American waking up - Ford losing out

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Speaking of Wal Mart - Irish TV showed an excellent documentary about WM.

Grown from a small convenience store, it now the biggest retailer in the world.
It's profits grow and it employees thousands of people.

WM though doesn't pay well.
In fact WM's pay is very very low - and it won't allow it's workers to be unionised.

WM business model is sell cheap - undercut everyone.
That's fine in principal.
But just how far does WM go to achieve this?

Well, because it focuses on cost - wages and overheads are minimised.
Now that they've pared this to the bone, how else can it further cut cost?
By opening a massive logistics centre in - CHINA.

WM source most of their product hardware produce, from China.
Not only is it produced cheaply - it is produced in third world labour conditions, where subcontract companies are paid a pittance and there is no annoying employment legislation.
And WM don't ask too many questions about employee and labour law anyhow.

So not only do WM get cheaper product - WM also move away from other tradition US providers of the same product.

Take TV sets for example.

WM used source it's TV sets from a company called Five Rivers in
Tennesse (JH might be able to confirm their location).
5 Rivers Inc is the last US-based TV manufacturer in the USA.
WM put the gun to 5 Rivers head - "drop your price or else"
5 Rivers didn't - WM dropped 5 Rivers and now source TCL sets from China.
5 Rivers are in the process of trying to sue WM on the basis of unfair competitive advantage.
Will 5 Rivers succeed?
And how many other US companies have lost contracts to other foreign companies at WM?

If Unions had more power - this situation would never materialise.

Speaking of Wal Mart - Irish TV showed an excellent documentary about WM.

Grown from a small convenience store, it now the biggest retailer in the world.
It's profits grow and it employees thousands of people.

WM though doesn't pay well.
In fact WM's pay is very very low - and it won't allow it's workers to be unionised.

WM business model is sell cheap - undercut everyone.
That's fine in principal.
But just how far does WM go to achieve this?

Well, because it focuses on cost - wages and overheads are minimised.
Now that they've pared this to the bone, how else can it further cut cost?
By opening a massive logistics centre in - CHINA.

WM source most of their product hardware produce, from China.
Not only is it produced cheaply - it is produced in third world labour conditions, where subcontract companies are paid a pittance and there is no annoying employment legislation.
And WM don't ask too many questions about employee and labour law anyhow.

So not only do WM get cheaper product - WM also move away from other tradition US providers of the same product.

Take TV sets for example.

WM used source it's TV sets from a company called Five Rivers in
Tennesse (JH might be able to confirm their location).
5 Rivers Inc is the last US-based TV manufacturer in the USA.
WM put the gun to 5 Rivers head - "drop your price or else"
5 Rivers didn't - WM dropped 5 Rivers and now source TCL sets from China.
5 Rivers are in the process of trying to sue WM on the basis of unfair competitive advantage.
Will 5 Rivers succeed?
And how many other US companies have lost contracts to other foreign companies at WM?

If Unions had more power - this situation would never materialise.
I watched the very same show several weeks ago. I watched it several times since. It really opened my eyes. The 5 Rivers part was heart breaking. In several discussions of the show with some of my younger friends they saw nothing wrong with "Low prices everyday" type of cut throat capitolism. These are the same friends who upon graduating from school [university] stepped into a job market with low wages......
Wal-Mart is very anti American........ In the 5 river situation did you pay attention to the part where Wal-Mart was funding the legal aspect of the initial countersuits for the Chinese? Fucking Wal-Mart sueing American companies for the Chinese......

If Unions had more power - this situation would never materialise.
If the union workers would not be the first one in line at the checkouts at Wal-Mart with their carts full , then the Wal-Marts would have a hard time exsisting. If the union workers supported other union made products, Wal-mart would have a different strategy.
It's a little hard at times to be a union backer when they do not support themselves.

If the union workers would not be the first one in line at the checkouts at Wal-Mart with their carts full , then the Wal-Marts would have a hard time exsisting. If the union workers supported other union made products, Wal-mart would have a different strategy.
It's a little hard at times to be a union backer when they do not support themselves.


