Death Rattle

     As we in America are watching Chrysler and General Motors once again restructure because they cant compete with the foriegn automobile industries, some question if this is the death rattle of two of the big three auto manufactureres in America. 

     In the last forty years the auto industry in the United States sales have slumped continuely against the foriegn aoto industry.  Alot of people blame the labor unions but, that is not where the blame lays.  After researching and looking into the destruction of the industry in this country i have come to the conclusion that the blame is to be placed in several different places. 

     From personal experience i worked in an auto supplier to the big three and the company I worked for added several thousand square feet put a new over head crane, the cost of which was in the millions.  Ten months later they closed the plant.  To me it didnt make alot of sens e to do this until I looked into why.  It turns out they got a huge tax break for closing the plant that had been there for over thirty-five years and could write off on their taxes the loss of the upgrades.  They moves all the equipment to another of their five plants in the United States and partly to a new plant they opened in Mexico.  They are able to manufacture the parts in Mexico and ship them to the United States for less because of the Norht American free Trade Act.  this makes great sense business wise to the big three howwever, it is extremely harmful to the American worker to go from $18 an hour to go to a service job making $8-10  per hour.  When thousands of these jobs are lost every month how can we avoid going into an economic recession.  While the prices continue rising with inflation the average workers wages fall.  So part of the reason for the downfall of the American auto industry is due to unfair trade agreements to the American worker.

     Secondly poor management from these aouto industries have led to this downfall as well.  General Motors has a plant in California that a decade ago was the worst of all the plants they had in effeiciency, production, and quality.  So they closed it and then a month later reopened it.  Now, its production is the highest in quality and the most efficient of the General Motors family.  What did they do to make these vast improvements?  They brought in a manager who had ran a Japanese plant and he implented Japanese style management which allows the workers to take greater pride in their work.  One of the things they do is place stickers on the vehicle they produce that says they made that particular truck or car.  This brought the employee moral up as well as many other programs they implemneted at this plant.  So just by changing the management style with the same employees production and quality went up in amazing ways.  Did they implement all of these programs in the other plants?  No that makes too much sense for General Mototrs.  So now they had to get a bail out from the government.  Which now has controlling interest in them.