“if any autoworker did as piss poor of a job as Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, they would be fired.”
This is the funniest thing I’ve read in days! Firing a UAW member would take a combined act of the Union president. the US president, and the Pope!
The entire management structure at Stellantis needs to be replaced, although the company may not be fixable.
+1
Job #1 should be the improvement of the very poor reliability of their vehicles, as compared to the competition:
It’s the same for any strong union. When I was in the steel mill 40 years ago I worked on a tiger team with several union workers. A few complained about drunk coworkers that couldn’t be fired. Foreman complaints first went to the general foreman, then the labor relations manager, then the mill superintendent, then corporate HR. This typical could take a few months. All the time, the guy was still on the job. At the end of this train, they gave him a second chance, then the cycle started all over when he was drunk in the job again. The turn foreman usually found a bench for the drunk to sleep it off and pulled in a laborer to take over his job. If the drunk was a senior worker, others would move up until all positions were filled.
The tiger team members complained in particular about a roller operator who controlled the speed of the rolling mills. Ten mills were lined up and reduced the billet from a 4” square to a 1” round cross section. If the roller operator didn’t keep the speeds of the mills just right the bar would shoot up and out of the mill. The bar was about 2000F and extremely dangerous.
I read that in the newspaper this morning. I also read a news article saying that the US dealers were livid about the replacement of the ICE power plants with BEV and it was costing them a lot of business.
+1
I know a guy who was a conductor on a rapid transit RR system, and he used to talk about a co-worker who was so incompetent that–even after many years on the job–was unable to figure out the emergency procedure for opening the doors during a power outage. Even though this was a significant safety hazard for the passengers, that incompetent was kept on the job.
Between my wife and I, we’ve dealt with 4 differnent unions within GM. There are endless stories of alcohol and drug addicts, incompenents, thieves and members refusing to work at all. Even those that were fired were brought back in contract negotiations.
Those don’t even touch on the “not my job classification” stories
A few times, I accompanied my boss when he picked-up his wife from her office job at the old GM assembly plant in Linden, NJ. The number of employees who appeared to be either “under the influence” or hung-over at the end of their shift was amazingly high.
I was reading an article the other day on the 59 desoto and it reminded me of how far Chrysler has fallen. They used to have pretty good enginering except for their body issues. Too bad.
I had a guy I tried to fire about three times. Took more effort than th3 guy was worth. Finally the union rep came to me and said let’s make a deal on getting rid of him. The guy had worn out his welcome with the union too.
Then again the words come back that no one gets a union they don’t deserve.
Clearly there’s a Jeep thing going on here that we don’t understand.
And I guess the now former CEO didn’t understand it either.
Speaking of effort and HR issues. After leaving the steel mill I worked with someone that was a general foreman at the same mill. He had more success in firing employees at the mill than many others. He documented every interaction with the offending employee. It may have taken 3 rounds, but he generally fired people that should not have been there. This tactic worked with the slackers he supervised at the later place we worked together. BTW, I didn’t work with him at the steel mill and had to depend on his stories of his success. I have no reason to doubt him though.
I worked summers at one family owned plant. Some of the guys belonged to a union but the others didn’t. The union guys got ten cents more an hour. At $1,65 an hour it was noticeable. I thought that was stupid. They fired the best plant manager because he spent money to increase productivity. It took some years but yeah, sold and belly up.
Another plant had no problems and everyone was motivated. They paid incentive do if you produced 120% of the rate, you got paid 120% of the base wage. Another plant insisted on a union when they came to town. Contributed to stock options and paid over the going labor rate. Even had hourly folks sent to Philly for the annual meeting.
Different management, different results. In school we analyzed various wage plans and one of the favorite comments by the professor was they actually punish good performance.
That’s treating the company’s employees as the most valuable asset. IMHO, good idea for all involved, execs, emplyees, stock-holders. Explored well in the 1980’s book In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters. This sort of corporate policy seems to be on the wane for some reason.
Just to clarify, the ones attending the annual stock holders meeting were stock holders and hourly workers. Purchased stock through the company cost sharing program.
The solution to Stellantis’ problem is glaringly simple–and is the same for any other business.
They need to offer products which people want, at a price which customers are willing and able to pay. It does no good to load up dealer lots with $100k SUVs when the majority of career-type jobs in this country pay between $40k and $80k per year. A car company needs to figure out how to sell vehicles at a variety of price points, ranging from roughly $15k to $60k.
And of course, if it’s impossible to develop and build low-cost economy models, the better option would be to badge-engineer a competing vehicle which already exists, not to give up on the entry-level buyer. For example, in Latin America, Dodge offered the Dodge Attitude, which was a rebadged Hyundai Accent, and later a rebadged Mitsubishi Mirage sedan. There’s no reason why they couldn’t offer such a vehicle here, to attract younger and less affluent buyers into the showrooms, and turn them into customers, instead of scaring them away with unaffordable prices.
I think that Nissan and Kia are the only manufacturers that sell cars with an MSRP under $20,000. They each sell ine model. If they would be popular, why aren’t there more? The average price of a new vehicle is over $47,000 because people are willing to pay that much. There are a few more manufacturers that sell models under $25,000 MSRP but most of their vehicles are higher than that.
+1
Car manufacturers will market whatever will sell in sufficient quantities to make it practical to manufacture them. Declining sales have led to a discontinuation of the Mitsubishi Mirage in The US, about one year after it was discontinued in Japan. I think that it remains only in markets such as the Southeast Asian countries and other developing nations.
We’ve kicked this “why can’t carmakers build and inexpensive, simple car” around several times before. @VDCdriver and @jtsanders are right. There isn’t enough of a market for such a car (or a small cheap pickup) in the US market anymore. Manufacturers would not be dropping them if they DID sell.
As for shifting one in from another part of the world… That is no longer economical either as US cars have higher requirements for safety and emission controls not required elsewhere. Those cheaper imported cars would be more costly to update than a clean sheet US small car that no one would buy.
If we compare prices of the smallest cars in the UK to the US… A Ford Fiesta or a Nissan Juke or a Citroen Berlingo cost about $23,000. This is only slightly less than a base Toyota Corolla. Which would an American choose? The Corolla. Or they’d spend more for a Camry or Rav4.
+1
Additionally, it costs a lot for a mfr to vary the construction of the same car on the same assembly line. Building a car to US safety & emissions standards on a foreign assembly line adds to the overhead for the mfr, so they are reluctant to do this type of thing unless they are assured of good sales volume in The US.
The biggest problem facing Stellantis is reputation. Once lost, it is very difficult to get it back.
For example, many people today will not buy a Nissan with a CVT because of the problems it had when they first introduced it. Some where around 2012 -2014, they had uncovered all the issues and corrected them. Now they are very reliable, maybe one of the most reliable transmissions out there, but still there is a lot of market resistance.
If Stellantis were to start making vehicles that would be in the top ten for reliability today, it would be at least 5 years before anyone actually noticed the quality improvement and ten years or more before their reputation begins to improve. That is a long term investment that they don’t seem willing to make.