Innovative Saturn-UAW Contract Dismantled

[CE]

It seemed like such a great idea at the time. Create an atmosphere where
workers and management are empowered to work together in harmony. Saturn's
historic labor agreement was the cornerstone of the corporation, fostering a
relationship that fueled interest in the small-car company in individuals
and organizations far beyond the confines of the automotive industry. But
not anymore. Nearly twenty years after the innovative labor contract was
created, Spring Hill workers voted to dismantle the contract in a
three-to-one vote. The new contract, which mirrors the national GM-UAW
agreement currently in place at other General Motors plants, will go into
affect at the beginning of next year.

For the full story, click on the link below:
http://www.saturnfans.com/Company/2004/contractdismantled.shtml

Charlie

 

[Philip Nasadowski]

Nice, GM conned the UAW into ditching the no layoff policy. Now they
can lay off everyone at the plant and move production to Mexico...

Is there any part of the US auto industry that isn't totally broken?
It's no wonder GM, etc can't make a decent car, between the MBA clowns
running things, the bean counters, the lawyers, the UAW, and the FEDs....

 

[Allison]

Actually, having no connections with Saturn but in Nashville nearby,
it's viewed locally as a move by original Saturn employees. Most of
the original guys had been laid off from other factories, no locals
hired. They negotiated a no lay-off contract along with some
concessions in pay & work rules. Now that most of those guys are
pretty much ready to go, they're shucking the old deal for the
standard deal which pays better and I'm guessing helps retirement.

There is also local talk of Saturn putting out other products for
other GM brands. That could be true. The typical deal is the union is
in from the front end saying we'll have 2 electritions here and a
wheel technition here. Just the way they're designed, that plan has to
be transferrable to Spring Hill. They've been doing one week a month
maintenance a month on the Ion line because they aren't selling.

 

[Jonnie Santos]

Don't forget post Enron, i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley too... it's a pain at my
place. I used to joke that the last thing we do is make product - sadly
it's not funny.

 

[David Firth]

Sarbanes-Oxley

SOX shouldn't hit the front-line worker, but if Saturn interprets SOX
requirements with the depth my firm has interpreted them for
accounting and IT, the back-end admin and support staff will pull
their hair out.

Which leaves who to run the company? As an investor, a
vendor/supplier, and as a customer who wants the company around for a
long time (my family has a Saturn SW2 that we love and are considering
replacing it in a year or so with a VUE) I want professionally trained
management, preferably folks who know operations and have taken the
time to get some professional management training. I want the support
staff (legal, accounting, supply chain, engineering, etc.) to also be
committed to personal development in their fields, be it education,
professional/trade organizations, or taking the job seriously enough
to become top-notch.

My experience with the Spring Hill plant is dated, but I used to sell
and support data acquisition and submetering instrumentation. I had
projects in the Saturn plant, the Honda Marysville, OH plant, and
called on some Detroit GM facilities through a distributor. The Saturn
plant and the Honda plant were very well run and the Saturn folks were
much nicer to work with than the Honda folks. The GM plants in Detroit
run by old school, pulled myself up by my bootstraps types, were hell
with which to work. Saturn and Honda wanted to submeter their
facilities in order to assign energy costs to the departments in which
the energy was consumed -- a must for activity based costing, which
allows better budgeting and performance monitoring. ABC isn't easy to
do correctly and I never found out if they achieved their end goal,
but at least Saturn and Honda were trying to operate as a modern
company. In the last Chevy plant I visited, I might as well have been
time warped back to 1955. Ford, to their credit, was also working with
our equipment and had a nice energy monitoring system -- but they were
much more uptight than Saturn & Honda.

I could easily turn your MBA comment into a reply about all the waste
I've experienced in union shops. However, I support collective
bargaining and wish that both labor and management could concentrate
on good operations rather than finger-pointing. An MBA is not required
to be a good manager, but it is a tool that can help a good manager be
a better manager.

I wish the entire plant luck in their transition, and I hope that GM
corporate doesn't screw it up.

I think that elsewhere in this thread the Ion's slow sales was
mentioned or alluded to. I'm a Saturn fan and even I don't like the
Ion. Can't really explain it, though the speedo in the center of the
dash is a good start. Maybe I'll warm up to it. I didn't like the VUE
until I rented one for a week.

Cheers,

Dave
One of those 'MBA clowns'

 

[Art]

Seems to me that the real losers in the new contract are the Saturn dealers.
At least before when the plant was going to be building just Saturns there
was an incentive to turn out good new product for Saturn dealers. Now what
will they be getting in 5 years?