Bringing this back full circle...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Employees at Ford's Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich., will have to drive Ford Motor Co. vehicles to work or park across the street, the plant manager announced earlier this week.

Do I need to explain why this is a problem in the first place?

If the union workers would not be the first one in line at the checkouts at Wal-Mart with their carts full , then the Wal-Marts would have a hard time exsisting. If the union workers supported other union made products, Wal-mart would have a different strategy.
It's a little hard at times to be a union backer when they do not support themselves.Very good point, Wolfix. Wal-Mart's success is not essentially due to skullduggery, it is down to greed on the part of the consumer. They have focused on a property that is present across the spectrum of society. People from all walks of life will cast aside social principles for personal gain.
The way to beat the WM's of the World is not through the courtrooms, but through the customers. Until the consumer gains a social conscience, the WM's will have an ever-present market to exploit.
Since the family store is not able to compete with the buying power of the big fella's, given that they are providing quality service, there are only 2 ways that their survival can be maintained - (a) Government legislation, usually through restricting the opening hours of the big supermarkets etc, or (b) Customers voting with their feet.
There are still (I hope) many of us who actually feel good when they purchase something from a small business. The same does not apply to purchases from soul-less corporate shells. There is no added-value in such transactions.
It is a matter of putting aside the greed and the easy-option one-stop-shop factors, and thinking about what makes the microeconomics of a community go around. The profits of a local business are likely to be spent locally. The profits of an international corporation are whisked away to realms unknown, with just a few sheckels left behind to pay the minimum-wage incomes of those behind the check-outs.

...Do I need to explain why this is a problem in the first place?Aaaah, Ford's new sales campaign - "Buy a Ford. It may be a crap car and use a lot of fuel, but you'll be allowed to park closer to work."
Incidentally, I have a Ford at home, but that's only because I like vehicle manufacturers to have 4 letters in their name, and Audi didn't have a station wagon / ranch wagon / estate available in my price range.

I watched the very same show several weeks ago. I watched it several times since. It really opened my eyes. The 5 Rivers part was heart breaking. In several discussions of the show with some of my younger friends they saw nothing wrong with "Low prices everyday" type of cut throat capitolism. These are the same friends who upon graduating from school [university] stepped into a job market with low wages......
Wal-Mart is very anti American........ In the 5 river situation did you pay attention to the part where Wal-Mart was funding the legal aspect of the initial countersuits for the Chinese? Fucking Wal-Mart sueing American companies for the Chinese......

My God, you saw the same program so!
Fantastic.

I thought that it was a really good insight to WM.
They gave WM every opportunity to respond and their answers seemed evasive at best.

And you're correct about the 5 rivers leagsl appeal and WM funding the case on behalf of the Chinese companies.
Yep, you've got an American company funding legal cases taken by Chinese companies - against American companies.
Sad.

Very good point, Wolfix. Wal-Mart's success is not essentially due to skullduggery, it is down to greed on the part of the consumer. They have focused on a property that is present across the spectrum of society. People from all walks of life will cast aside social principles for personal gain.
The way to beat the WM's of the World is not through the courtrooms, but through the customers. Until the consumer gains a social conscience, the WM's will have an ever-present market to exploit.
Since the family store is not able to compete with the buying power of the big fella's, given that they are providing quality service, there are only 2 ways that their survival can be maintained - (a) Government legislation, usually through restricting the opening hours of the big supermarkets etc, or (b) Customers voting with their feet.
There are still (I hope) many of us who actually feel good when they purchase something from a small business. The same does not apply to purchases from soul-less corporate shells. There is no added-value in such transactions.
It is a matter of putting aside the greed and the easy-option one-stop-shop factors, and thinking about what makes the microeconomics of a community go around. The profits of a local business are likely to be spent locally. The profits of an international corporation are whisked away to realms unknown, with just a few sheckels left behind to pay the minimum-wage incomes of those behind the check-outs.


Makes perfect sense, Eoin.

