Oh, automotive industry…
Mar. 30th, 2009 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ginny_tSo, the bailout in the US is coming shortly; the CEO of GM has stepped down. These things are not unrelated. As the linked article points out, that's very different from the treatment that Wall Street honchos got. Very different.
Chrysler is engaging in shenanigans here in Ontario. I'm torn about this. I hate the car culture, hate its consumption and its waste and its dependence on built-in obsolescence. On the other hand, the loss of Chrysler would be a huge hit to Ontario's already battered economy.
Also, while everyone in the automakers' organisations is expected to retrench for the company's sake, the spotlight is on the hourly workers. Sure, it's a good job, and the hourly wage sure is attractive. But compare that to what the executives (y'know, the people making the decisions) in the company are getting, and the whole situation suddenly changes. Where are the concessions they're making? Let's hear about that!
It bugs me that all the cuts are happening lower in organisations to the people who have no power, had no input into the current situation, and need their jobs to keep their homes and feed their kids. It's not new, but it's hugely unfair.
In 1982, Ontario politicians were all, "We must preserve, protect, and support the auto industry! For the good of the province!" 27 years later, we're in the same place.
Chrysler is engaging in shenanigans here in Ontario. I'm torn about this. I hate the car culture, hate its consumption and its waste and its dependence on built-in obsolescence. On the other hand, the loss of Chrysler would be a huge hit to Ontario's already battered economy.
Also, while everyone in the automakers' organisations is expected to retrench for the company's sake, the spotlight is on the hourly workers. Sure, it's a good job, and the hourly wage sure is attractive. But compare that to what the executives (y'know, the people making the decisions) in the company are getting, and the whole situation suddenly changes. Where are the concessions they're making? Let's hear about that!
It bugs me that all the cuts are happening lower in organisations to the people who have no power, had no input into the current situation, and need their jobs to keep their homes and feed their kids. It's not new, but it's hugely unfair.
In 1982, Ontario politicians were all, "We must preserve, protect, and support the auto industry! For the good of the province!" 27 years later, we're in the same place.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 01:57 pm (UTC)I don't really know what to say about the rest of it. There are plant shutting down everywhere you turn, and the area is beginning to look pretty run down with all these abandoned warehouses and plants around (and not just in Detroit, in a lot of the tri-county area).
But we are also getting a lot of the film industry starting to gravitate towards us because it is much cheaper to film here (taxes). So I hope that can at least take off so we don't completely crumble should the auto industry go down after all.
I have seen too many friends and relatives around here be effected by all of this. (including myself). Its rough
no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 02:53 pm (UTC)Seriously, in good times everybody rails against multi-car households and says that we should all be using public transit more often. But times are tight and people start to think, "Hey, you know, maybe taking the bus all the time really does make sense for us right now," and they stop buying cars, but everyone's surprised when suddenly the auto industry is teetering precariously.
If we subsidize the heck out of the auto companies, what are we really doing? Paying them to keep making cars that people don't want? They're already stockpiling cars in warehouses because nobody wants to buy them. Isn't that crazy, on some or many levels, especially when we at the same time talk about trying to curb resource consumption? I mean, how can people leading simpler lives and consuming less ever have any effect if the companies are going to get subsidized to keep manufacturing their products whether people buy them or not? Not buying so many products doesn't do the Earth any good if the products get made and then just junked anyway.
Ultimately I do think that there are some hard times ahead and some people are going to be screwed, but I think it was naive to think that we could move toward a more sustainable economy without that occurring at some point. I mean, getting right down to the basics, you can never have a sustainable economy so long as success is measured as constant growth, and you can never support a continuously growing population with a steady-state economy.