that were used for the SAGE network troposcatter relay, and GATR relay. These facilities were overbuilt to a level hard to imagine or even describe. However, there are caveats:

First, the sites were almost always powered by their own diesel generators, typically huge Nordberg or Vivian diesel engines. Onsite diesel storage required POL tank farms, in some cases a quarter million gallons worth. Over the decades, these single wall tanks leaked, contaminating ground water and soil

Second, a lot of these sites are at or below the natural water table. Therre are exceptions, there are mountain sites in Arizona and Utah that are naturally bone dry. But most of the sites required *constant* pumping. Once they were abandoned, they turned into an underground water tank

Texas Missile Silo TX page

Third, like any underground structure, there is always the danger of Radon from the soil. Most of these structures are located in areas the EPA considers naturally high in ground Radon. Thus, constant ventilation would be required

Fourth, the majority of the missile sites available are older Atlas and Titan sites. Most of the Minuteman sites are imploded and backfilled to meet various arms control treaties. The Atlas and Titan were liquid fueled, as you are aware. The fuel and oxidizer are highly toxic and most sites are contaminated with fuel and oxidizer

Fifth, although these missile sites, command bunkers, communications bunkers, have been abandoned from 20-40 years now, they probably are still programmed into Russian ballistic missiles. With such an overabundance of re-entry vehicles, it makes little sense to deprogram especially older Soviet generation ICBM's that were "hard wired" to a target. It's quite possible your supposedly "safe and secure" new home may be on the receiving end of a 400 KT thermonuclear device - if it ever came to that

That said, I wish we would try to preserve more history from the Atlas and Titan days. It's important to properly keep those events in context, when you can actually see and touch a facility.

I also wish more had been done to preserve old SAGE radar sites, such as PineTree Line or Mid Canada Line sites. There is a MCL sector command site sitting abandoned on the shore of Hudson's Bay, called Winisk. It's located within the new Polar Bear Provincial Park

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskmap.jpg

At one time, during the peak of the MCL, there were 8 sector control sites (Fully manned) and 80 unmanned remote doppler radar sites. All were literally abandoned, and serve as serious sources of environmental contamination (POL tank farms, mercury, PCB's, etc).

Why not restore Winisk and use it as a tourist accomodation for the provincial park? Not only would tourists understand the environment, they would also be able to understand the exploration of the north in the context of the Cold War

http://www.lswilson.ca/mcl-424.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/mcl-521.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/mcl-415.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/mcl-415a.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/mcl-521a.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winisk9.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winisk10.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winisk14.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskctltwr.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskpic30.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskpic31.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskpic42.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskpic43.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/chopper at winisk.jpg

http://www.lswilson.ca/winisk-60.jpg

MCL-SCS500

When you consider that the Winisk station has been abandoned since the mid 1960's, it's in surprisingly good condition. The climate that far up north is harsh.

 

Dave, they all have Indian accents and live in India was what I should have typed and was hinting at.