Aaaah, Ford's new sales campaign - "Buy a Ford. It may be a crap car and use a lot of fuel, but you'll be allowed to park closer to work."
Incidentally, I have a Ford at home, but that's only because I like vehicle manufacturers to have 4 letters in their name, and Audi didn't have a station wagon / ranch wagon / estate available in my price range.
It is very difficult to compare Audi/BMW/Mercedes with Ford. Complete different price points. Also , I am not sure of Germanys actual labor system, but aren't they unionized too?
And I understand the reluctence of union members buying Harleys too.. I ride a motorcycle for tramsportation 8 months of the year. Harleys are crap.
Thee is also another difference... It is when a company dumps their products into a market to gain market share. Shimano was involved with this. I hope to never buy Shimano again.
Greed......I see it at all levels. Wal-Mart has exploited this characteristic flaw.
When my town was a union town it was a nice place to live and to do business in. Today [I have actually moved next door to another community] it is a lousy town to live in. Actually, it is a piece of shit.

Bringing this back full circle...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Employees at Ford's Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich., will have to drive Ford Motor Co. vehicles to work or park across the street, the plant manager announced earlier this week.

Do I need to explain why this is a problem in the first place?


Yep, we are a greedy lot,as a whole, and it will be our downfall in the grander scheme of things.
This is just a symptom of the sickness of mankind or" people kind" if you are politically obsessed.

Yep, we are a greedy lot,as a whole, and it will be our downfall in the grander scheme of things.
This is just a symptom of the sickness of mankind or" people kind" if you are politically obsessed.
I think you have a certain measure of people that are not all that greedy and self-centered to start with. But when those types are confronted with the blood-sucker types, they probably feel that they must act the same way, or they aren't going to get what they need.

When one person gets selfish, everyone else has to get selfish too. When one person is willing to compromise, and others are too, then you'll have people that are doing better for all concerned.

Ford have slashed jobs in America and are closing plants because Americans have fallen out of love with the SUV.

Ford USA cannot compete with the likes of Honda, Toyota, VW and BMW. Smaller, faster and more economical cars seem to be the flavour of the moment in the USA and no longer are people lusting after large engined gas guzzlers from Ford.

Ford UK who sell a lot of smaller Fiesta, Focus and Mondeo is unaffected, infact business has never been so good.

Is this proof that America is finally waking up on issues of global warming and voting with their feet?

On a personal note, something not reported:

On my way to and from work yesterday i counted no more that 10 Ford 150s, 250s, Dodge RAM1500s and Chevy Silverados. (fully blooded American SUVs) and this is the UK. These are new cars and thier ilk were very rarely seen in the past here. Seems like we are the next in line for a wake up slap in the face. Oh, and some tosser in my town has just bought a Hummer. Another take on the layoffs is: Ford is slicing a way oversized work force. They are going to look to manufacture more like Japan and cut the cost of overpriced ,overdemanding union labour. Labour has had a gun to the heads of American mfg for a long time. They will put the $ into the products instead of too many workers. Oh and the execs will get rich too...Watch

An interesting article in todays Observer Newspaper on the US Car Industry :

Sunday January 29, 2006
The Observer

For John McVeigh, making cars was not just a job; it was his shot at the American Dream. He had left Glasgow a young, wide-eyed man at 21 and ended up in Detroit, lured by the huge factories churning out the cars that defined 20th century US life.
He started on the factory floor and rose through the ranks. When he retired in 1989 he was part of the management; he had brought up four good children and lived in a nice house in the suburbs. His neighbours' life stories mirrored his.
But after a week in which Ford laid off 30,000 workers and shut 14 factories, McVeigh knows his story is now part of history, like the homesteaders or the goldrushers, a way of life his grandchildren will never know. He winced at the news. 'You can't do what I did now. It just could not happen again,' he said in an accent still coloured by his Scots childhood. The statistics tell a bleak story of economic disaster that has seen a whole corner of north-east America dubbed the Rust Belt. The Big Three - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler - have declining market share, crippling pension costs and a product line reliant on deep discounts to sell.
Chrysler has been taken over by the Germans and GM posted a $8.6bn loss last week, its biggest since 1992. Ford has been losing market share for 10 straight years. Last week's news was so bad that few people noticed DaimlerChrysler quietly announcing it too was axeing 6,000 staff. At the same time, foreign firms have been invading.

