Wagoner steps down from GM on Obama's insistence

I knew people would say this....but this is only half correct. The ills at GM pre-date the arrival of Wagoner. It is not his fault. However, it is also clear that Wagoner was not the man to lead GM to prosperity. Now, when is Obama going to clear out the middle-upper level management that are the real rot at GM? GM is a hydra. All the heads must roll, not just the one.

Do you ignore or just not believe that a company cannot be profitable when only one in five of the families it supports is actively working for the company? The UAW is evil in it's purest form.

Technically he (Obama) would be the ultimate head, given that the Fed government would own GM

I still see a little socialism in there, GM is still a private company.

I agree. The world seems to be moving in that direction with all these bailouts and company takeovers by governments. I wonder how close it will get to communism.

GM was a private company before it took $13B in Government money. If you take money the you give up the right to operate as a private company. And the shareholders should be happy that someone is stepping in and doing something different than the boneheads who run the company now are doing. GM should file for bankruptcy anyway. All the bailout money is a complete waste. Bankruptcy will kill the UAW and the bondholders who have given up NOTHING through this whole bailout process.

Yeah, but if I'm not wrong they will give the money back, it's not like the Fed gov bought GM.

It's not that the govt owns GM, it's that if Wagoner didn't step down, there would be absolutely no chance that GM would get any more money.

There is not a chance in Hades that GM will ever be able to pay back the money it has "borrowed" from the government. If a company is failing, the let them fail. Yes it will hurt, but there is no amount of restructuring that will fix the business model of GM.

Are you kidding me? Wagoener has been responsible for numerous cars being rated number one in thier car class. He has scaled back thier cost structure in a major way. All Obama is going to do is coddle the union and force GM to make "green" cars that nobody is buying. Just ask Toyota (by the way Toyota has asked for 2 billion in bailout money from thier government). The problem is the legacy cost the union forced on the car companies but threatening striking and shutting down production. Obama has no idea what he is doing. He is trying to use the car companies to further his agenda, Global Warming policies and helping the union at the expens of the industry.

@ TEN: It's anyone's guess why you aren't on Obama's Presidential Task Force on the Automotive Industry. You seem to have some insightful opinions that could come as a great boon to the undeniably intelligent people heading that group! But, of course you wouldn't help them; all they are doing is enabling Obama to pursue some personal agenda, because it's more likely the president is more interested in re-election a few months into his four-year term than he is about resolving a horrible national issue. You don't think this might just be a little more complicated than you believe it is?

Bemen: I own an injection molding company that has supplied ALL of the auto companies since 1977. I have been in these auto plants and launched numerous programs for this industry. I think I know a bit about the industry and where the problems exist.

Numerous cars being rated #1 where? In the US perhaps, which last i checked was not the world. Also, Toyota asked for a 2 billion $ loan to cover investments they had in US based holdings that went out the window not because of poor sales. I agree that this douche should have stepped down a long time ago, his accomplishments are not worth mentioning, since he came to the position GM has been losing money every quarter. Look at all the other CEOs even Ford's they are all doing better than Wagoner. For example Porsche/VW Group, Mercedes, Hyundai look at where those companies were in 2000 and where they are now. I mean if you grade his performance in comparison to the rest of the industry he is a terrible CEO. But i don't blame him entirely, GM was on a downhill slope for a while before he came, he just didnt try to fix the problems until they got too big to be fixed.

The first line of the article made me lol. =P

word !

Thanks Viking. You are too smart for us.

I'm gonna make this sweet and to the point. Legacy costs for previous union workers is eating GM alive. If you notice, all of the import companies that have established factories in the US reside in the SOUTH. The ONLY reason for this, is to skip out on the workers unions up north. How can a company be profitable when it costs them twice as much to produce a product because they're required to pay previous workers for their service. Delve a little deeper radmeister and understand what is all at stake. Malibu, Cruze, Acadia, Enclave, Traverse, CTS, Suburban, Silverado, Yukon, Tahoe, Volt. None of these products are perfect (no product is). The key word is competitive. Ex: a Malibu is superior to a Camry in some ways, and a Camry is superior to a Malibu in some ways. Specifically, like any other company, tech roles down hill. Cadillac is leading the way. Had GM not run into financial trouble, the next STS/DTS would be appearing and it would be BMW/Mercedes/Audi/Lexus/Infiniti competition. Now, it appears Cadillac might fall in that weird pseudo-luxury place...like Acura.

