He also wrote that the US has a higher percentage of supervisors than Germany, Sweden, and Japan combined.

According to Gordon, 20% of the purchase price of every product made in the USA goes to supervisors and monitors, not including secretaries, assistants, and accountants.

That means if you buy a $20,000 vehicle, $4,000 goes to pay for the burden of supervisors, managers, and executives whose sweatless efforts add fat, no value, and whose only solution to every blunder of their own creation is ‘cut the muscle.’ It’s been said the Big 3′s distraction with its muscle power (the workers) has put their decision-makers’ minds on all manner of schemes to weaken the union and cheapen the value of autoworkers around the world. They don’t think about cars anymore. They don’t think about consumers anymore. They think about labor markets and Super Bowl ads. Going so far as spinning off Delphi, tanking it, and shipping it out of the country piece by piece, job by job ( http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3601455 ).That’s what bankruptcy and union busting is about.

Less than 10% of the purchase price of a domestic, union-made vehicle can be attributed to assembly line workers. 20% for ‘monitors’ based on 1996 figures (when Fat and Mean was published). Gordon observed at the time that “the proportion of managers and supervisors in private non-farm employment has grown during the 1990s, not shrunk.” And you can bet the Big Three have a lot more supervisors, managers, and executives today. There have been a lot more college graduates looking for desk jobs than there were in 1996. And there are a lot fewer workers on the floor, working a lot faster, than in 1996.

Those workers shouldn’t give up anything else. The UAW has been on the back-peddle for decades, to the detriment of workers here and overseas. The 2007 contract cut wages to $14.50/hr., no pension, no retiree health benefits for new hires. These are the workers who are suppose to be the backbone of the glorious Green Revolution, building what would remove the planet’s number one climate changer (the internal combustion car) from the equation. The President-Elect promised to create millions of new Green Jobs. The benchmark for manufacturing jobs, the standard-bearer for the world, has long been the UAW. Now that line in the sand is on a fast retreat that will make the Green Jobs revolution this country and planet desperately need as appealing to workers as a Wal-Mart shift.

Understand the connection: it is utterly foolish and dangerous to lambaste and cheapen manufacturing workers out one side of your mouth, and ask them to ‘Save Our Planet’ out of the other. That is the bigger issue and longer view we need to consider during this Auto Loan debate. The current blue-collar, future green-collar workers (with and without college degrees) understand the critical role their labor must have in successfully addressing climate change. The question is: do white-collar college grads get it? Does the media? Does Congress?

The job loss and the economic down turn is not solely in the auto industry.Our economy would benefit from more people able to afford transportation to jobs and areas of higher learning.
The industry has long since needed to innovate;cross market, get into public transport.The old car payments could be the new commuter pass payments.

The natural world changes and is changed, whatever the reason wherever the blame.

The green car initiative has been ignored since at least the 70′s, Remember Citicar?

PBS’s NOW has ben running programs about the history of the electric car. I remember learning in highschool that when the industrial revolution started,America didn’t think there’d be enough fuel to last and the dark smoke and smog was troubling then ,as well (These facts are often quoted by people to support the continued use of unrenewable resoureces-the ” see, they were wrong,we’re still here” approach).

No matter when or how change brings destruction.
The car industry has been in a slump for years,especially the American car industry,again, remember the 70′s “buy American, buy a Ford”?
The people losing their jobs should have been phased into sustainable employment areas by now like recyled car uses, scrapping, maybe greening the industry- welding is not just for cars, management is not just for one type of factory.

Why aren’t the car companies cross marketing? Start building Public transportation empires and the vehicles for them.
The old car payments can now be the commuter pass.
And there are plenty of people who need homes (old trains= diner, old SUV =day spa?)and needy people need cars, create tax exempt aid agencies.

Again:

Our economy would benefit from more people able to work because they’re able to afford to get transport. The old car payments could be the new commuter pass payments.

I’ve been unemployed for almost three years, and nobody is offering me a lifeline into solvency. If my tax dollars (yes, I still have to pay taxes) go into the pockets of people who claim they need them more than I do, then I damned sure want to understand why their need is greater than mine, and why I should be willing to support their status quo.

Peace