Quote:
Originally Posted by VRM
I'd be happy to read it. I've looked for it before and have not been able to find it online. Can you post a link or send a copy? I work with the facts I have - if you can prove them wrong (a contract could certainly do that) I will be happy to say so. Try proving your case instead of trying to convince me that you know everything there is to know about everything. Show me the data that you are working from and I may come to the same conclusion that you have.
Steve
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Steve,
Don't worry about reading the contract.
It isn't relevant to the original
first post I made on this thread:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Wes
So Labor makes up a paltry 10-15 percent of the cost of autos and this is where the deepest cuts have to be made?
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I don't know where I lost Jamo, or anyone else, but rest assured that President Ron Gettelfinger didn't get his 10% from the pages of the contract. Nor did anyone get the bogus $76/hr figure from reading the contract. For a lead to the $70 "shocking earning" source, check out this appalling propoganda:
http://www.uaw.org/auto/12_01_08auto1.cfm . Prepare to be shocked and appalled. Just kidding.
Or, on second thought, maybe you should worry about reading the contract ...in the possibile instance that my thread whining about the "paltryness of 10%" has been successfully, and completely legitimately, hi-jacked and has turned the thread into a contract-reading-fest. I realise these are brutal words.
For a while there, Jamo completely lost me as to why the contract was so important to my original point. And I still don't see it. Of course it's important, but not to my point.
As an example, a contract is a very basic thing. It is most often a piece of paper, with writing on it, that is an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do, or refrain from doing, an act which is enforceable in a court of law. With very little stretch, a dollar bill is a contract of sorts. It's paper, it has writing on it, and promises, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." Is it fair? Beats me. It's an agreement at the time.
Now, if I were discussing drug smuggling, prostitution or political bribery, I would not insist that my fellows read the dollar bill to gain insight. The writing on the dollar bill has no bearing on its destiny in moral turpitude. While the piece of paper, the dollar, is involved by anyones count, the printing on it is not paramount to where it goes in any given instance.
Steve, I hope to God that you and/or others can follow me because I haven't had much visable luck in my scientific(?) quest for truth ....except for Stentor directly questioning some rather simple math.
And, as for Jamo, should he be reading your mail...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jamo
Wes...no flame or disrespect intended, but you have essentially made yourself totally irrelevant to this discussion.
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Jamo, I have never been told in such a totally pleasant manner that I was pretty much rendered a worthless poop. So I want to thank you for your kind words and apologise for my prior beating around the bush that opening the pages on the exact words on the contract weren't a big deal, at least to me. As usual, I'll assume that each side plans to spring a surprise interpretation on their opponent soon after it is signed. That accounts for the all-around wry smiles during the signing process.
I should have come right out, like a man, and said that the contract, although a minor contributing factor, wasn't directly relevant to the discussion I started with. Now if we could open the accounting books at GM, I think those would be worth reading, and very relevant, to determine if labor really cost only 10%. I highly suspect that the accounting books, not the jello-clad contract, also hold the secret to the real calculated cost, in dollars per hour, of the average employee.
So, while I fully appreciate your law degree and astute verbal comprehension, Jamo ...where's Bernie, aka Beancounter?
Not that I believe he would side with me here, or have an inside scoop.
Well, maybe an inside scoop, divulged to a sharp accountants eye in the GM etc public annual report(s).
Or maybe I should just move on from this 10% vs $76/hr thing before I dig any deeper. I'm probably the only one here that would be shocked and appalled that corporate influenced congressmen would blame 10% labor and be willing to scuttle the country over it.
Check this out:
http://www.uaw.org/auto/12_16_08auto1.cfm . Yeah, I know ...lyin' liberal ba$tard$.
I have this adopted theory (from AARP) why segments of corporate America would like to go bankrupt and press politicians on both sides to bring it about. It involves the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC),
http://www.pbgc.gov/ . Hang on to your wallet, Joe six-pack.
WES
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