Despite Bush Administration claims that the economy is going strong, General Motors is axing 30,000 employees.
More proof that trickle-down economics is good for nobody - not even the rich.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Embattled automaker General Motors Corp. announced Monday it would close three U.S. assembly plants outright, and trim or close operations at other plants and facilities by 2008 in an effort to stop billions in annual losses at its core North American auto operations and make deeper cuts than previously announced.
The closing will cut 30,000 hourly jobs, up from its original plan to trim 25,000, with many of the eliminations coming as soon as next year, despite job protection provisions of its union contract that runs through September 2007.
The company said the plan is aimed at saving $7 billion a year by the end of 2006.
The plants being closed include Oklahoma City, and the Lansing, Mich., Craft Centre in 2006, and Doraville, Ga., in 2008.
In addition, some shifts will be eliminated at three other assembly plants. In addition Line 1 at Spring Hill, Tenn. and Oshawa, Ontario, Car Plant No. 2, will also shut, although assembly plants on the same property as those two lines will continue to operate. But GM counts the facilities being closed there as separate assembly plants.
One shift in Moraine, Ohio, will also be eliminated in 2006.
GM also said it will shut eight other facilities, including two stamping plants in Lansing, Mich. in 2006 and Pittsburgh in 2007, along with two powertrain plants, in St. Catharines, Ontario, and Flint, Mich., in 2008. And the company will shut three parts facilities in Portland, Ore., Ypsilanti, Mich and St. Louis by 2007, although St. Louis will be converted to a collision center. There will be one more parts facility closing, with its identity yet to be determined.
The company said the full range of cuts will eliminate 30,000 hourly jobs through the capacity reductions, up from its previously announced target of 25,000 job cuts. The company had about 111,000 hourly U.S. workers at the start of the year.
Wagoner said he anticipates that about 7 percent of salaried, non-union staff would also be cut by the end of 2006, although he did not give a specific number of job cuts planned there.
Meanwhile in Canada...
WOODSTOCK, Ont. (CP) - Ontario workers are well-trained.
That simple explanation was cited as a main reason why Toyota turned its back on hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies offered from several American states in favour of building a second Ontario plant.
Industry experts say Ontarians are easier and cheaper to train - helping make it more cost-efficient to train workers when the new Woodstock plant opens in 2008, 40 kilometres away from its skilled workforce in Cambridge[...]
Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.
Instead of investing the money that is needed into education and fixing our broken health care system, the Bush administration chose tax cuts for the wealthy. They argue that tax cuts stimulate job creation.
Well, Canada's taxes are a bit higher than the United States, particularly for the wealthy, but their work force is better educated, and health care costs are lower, as a result. The higher education and lower health care costs that result more than make up for the higher taxes, and this results in bigger profits for big companies, and more, better paying jobs for the middle class.
Trickle down, crony economics helps nobody, nobody at all. Why don't the wealthy see that? When is America going to see that? The sooner we stop it, the better.