You Set Up the Lemonade Stand to Buy All the Lemonade

Posted on 08/09/2012 by Grumpa Joe
UAW members at protest

UAW members at protest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a “thing” for unions. In Particular the UAW. While working a summer job for International Harvester  as a college freshmen, I met the UAW. I went to look at my design for a machine frame on a welding table in the R&D shop. I examined the way the welder had placed all the pieces of steel on the welding table over a layout of the design. I saw a part out-of-place by what I thought a large amount. I tapped the piece back into the correct place. The act took but a few seconds to complete. Within a few minutes my boss Mervyn came out and asked me to walk with him. I did. As we left the shop floor, I noticed that all the shop-workers were conspicuously sitting down doing nothing. Inside the office, Mervyn lectured me on life in a UAW factory. It seems my adjustment stole life-giving sustenance from the mouth of UAW families. They showed who was boss by sitting down on the job. They didn’t go back to work until Merv’s boss came out to apologize to the UAW shop Steward about my mis-behavior.

After my experience I began to take notice of UAW articles in the newspapers. They struck a lot. Walter Reuther was head of the UAW at that time. GM announced a multi-billion dollar profit and Reuther boldly proclaimed that the UAW would get their piece of the pie. GM workers went on strike and were out for several weeks. I cannot believe those guys ever made back what they lost in wages during that time. GM lost business to Ford and Chrysler and ultimately caved.

What I noticed following strike articles is the attitude of the striking workers; “we would rather see this company go out of business than to make a single concession in a contract.”

Watch what will happen in Chicago this month. The teacher’s union will strike to get their demands for a raise. Poor teachers, twenty-three million private sector workers are scraping to find a meal, and they are looking for more money. None of what they are asking for is for the betterment of your kids, it is for themselves. They have the same attitude as the UAW on bringing the school district to its knees. Mayor Rahm-bo Emmanuel will cave not because he wants to see all his under-performing schools do better and the kids in his city learn to read and write, but rather will be looking to protect his former boss during the election. That means we pay the bill folks, by paying higher taxes.

In the meantime, enjoy the article below about the Hopey-Changey-Feely success of the UAW and Govmnt Motors.

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Reblogged from several sites

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By Angel, on July 12th, 2012

Remember how Obama keeps telling us how he saved GM, and how our economy is getting better, it seems the car company he bought is being saved by Govt employees using our tax money to buy new cars. 79% of GM’s sales last month was government purchased.

GM’s sales figures for last month were the best since 2008 , up 16% for the month of June. YIPPEE! Well, wait just a minute. It seems that those rosey sales figures are due primarily to a 79% increase in fleet sales to the U.S.government in June. That’s right. Our tax dollars are being used to pump up GM’s sales figures ahead of next month’s quarterly report so that Dear Leader can point to Government Motors as a huge success. The incestuous relationship between GM, the UAW and the Regime has never been more glaringly apparent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. GM is unsustainable without government subsidies and will ultimately go bust again, taking billions of taxpayer dollars down with it.

We bailed out General Motors to the tune of $50 billion. $30 billion of this is effectively a loss, mostly sunk into fattening the United Auto Workers union—fierce Obama supporters—while the actual bondholders were shown the elevator shaft.

Meanwhile, as NewsBusters reports, “We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500+ million shares of GM stock.  Which we need to sell at $53 per.  Which debuted post-bankruptcy at $33 per.  And which is currently trading at just over $20 per.  Meaning we’ll lose about $15 billion.”

But it gets better. Despite the overwhelming negatives, the tiny bright spot of positive June sales numbers is being heralded by Obama and the leftist press as proof the auto bailout was a “success.”

Obama is now campaigning on the “success” of – the government buying cars from…the government’s car company.  With our money.

Americanvision says That’s like you setting up a lemonade stand for your kids.  You buy them the lemons, sugar, cups and pitchers – and then buy most of the lemonade yourself.

The pressure is on Government Motors to appear financially strong as this may be the last earnings report before November elections and sets the stage for how “successful” GM is. One of GM’s past tricks to help fudge earnings numbers has been to stuff truck inventory channels. Old habits die hard at GM. According to a Bloomberg report, “GM said inventory of its full-size pickups, which will be refreshed next year, climbed to 238,194 at the end of June, a 135 days supply, up from 116 days at the end of May.” 135 days supply is huge, the accepted norm is a 60 day supply. The trick here is that GM records revenue when vehicles go into dealership inventories, not when actually sold to consumers.

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Cocktail Arrogance

Posted on 09/06/2010 by Grumpa Joe

Wow! Times have changed since 1961. That year I graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Manufacturing jobs ruled the country. Every engineering student I knew had a minimum of six job offers. The starting salary for engineering graduates ranged from $480.00 to $620.00/mo. The highest paying jobs were in the aeronautical fields. The lowest were in teaching and government. I do not really know what engineering graduates make today, nor does it matter. What does matter is that the pay scale has flipped. Teaching and government jobs pay higher than private sector industrials.
Finding an industrial job is a difficult task, as most companies have moved manufacturing to Mexico, or China to avoid unions, and to take advantage of lower wages. Why have they fled? Because, unions take advantage of any company that makes a profit. The union bosses really believe the profit comes exclusively from the blood, sweat, and tears of their membership. Forget about the years of research, development, and the engineering that goes into any product. Forget about all the effort that goes into marketing, and sales of the thing. Forget about defending a patent from competitors. Forget about the money the investors put into the company so they can have the infrastructure, and tools needed to produce. All a union sees is the effort they put into assembling the thing. They believe that because union workers made the thing, union workers should get the profit from it.
I spent a few years working for Government Motors when it knew how to make money. At the time, Walter Reuther was the big cheese of the UAW. Every time GM announced their profits, good old Walt made a statement to the press that the UAW deserved to get a bigger piece of the pie. It did not matter if they had a contract, he would find a loophole to strike or go into re-negotiation. He was very successful at getting concessions from GM management. Management always caved because they owned so much stock themselves they did not want their dividends or profit sharing affected. The UAW became so greedy that GM finally imploded under the weight of the legacy carrying costs.
GM was not alone with union demands. Any company that had a union was under the same stress. Laws protect worker’s rights to organize. Once a union is in place, it is nearly impossible to get it out. The current effort to initiate unions with open ballots would make organizing even easier. The difference between 1961 and 2010 is that the unions do not have manufacturing to organize anymore. Instead, they organize office, and service workers. I was shocked to learn the extent of their penetration into government. I was aware of teacher, police, and fire unions, but not government worker unions. I wonder how Uncle can keep them from becoming a threat to national security. Imagine if the union boss announced that because the government collected more taxes this year, the union would take a larger share of the pie.
Unions also demand work rules. They want rules to have reason to strike, file grievances against management, and thereby leverage new demands at contract time. A very recent case of the reluctance of the SEC to fire or discipline an individual who spent his day watching and downloading porn on the job is an example. In the private sector workplace, a single visitation to an inappropriate website is cause for immediate dismissal. Why doesn’t the same rule apply to government workers?
Obama sees big government as the answer to every problem. He is actually promoting unionization of the government workplace. Why is that? A union will allow his bureaucracy to abdicate all responsibility for good management. That sets up the whole system for patronage appointments of cherry jobs throughout. Without the need for management skills, idiots can manage the entire bureaucracy because work rules will define worker function, and union bosses will police infractions through the grievance system
God what have we gotten ourselves into?

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