That is implied in the articles and certainly in buyer's preferences - although most buyers probably haven't any idea what type of labor produced a given product.
Anglo-American auto unions produce inferior products by and large. Great Britain led the way - it has no domestically controlled auto industry - British unions - the type Sweeney emulates -took care of that. Sure, feckless management helped the unions cripple the industry just as they are doing here.
We all know what the good US made cars are and they are more likely than not to be non-union than union made. They have superior resale value and don't require rebates or incentives to be moved. Even your Detroit paper finds Cadillac to be probably irredeemable:
GM launches $4 billion tuneup of faltering Cadillac brand
auto.com
Let's face it, Generic Motors would do better to get out of auto production entirely. They're doing it anyway.
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- January 30, 2001
Chrysler Slashes Production, Jobs
As Rivals Plot Their U.S. Expansion
By JEFFREY BALL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
...As in past downturns, Chrysler is the first of Detroit's Big Three auto makers to sharply scale back in the face of a slowing economy and tougher competition. But Chrysler won't be alone in making painful cuts as customers, revenue and jobs in the U.S. auto industry increasingly shift toward Asian and European brands and away from traditional Detroit names like Chrysler, Dodge or General Motors Corp.'s Oldsmobile brand.
GM said last month it will kill its storied Oldsmobile brand, and cut a total of 15,000 hourly and salaried jobs world-wide. Although GM says it has no plans for major new cuts in plant capacity in the U.S., officials note that as the company renovates its factories over the next few years, it will reduce output and cut the number of models it offers.
The coming cutbacks at GM and Chrysler represent casualties in a market-share war that will likely intensify. North American auto-plant capacity is expected to increase by 1.3 million vehicles by 2008, to a total of 21.3 million vehicles, according to the Autofacts unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers. But many auto-industry officials now expect U.S. sales volume, including imported vehicles, to remain at about 16 million vehicles a year. U.S. auto makers have been forced to heavily discount their wares to compete for buyers, resulting in a costly incentive war that was largely responsible for losses in recent months at Chrysler. By cutting capacity, Dieter Zetsche, Chrysler's new chief, hopes to stanch the profit-draining discounts.
But even as Chrysler plans to idle factories, foreign rivals are opening new plants. Between 1997 and 2000, Asian and European auto makers muscled into some of Detroit's biggest and most-profitable markets, particularly pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles. The combined market shares of the Big Three, excluding the European luxury brands they have bought or merged with, fell from 71.5% to 65.6%, according to Autodata Corp., an auto-industry research firm.
Toyota Motor Corp. last week announced the latest in a series of capacity expansions, outlining plans to increase output at its engine plant in West Virginia. Toyota wants to nearly double its North American production, which could enable it to overtake Chrysler as the No. 3 auto maker in the U.S. market.
Both Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. are building new factories in the South to crank out SUVs and minivans. Honda's plant is going up in Alabama, Nissan's in Mississippi.
Even Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler's sibling within the DaimlerChrysler family, is expanding its SUV plant in Alabama. Its German rival, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, is enlarging its South Carolina factory, where it builds U.S. favorites, including an SUV and a convertible roadster.
The new and expanded factories being built by foreign auto makers will create more than 10,000 jobs in the U.S. as Detroit contracts. Given that the jobs in the Southern plants tend to be nonunionized, the shift points to the increasing pressure on the United Auto Workers union -- which, despite negotiating a generous contract with the Big Three in 1999, wasn't able to prevent Chrysler's latest job cuts. UAW President Stephen P. Yokich, apparently referring to payments guaranteed to laid-off workers under the union contracts, said in a statement that he is "confident that our current contracts with DaimlerChrysler will provide our members and their families with economic security during this difficult period." Those cuts include closing Chrysler factories in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico....
interactive.wsj.com^HMC |
