<p>Well, hmmm. Nike fires its new president after 13 months, citing poor performance. His severance package is
That’s for a guy who, accoridng to his bosses, didn’t make the grade. I’ve read kvetching about school superintendent, college administrators, and union workers on these threads. Well, welcome to the top of the private sector.</p>
<p>Xiggi, you make a good point. Having health care tied to employment (why?) creates a competitive disadvantage for US companies vis a vis companies in single payer nations, as well as between domestic companies with full benefits and those without. Which raises the question: is linking health care costs to employment a good thing? The momentum for de-linking retirement income from employment is pretty much unstoppable now, although too late to save a lot of companies which went under due to underfunded pension plans. Is it time to reevaluate where health care dollars should come from?</p>
<p>It should be pointed out that Mexican factories were built much more recently than many US auto plants. The Wixom (Michigan) assembly plant was built back in the mid 50s. It would be unfair to compare productivity rates between dissimilar manufacturing plants even if they produced comparable vehicles. The Wixom plant produces a mix of unibody and body on frame vehicles (the Lincoln Town Car and the Lincoln LS). Newer plants are designed to be more flexible in the types of vehicles that can be produced on their assembly lines a feature never thought about by Ford or anybody else in the 1950s. Material handling engineering has come a long way since the early 20th Century.</p>
<p>Re: Healthcare costs</p>
<p>Most industrial nations have some form of national health insurance. The US does not. </p>
<p>Re: Michigans future prospects</p>
<p>The local paper interviewed auto workers and their adult children about a month ago. Almost all of the college educated children plan to leave the state in search of job opportunities. Their auto worker parents all advised their kids to look for work outside the auto industry. Even when the college graduates received strong job offers from the Big Three or did internships, they all declined.</p>
<p>Re: Modern communications</p>
<p>Ford actually had a design studio in California during the reign of Jacques Nassar in the 90s. The hope was to get more in touch with West Coast auto trends. For whatever the reasons, the whole operation was closed up a few years ago and brought back to Michigan.</p>
<p>Took the fall on a mighty soft sword, I would say. If I got fired with these kinds of packages, gee, I would feel just awful</p>
<p>Love all the excuses for incompetence</p>
<p>And gee, I heard today that dealers have way too many SUVs and not enough hybrids and smaller cars from Ford. So the workers build what the overpaid bosses tell them to, and they are the ones being let go because the bosses have no vision and are making off like the bandits they are.</p>
<p>Today’s WSJ reports that Ford Motor currently has 1,100 workers in its JOBS Bank who cost the company about $130,000.00 each - approximately $140 million at Ford alone - and that’s before the new round of layoffs which will significantly increase the number of workers in the Bank.</p>
<p>Add in GM, Delphi, Chrysler and Visteon and you start to understand the problem that the industry faces. Lots of money that could have been used to design and build a better hybrid!</p>
<p>Great article. For you political types…Bush didn’t kill the industry, nor did Clinton. Management did and so did the UAW. Very sad…and Michigan is paying the price.</p>