On Jun 1, 2009, at 6:43 PM, Charles Bennett wrote: > I do see your point that they didn't do anything else, but I don't > know that it would have made much of a difference. > They weren't winning the quality wars anyway and their cost of sales > was too high compared to the foreign cars. Honda, Lexus and Accord > on the high end, Hundai KIA etc on the low end.
The American companies just didn't seem to get that developing a reputation for quality requires a long term commitment. The early adopters of the Saturn became very loyal and the unions even made concessions to get the labor costs competitive with the US operations of Nissan and Toyota. But internal company politics effectively hamstrung Saturn and books have been written on the subject. Meanwhile first the Japanese and then the Koreans entered the US market with cheap but shoddy cars but kept stressing quality until they turned the perception around. > In any case it's pretty much all at GM management's feet as far as > I'm concerned. I remember when the US auto executives were up in arms about Japanese competition and the Japanese CEOs pointed out that they made in the low six figures while upper management at US companies were compensated in the multi-million dollar range even as their companies lost money. It was very clear that they just didn't care about the success or their companies. > > My, poorly stated, worry is not about assigning blame for the past > but that going forward, the government has a vested (literally) > interest in pandering to a union that in turn will vote for them as > long as the company is not allowed to fail. > > Who will set the wages now? The government? Hope for rapid divestment. -- A young idea is a beautiful and a fragile thing. Attack people, not ideas. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
