NuncoStr8

or cops, or steel workers, or linemen, or all the other unions in this country?

rockville

The teacher's union has done a lot of bad to California. Individually the union members aren't bad. The problem is as a group they often demand and can force in the short term more from their employer than they are worth.

Saki GT

Afaik as of today Toyota has had one union plant, and one plant closing in the US, and that plant was NUMMI. NUMMI was also California's last large auto plant, a sign of business in general leaving California...

andy92782

Very interesting audio episode. It's unfortunate it took so long for them to get their act together, but I believe they finally have.

The National Geographic Channel recently aired an episode of their "Ultimate Factories" program that showed the factory in Canada where the new Camaro is built. I've also seen the episode with the BMW plant in South Carolina where the X5/Z4 are/were built. Also, having personally done BMW European Delivery, I've taken BMW factory tours in Germany so I'm pretty familiar with how they build 'em. By and large, the build process and technology GM uses with the new Camaro is extremely similar to how BMW builds their cars, from welding the body together to paint to final assembly and test. The perception of a high quality process is certainly there for both companies.

These days, I'm far more concerned with the *design* of the car rather than the quality of the build process. Cars are extremely complicated now with all the electronic gizmos, millions of lines of code running on who knows how many microprocessors, etc. A problem is more likely to develop based on a design flaw rather than a lazy production line worker who forgot to tighten down a bolt. These kinds of flaws aren't any more likely to occur in a GM vehicle than any other, IMHO.

radcliff1234

Awesome episode...............
I like it................
Thanks for sharing...............


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NuncoStr8

The Corvette episode is incredible compared to the BMW show. They highlighted the building of the Z06 and the production differences between that and the base C6. I saw it back to back with the BMW Z4 episode, and the Z4 is coming out of Walmart by comparison.

Everybody in a BMW factory is an "associate." Everybody in the Bowling Green factory has a job title, and is a "specialist." And from watching them work, they truly are. The idea that the people assembling cars on the "line" in a factory are trained monkeys is ludicrous. They are craftsmen and women that know what they are doing and are very good at it, even if it would bore you to death to watch them do it all day long. There's no pretend "partnership," there's "You're the best in the company at doing this, that's why you work at Bowling Green."

But I agree that the processes aren't generally different at different companies. It's tough to watch people at work and continue to believe they are a bunch of over-paid slackers who don't care about their job. I did come away from watching both the BMW factory show and the Corvette episode thinking the Corvette people really deserve far more money than the BMW "associates." It's an entirely different corporate culture, but I don't prefer the BMW culture.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the BMW factories in Germany have union workforces. And the union has a seat on the board. Wow, so different from the way we do things here

Saki GT

Unions in Germany are just as bad as they are in the US as far as I can tell.