In 1979 the Big Three sold nearly nine out of every 10 new vehicles on US roads. By 2004, as European and Asian firms ate away at their market, only about 50 per cent of the nation's new cars were sold by US producers.
By October 2005, cars made by the Big Three accounted for about 40 per cent of the US market, according to Forbes. Toyota, Honda and Korean Hyundai had all made inroads. Even that US archetype the truck saw 30 per cent of its market go to foreigners.

The US car industry is lurching into terminal decline. It means a fundamental part of America has died as well. Nothing has come to symbolise the American century more than the American car. It began with Henry Ford and the Model T and went right through the tail-finned monsters of the Fifties and the hot rods of the Seventies.

American cars were about freedom, sexual liberation and sheer confident patriotism. For young Americans a driving licence and their first Chevy or Ford was the most important rite of passage into adulthood. The car gave birth to other American icons: the motel, the advertising billboard and the diner. They were all children of the road.

Of course, the car still defines a lifestyle. Americans still buy cars by the millions, whether they are in gridlocked LA or in the middle of Kansas miles from the nearest town. But what does it mean when a country's cultural heart is now made in Japan? Or Korea? Or Germany?

On a stretch of Texas highway west of Amarillo lies Cadillac Ranch. Planted in a field of wheat are 10 rusting Cadillacs, ranging from a 1949 Club Coupe to a 1963 Sedan. All stand face down in the earth, enormous tail fins pointing defiantly at the sky. They hail from an era when the Cadillac motto was 'The Standard of the World'.
Motorists in their thousands pull off the Interstate in their Hondas and Toyotas to gawp at the sculpture that has stood there for 32 years: a row of automobile tombstones. 'When we made it, Cadillac Ranch was intended to be as much a monument to the glory of the tail fin as a burial of the gas guzzler, said Chip Lord, one of the artists behind what has become one of the most famous US public works of art. 'But that's not how people see it these days.' When Lord and his fellow artists collected the Cadillacs for their work, they toured the Texas panhandle looking for cheap deals. Driving the huge beasts to Amarillo was a 'white trash dream come true,' he says.

Back in 1974 the cars' paint gleamed under the blue Western skies. Now they are rusted and covered in graffiti. 'Perhaps it can be seen now as a sign of the decline of the American empire,' Lord mused. 'It could become a symbol for it.'
Lord now drives a Honda: 'I know the thrill of being on the road in one of those old American cars, but the fact is that if you drive one you quickly realise how archaic they are.'
The thrill used to be all anyone cared about. American cars had names such as Mustang, Charger and Javelin. They were about moving forward, at speed and damn the consequences. The size of the engine and the roar it made cruising down the road were all that mattered. The American car was the ultimate expression of the self.

It was a story that begun at the start of the 20th century in Detroit, when Henry Ford, born on a Michigan farm, mass-produced the Model T. He changed not only his own life from rural poverty to urban riches, but the country's too.
In thrall to the car, America went from a farming-based society centred on small- town morality to an industrialised behemoth where the new cultural hero - personified by Ford himself - was the big city capitalist. The new frontier was not out on the open range or staking a homestead, it was on urban streets and the new horse was a car. Detroit became Motown - Motor City.

From the beginning, America's cars were just as much lifestyle as they were practical. In the Twenties, Ford Motion Pictures was the biggest film producer in the world, spewing out more than 3,000 movies celebrating the adventures to be had behind the wheel of a Ford. Product placement is no newcomer to the film industry; it was there at the birth.

In the Fifties and Sixties, brimming with post-war confidence, America entered the age of drive-in cinemas and suburbs geared around cars. James Dean drove a 1949 Mercury in Rebel Without A Cause and Steve McQueen tore through the streets of San Francisco in a 1968 Mustang in Bullitt. JFK was shot in a Lincoln Continental. Car advertisements featured open roads, blue skies and square-jawed fathers piloting wives and children along new Interstate highways (the biggest public works project in the history of the world). American cars were the best in the world because America was the best in the world.

