Painful Changes The President's latest statements about the auto industry are NOT going over well locally. I work in that industry so I am definitely biased but I really don't think the President's statements show that he gets it.
US automakers have been laying US workers off by the thousands. Costs have been slashed to the bone. Unions have been decimated. Salaries and benefits have been cut. Work has been outsourced to India, Mexico, China, the Phillipines, etc.. That outsourcing is accelerating in every arena.
Pensions and health care benefits for retirees have been reduced or eliminated -ignoring the promises that were made.
Michigan has a 12% unemployment rate in large part because of all the "painful changes". The rare new hires at auto supply companies are making $12-14/hr with few or no benefits.
Compuware just removed all of its people from Ford in a dispute over salary. Most of those people won't be hired back. GM is cutting hundreds this week alone. GM has said that there will be at least 3400 reductions among US salaried this year and a total of 47,000 employees cut in total. Another 7500 GM UAW workers are taking buyouts. My team's budget was slashed by over 60% compared to last year. Every team meeting we have our group VP tells us she doesn't know if she will be able to keep the entire team past mid year.
NO ONE in the auto industry whose name is not on the outside of the building has a safe job. Obama doesn't have a thing to tell anyone in the auto industry about "painful changes".
Even if everything he said was true , which it ISN'T, not by a long shot, where were his similar comments and tone directed to the financial industry which has sucked up in three months more federal tax dollars than the
entire auto industry has even dreamed of asking for?
Talking about having taxpayer money chase after bad money when he is planning to spend even more billions if not TRILLIONS subsidizing banks is tone deaf in my opinion. The banks and insurance companies get whatever they want with no strings attached while the auto industry has to bow and scrape for peanuts.
I hope he succeeds as President but I definitely think he needs to find out what's really going on in the auto industry before making such seemingly cavalier statements.
