J. B. Wulff

UAW Pricing Itself Out of the Auto Market

The UAW is so out of touch with reality while sadly in touch with politics. It's the only one at the table that won't do anything to help. The only way to get around them is via bankruptcy! Then the UAW will be forced to accept a more reasonable wage. Sadly, I'm afraid President Bush is going to reward their stubbornness.

A Modest Proposal For The U.S. Auto Industry: Stop Building Cars

There is more than enough blame to lay on government, unions, management, etc. The blame game never solves the problem. It just crucifies someone. The only way to solve the automobile problem is bankruptcy. The steel industry has gone through it. The airlines have gone through it twice. It's messy and it hurts. Many good people will have their lives messed up, but until everything gets "marked to market" in the auto industry there is no hope of a lasting solution. The horror stories of three million unemployed people if we go this way strains credibility. Car dealerships will close in some cases as they have been doing for years. People will still be buying cars. Successful dealerships will align with other vendors or hook up with whatever gets salvaged from the current jumble. In its better years, GM had a well organized offering of five lines of cars designed to meet the needs of various income segments of the buying public. Chevrolet was your entry level and Cadillac was the top. I expect that the current mishmash of models and features was the result of internal turf wars and the lack of solid leadership at the top. The contracts and benefits that are dragging the whole industry down came about in the huge post war boom. The industry was a gravy train and nobody thought about tomorrow. Packard, Studebaker, Nash, Hudson, Kaiser, Frazer, and Henry J vanished from the American road when they could no longer compete. The mourning period for them was not all that long. Henry Ford was the genius who mass produced an inexpensive car and raised the wages he paid his workers so that they could afford to buy them. American ingenuity has never let us down in the past and it won't now. Let's give it a real chance by having a banruptcy driven fire sale of the big three! We will be amazed what comes out the other side.