If these costs were the cause howcome they were doing more than fine up until the mid 90s? Sure the legacy payments grew, but not that substantially in the 10 years. I think the root of the problem is not their operating costs, Ferrari pays much better than GM, so does Lamborghini, so does Porsche. The trick is to realize your costs and design a product that can sell well enough to cover your costs and make a profit. When they sat at the drawing board they wrote down some anticipated sales figures based on some statistics, the cost to produce each unit, and they came up with a selling price. I guarantee you that they make profit on each vehicle sold. What happened is they lost customer interest, they didn't accommodate to new demands, and they became something like one of those stores that sells you all kinds of junk with no real purpose, and not specializing at one thing resulting at being crappy at everything. The root of the problem in my opinion is still inferior products that other than some styling cues belong back in the 90s. This comes from years of management not guiding the company into the future and thinking that they are safe because they are one of the "big" three. And the workers letting quality problems slide by because "oh it's not my car". I've been through both Toyota and GM plants here in Canada and i must tell you they are a completely different atmosphere. At GM everybody is miserable, they don't give a rat's ass about what they are building. Go into a toyota plant and everything is different, from how clean the floor is the smiles on people's faces. At GM there are very few critical quality checkpoints along the line, at the Toyota plant i went to where the new Camry is built at all workstations along the line there is a master stop button. If you see a problem you stop the line, until the engineers and quality people can find out what caused that problem and fix it so it doesn't happen again. And the worker gets an incentive for pointing out a problem. Thats why among other things Toyota is the pioneer of quality. At GM they don't care, it took 123 Cobalts to go through the line for them to realize their laser scanner at the ABS system install station wasn't reading the chassis serial # properly and 123 cars that were supposed to have ABS came off the line without it...Like please don't sit there and try to tell me that everything at GM is fine, and people suddenly got retarded in the last 10 years and stopped buying GM products for no reason. Also if you think the union is the root of the problem you are so wrong. Lots of car companies that pay more and have more benefits, lots of other type of companies that pay more and are union, especially in the mining and steel business and oil. Yet they are all still profitable.

Now to the cars, ok Malibu is pretty nice although i dont like the rear end its an overall decent car. Would i choose it over a camry, not really the dash is not as well assembled, and the plastic is of lower grade which when combined after 100,000km and listening to music loudly = rattles. Cruze is decent, but a failure in my opinion, a sign of their mental retardation if you will. Why did they take an opel Insignia and make it more ugly? Just bring the bloody Insignia over the way it is...Wouldn't buy it just because of that. I mean other than the Enclave and CTS nothing they have really shines above the competition, sure they may all have some nice aspects but they don't get enough check marks to get many people to buy GM over the competition. The volt....what can i say, i think it will be a disaster and coffin in the nail for GM, they cannot sell at CTS for 40k which is 10x the car the Volt is what makes them think they can sell the Volt? I mean unless gasoline goes up to 1.30$/L again and electricity stays at 0.0749$/kwh you are better off using gasoline, and much better off using diesel. Right now with the 0.78$/L Diesel the Volt gets something like the equivalent of a diesel getting 40mpg..Cost wise that is. And for 40k? No thanks. Wagoner should have been shot for putting the company's future on this idiotic idea of a hybrid-electric GM at 40,000$.

Where is this free electricity you speak of? And yeah i have worked both in a union, and as a manager of 140 union employees. I really don't know where you are getting your figures from, a janitor at GM makes like 14$/hr, starting wage is like 18$/hr and goes up every 3 months to a maximum of 34$/hr, even with benefits and pension that comes to about 45$/hr. Even a shift supervisor wouldn't make 75$/hr. Department manager may, and he's not union. 75$/hr is 150,000$/year roughly if you fell for the propaganda that the union is to blame for this problem because they make 75$/hr you are fooling yourself. You are also fooling yourself thinking that you will be able to charge the volt from those parkinglot block heater outlets...I highly doubt it will charge on 10amps or hell even 15amps, and if it does it's sure going to take a hell of a lot longer to charge your battery than 2.5hrs. And yeah you know what, sit there and do the math yourself, calculate the equivalent cost of going 100km on electricity based on the Volt's efficiency with a cost of 0.0749$/kwh(rate in ontario) and see what it is compared to a Jetta TDI. Also remember that the Volt is 10-15,000$ more than a Fully loaded TDI, you would not live long enough to make up that difference even if diesel shot up to 1.30$/L.

I said after benefits Radmeister. Google search average GM wage and you will get from $73.21/hr to $81.18 an hour. Also, I don't know how it is where you live, but where I live most people work more then 2.5 hours and those block heater outlets in most places are standard outlets. You can start a car with a charger off of them. You want me to do the math? Ok, at 120V and 20 amps it takes the Volt 10 hours to fully charge. Hmmm... about 18 cents an hour to charge, if you charge it up every night you can make it it to work and back, without spending a single penny on fuel, even if you do go outside your range you are going to get hybrid fuel economy numbers. It gets half it's charge in only an hour so you can make it the 20 miles even if you are lazy and work an hour a day. Also, I am willing to wager that by November gas and diesel prices will be around $1.20 again.