Yahoo is my homepage.
This immediately caught my eye when I got on:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/gm_wagoner

Wagoner will step down if asked to do so by Congress. I can't say whether or not this will be a proactive move, but the man makes $14.4 million per year. Who's to say what the other executives make? Just paying them each year is about 2 billion I'm sure!

Let the opinions on this ensue!

Get his @$$ outta there. Would you beleive GM hasn't paid for their parts in over 4 years here in the tool and die bussiness?? we are just so overlooked nobody cares, now they are using this bailout money to buy tools from China and India. My dad, who until now, ran the most successful Tool and Die Company in the state, just laid off 40 people and the other 110 took pay cuts along wtih him and everyone. The owner, a smart man, makes an annual salary of $150,000 and owns a $50million dollar company

Going to weight in here. Question: How did Ford keep from having to take bail-out cash? Good management is suspected. They hired the former CEO of Boeing. By the way, how is Boeing doing now, anyone know? Ford immediately started reducing and buying out UAW contracts, if I remember correctly. Was this a good idea? Obviously it was. Bet he reduced the upper level staff too. Smart management is the key, always has been.

Well, Ford is still one of the few family-owned businesses.
You tend to take better care of something your great-grandfather passed down to you than something given to you by a bunch of rich idiots.

Grrrrrrr!!!! Get the leash!!!!

lol
What can I say? I call a spade when I see one.

No Brent, your dead on with your post. I think the greed is finally catching up with the bastards. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch either.

Thats what I'm saying. I call a spade a spade when I see it. No bones about it.
Ford has a much better company than GM... wait for it....but GM makes a hell of a better product!
I have worked on cars from all three automakers and Ford is the HARDEST to work on, followed by GM and Chrysler.
Did you know Ford doesn't put a fuse diagram on their fuse boxes? You have to dig up the owners manual (which looks like it was written in English by a Mexican) and decipher fuse numbers in the "Roadside Emergencies" section.

The gov't should never give money to a failing business. There is a reason why the business is failing. Also, the gov't shouldn't tell a business who to hire or fire and shouldn't tell anyone when to resign. We are getting closer to a nationalized car industry. One enemy of socialism and communism is private enterprise. The gov't will seek to run every aspect of the nation (healthcare, agriculture, transportation, food market). Get ready. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it's socialism.

I just have to put it in perspective.
If I had just given them 30 billon bucks I would be telling them what to do with it too...

First step is to get rid of unions.

Yay for no unions!!!!!!!!!!!

Yea, no unions, no bailouts. Let the "business darwinism" take its course. You will find out that GM really will pull itself out of this. So will chrysler and ford. I'm proud of ford though. They showed the US that they can make it without bailout. Hopefully they don't change their mind now.

Its because Ford isn't in the deathgrip of its own word. GM has to uphold all those full retirement benefits and health insurance they promised the retired union workers.

I don't see why UAW-GM employees get paid so much. UAW-T/AS workers make the American Standard Heating and A/C units our business installs. They are barely paid a quarter as much. Their pay comes out to something like $21/hr average (benefits included in avg.). MUCH less than the $80-something/hr UAW-GM workers.

Unions are a thing of the past. They should have been done away with during the civil rights movement.

Why do you suppose that the UAW negotiates those packages when times are good? I've heard both sides and have to say that in some cases the union is necessary. Business in this country isn't just run by folks who want to treat their employees fairly. In fact, there are some real nasty people who own and run business(the Continental Can Company class action lawsuit some years back is a good example). Sad to say, it does "take a crook to fight a crook". In the automakers situation, in my opinion, both the union leaders and upper level management screwed the pooch and as usual middle level management (union and business) will take it in the shorts again and again and again. Greed and lack of long-term thinking did the trick this time plain and simple.