It ended in the 1970s with the Oil Shock. Suddenly America - and its cars - were vulnerable. Rob Latham, a popular culture expert at the University of Iowa, was given his first car at the same time. 'It was a 1963 Chevy Malibu convertible. I was 16 years old, driving this huge gas guzzler right through the middle of the oil crisis when you were only allowed to buy petrol every other day. It was nuts,' he said. 'I later wrapped it around a telephone pole, but I loved that car.' He now drives a Suburu.
The same thing happened to Detroit. The 1970s triggered the decline of the American car industry and a landscape of huge factories and skyscrapers turned into an urban wasteland. Only last week, the downtown home of Motown records, whose music was born from black workers flocking to the city for the car factory jobs, was bulldozed.

America's tempestuous affair with the car has become a passionless marriage. Americans still need their cars, but the world has changed and they no longer really love them. Chrysler was taken over by Germany's Daimler. Japanese firms, such as Toyota and Honda, are opening plants as Ford shuts down. Cars are not big business. Ford as a company is worth about $15bn - Google is worth $129bn.

US car design and production values have also been criticised. For years American cars have been outperformed by their European and Asian competitors. 'Asian and European design used to be considered a joke in the 1980s. Now it is the standard for cars,' said Lord.

Many of the US cars now on the market copy modest European and Japanese designs and shun the brasher concepts. Ford has brought in two Britons to be in charge of the look of its European and US products. Future cars will also be more fuel-efficient and aware of green issues. That is probably good for the environment, but represents a huge shift in what a car actually means to Americans - and what America means to itself.

The Hollywood car of choice now is not the 1946 Fat Fender Ford Coupé of John Travolta's 'Greased Lightning' or Jayne Mansfield's Buick Electra. It is the Toyota Prius, an energy-efficient hybrid driven by Cameron Diaz and Leonardo di Caprio. And the king of the recent SUV craze is the far from sexy Hummer, a boxy military-style vehicle, inspired by the 1991 Gulf war, that encloses its owner in a protective shell. A car born of looking for enemies, not rolling down the windows and hitting the road.
Latham says his students no longer see their cars as an essential expression; their Toyotas and Hondas are just vehicles. They boast of iPods or computer games, not their 'wheels'.
'They are like walking cyborgs with all these things attached to them. Cars have become functional. They are not statements anymore. Electronics are,' he said.
Lord agrees: 'Young people do not have that same set of cultural signs. Their cultural landscape is about technology and the internet, not about convertibles and driving across America.'
The Age of the American car is passing into nostalgia. Latham once studied a slew of road movies from the early 1990s in which old American cars were nostalgically treated. The most famous was Thelma and Louise, in which two put-upon women find freedom in an open-top T-Bird. At the end of the film, the heroines hold hands and drive off the edge of a cliff.
It is a fitting image for the death of a slice of the American Dream. After decades of the car being so much more than just a mode of transport - of symbolising industry, art, freedom, sex, a triumphant America - it has now become simply a way of getting from A to B.

Smaller, faster and more economical cars seem to be the flavour of the moment in the USA and no longer are people lusting after large engined gas guzzlers from Ford.
I saw a Ford SUV the other day, I swear the wheels looked like 35 inchers. The people looked like they could barely see over the dash. They were doing a turn around, I think they had to use reverse 15 times. Where do they get these huge ideas? Oh yeah, I HATE Hummers too, stupid ugly pieces of JUNK. Can they make ANYTHING that DOESN'T look like a cardboard box with with wheels. I send people like this to THE PIT OF HELL!

I saw a Ford SUV the other day, I swear the wheels looked like 35 inchers. The people looked like they could barely see over the dash. They were doing a turn around, I think they had to use reverse 15 times. Where do they get these huge ideas? Oh yeah, I HATE Hummers too, stupid ugly pieces of JUNK. Can they make ANYTHING that DOESN'T look like a cardboard box with with wheels. I send people like this to THE PIT OF HELL!LMAO!

Incidentally, I have a Ford at home, but that's only because I like vehicle manufacturers to have 4 letters in their name,...When I was a kid, we had an ancient Ford van that we used to move out west in. The day we left, my father changed the letters on the hood to read "DORF".

:D

That is VERY funny!