Black Friday for Us
I woke my wife up at 3AM to the sounds of Reveille blaring from my iPhone. While she was not enthused with my choice of music, she was less enthused with waking up at 3AM. I told her the mission calls for it. While we haven’t been impacted significantly by the economic downturn, we have reduced our discretionary spending to make up for the rise in costs of gas and groceries. So, our mission was to do knock the holiday shopping out for as little as we could; and that meant getting up at 3AM to participate in the carnage that is “Black Friday.”
We were able to get most of what we were looking for. One item we wanted to purchase at Walmart, was the Leapster. This is for my three year old, we were standing next to the roughly 4X4X4 foot box at 4AM. The sale did not start until 5AM. So for an hour, I listened to Metallica and the like, building up the rage. At 5 AM, when the Walmart employee opened the box, what I experienced was as violent as a mosh pit. There was a surge from the front trying to get through the front line; only to have about 30 or so of the Leapsters. Under this massive box, they had 4 display cases of Leapsters. Looking at the size of the shipping box, we were expecting at least twice that. I thought I wasn’t able to get one as I was in the second row. Luckily, one of the ladies in the front row, grabbed two and since I had been standing there for that long. She offered me one. Now I’ll have an excited three year old.
We still have a little shopping to do, but we are mostly complete. And we were able to do it without going heavily into debt.
GM management and the UAW doesn’t get it
I was reading a blog post, gettelfinger-screw-you… on rightvoices.com. The author makes some good points. One is that the U.S. Government could buy all 3 big three automakers for roughly 7Billion based on their current market capitalization. They want 25 Billion in loans, but could be bought for 7 billion. Think this could be a Problem? The author also mentions the contractually obligated “Job Banks Program.” Basically, the program entails, you job has been eliminated, but we can’t let you go, so we still have to pay you to come in and sit. The example in the blog is an individual that gets paid $31 an hour to do crosswords. That doesn’t include benefits, but how many people get paid $31 an hour? Now, think about who is earning that $31 an hour. Millwrights: the groups that move boxes from one side of the plant to the other. Line workers: folks who screw the lug nuts on a car moving down the line.
Now, my perspective:
My Grandpa retired from GM going on 20 years ago, and I’m a non-union contractor for working in the IT department in one of the local plants. In our plant, the plant president was walking through the plant, and found an individual sleeping. The president fired the individual on the spot. A grievance was filed. The Union made the president re-hire the individual and pay them back pay or they would strike. Also, I was watching a press conference where Gettelfinger made the statement along the lines of “… we have helped this company out as much as we can…” when referring to the contract negotiations earlier this year with GM. And now, in light of GM publically stating that if it has to file bankruptcy, with restructuring not an option; Gettelfinger says that no concessions will be made. Gettelfinger and the Union in general has forgot that first and foremost, they are employees. When the company is struggling, as employees, you either move on or you help out. You do not try to drive the company into the ground. And that is exactly what the Union is doing to the entire US auto industry.
Now, the union isn’t the only reason GM and the US auto industry is devasted. From my perspective, GM does not look at ways to do things as inexpensively as possible. A couple examples: during a recent hardware refresh, we were comparing vendors for storage. After a comparisons and bids were in, there were two competitors, they were both really close in price, but one had twice the storage as the other. We of course recommended the option with twice the storage, the CIO, chose the lesser option. The beauty is that after the new storage was in place, we had new requests for storage. Also, when we first started pushing VMware as an option to GM, their response was “that is not the direction of GM.” What saving roughly $4K per server in initial cost, not including all the soft costs such as power, cooling, procurement speed, etc.. Another area is GMs outsourcing of nearly all of their IT. Instead of focusing on one vendor, they have decided to spread their outsourcing out to numerous companies. It’s as if Wagoner and Szygenda don’t understand the concept of economies of scale.
Ultimately, the economy is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Poor management and an bloated arrogant union have eliminated any buffer to the poor economy.
My vote: Rick Wagoner, Ralph Szygenda and the Gettlefinger need to be removed. Bring union salaries in-line with other manufactures such as Honda or Toyota.
About mordtech
Experience:
I’m an IT professional with over ten years of Microsoft Server support. I’ve also supported Checkpoint and VMware. I’m currently employed by a large IT outsourcing corporation in the US.
I’ve implemented Windows Active Directory, Checkpoint VPN/Firewalls, VMware Infrastructure, Sharepoint/Project Server amongst others.
Personal:
I’m married and a father of two boys, which is by far the most trying job of my life: the boys, not the marriage. We reside in the midwest and aren’t looking forward to the fast approaching winter.
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