The UAW went on strike. Ford, GM and who?

[dryheat]

Stellantis. Just goes to show how out of touch I am. Look it up, it's a long convoluted story.

[Allen]

That would be Chrysler.

Chrysler has not been an American owned company since 1998 when they sold out 100% to Mercedes Benz.

MB sold Chrysler to some holding group and they sold Chrysler to Fiat. Stellantis is somehow in cahoots with Fiat.

So many people blame poorly made products from Chrysler as American made cars when the blame should have gone to MB or Fiat.

They even got American tax dollar bailouts during the "great recession". I think Nissan did too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis

[dryheat]

To Big to Fail. I think that was the term back when Chrysler got bailed out. I still say Dodge Ram.

[lyman]

my understanding is Chrysler did well, under MB, but MB saw the writing on the wall and sold to FIAT

[Allen]

my understanding is Chrysler did well, under MB, but MB saw the writing on the wall and sold to FIAT

One reason they did well under MB is a huge number of them were sent to Germany. You could watch the evening news or the BBC and when video's were shown of Germany the highways were full of Dodge Caravans or other Chrysler products.

[Ltdave]

okay. this is long but bear with me....

having worked for Chrysler, DaimlerChrysler, Cerberus, New Chrysler, FiatChryslerAutomobiles, and now Chrysler Group (Stellantis) heres how it went down


Bob Eaton sold Chrysler to Daimler Benz in May 1997. we had a big 'Day One' celebration blah blah blah. Daimler who was supposed to share some technology with Chrysler and Chrysler was to help with US distribution/parts/build etc but ended up getting old technology from Daimler, a good example being the Chrysler Crossfire (little hot coupe) was built on the 'outgoing' Benz 230CLK platform. the CLK was getting new underpinnings and engine upgrades etc. that didnt trickle down because they wouldnt be able to sell a Chrysler product for the same price as a Benz product OR, the Chrysler would have undercut Benz on price point and they wouldnt have sold many CLKs. in the end Benz removed right around $9 BILLION in cash reserves from the Chrysler Corporation. Bob Eaton collected $70 Million and disappeared into florida. Bob Lutz his right hand man went to GM.

2006 Benz sold Chrysler Corp (along with Plymouth, Dodge, Jeep) to Cerberus financial(? or whatever they were called) Cerberus also around that time bought Bushmaster Arms and Remington.

in 2007-ish Cerberus was done with Chrysler (I dont remember how much THEY took from Chrysler) but they offered up to $100,000 buy outs to employees with X number of years. Chrysler then had financial troubles as they tried to become New Chrysler Jim Press herded about 100 Texas Longhorn steers down Jefferson Avenue in Detroit to symbolize that he and the New Chrysler was going to be around for the next 100yrs.

because Chrysler really had no cash assets and the financial bullxxxx that came down under Barack Hussein and the sub-prime mortgages in late 2007-2008 Chrysler filed for bankruptcy with GM. they became New Car Co. somethings stayed in the old company so like the Plymouth nameplate, Chrysler could not name anything with a Plymouth model name.

Along comes Sergio Marchionne of Fiat and the Agnelli family and started poking around the carcass of Chrysler New/Old Corporation. they were interested in getting US dealerships and distribution blah blah blah and to 'share development costs'. Barack stuck his nose into the game again and told who ever was left at Chrysler, that if they wanted any financial support from the government, they HAD TO PARTNER UP with Fiat. they did and FiatChryslerAutomobiles was born.

around 2012 (my dates are fuzzy at best) FCA paid back the FedGov the money that they had gotten, early and Marchionne promptly went on the prowl looking for a partner so help share design/development costs. Renault, GM, Ford, and another automaker who i dont recall were all feted. everyone told him to go pound sand.

along comes PSA (Peugeot S.A. that built Peugeot, Citroen, Opel and Vauxhall) and decides it wants some American money. Chrysler had been getting good at making money then getting sold out to some foreign concern who promptly sucked it dry of cash. this new 'star crossed' company Stellantis was formed and the Fiat part of FCA was dropped and it was good old Chrysler once again.

under FCA, when european car sales SUCKED, it was Chrysler cash that kept them afloat from the sales of Jeeps, Ram Trucks and Jeeps. Stellantis took advantage of that cash as well when ITS foreign cars took a sale hit too.

in the US (and Canada) Chrysler has done very well when the foreigners kept their hands out of the cookie jar. Stellantis though as of late has been pushing to eliminate people. what happens is line workers who might have had to crawl into an engine bay and reach around and down and between to hook up a dozen electrical connectors are now being tasked with doing that then climbing out, putting in fender liners on one side plus another task before trying to get into the next vehicle to do all of the connections. of course there are no step ladders to get into the engine bays. the line speed gets cranked up, people miss parts/tasks and then they have to jump to the next car/truck and things end up going to the repair hole. while this is happening in all of the auto plants theyre also not replacing people who retire or go out on medical. i know people who have had to have both knees replaced from the repetitive motion injuries as well as having carpal tunnel surgery on both hands. if they do bring in someone new theyre called supplemental (used to be part time). where the part time would work mondays and fridays to cover for people taking 3-day weekends to be with family, the supplementals are forced 7 days, for 1, 2 or 3 weeks in a row. they cant call off for sick/appointments/family matters. they dont get vision or dental health care. their health care is considerably sub-par when compared to fellow line workers. not that it matters because they cant get time off to go to the Dr. they dont get the profit sharing. they dont get the performance/whatever they call the bs bonuses. and they start at about $14 an hour. they get promised to be 'rolled over' to full time usually by HR within the first week of starting but some go as much as 5yrs and still dont get rolled over.

then during the bankruptcy Barack and his gang also told the companies if they wanted financial help, they would have to have 2 tiers of employees. the legacy employees are from pre-2007. tier 2 employees started at $14 an hour (or there abouts) and topped out at $17-18 and hour. meanwhile the legacy employees would top out at $25 (i think. its been 16 years). they also got higher co-pays on their healthcare. they didnt get any pension but a 3% match on 401k up to 75% of the federally allowed deposit limit. (my numbers might NOT be spot on because ive never really talked to many of the 2nd tier employees). EVERYONE lost Cola. EVERYONE lost OT premium after 8 hours (federal law says OT premium after 40 hours) and the membership gave up a LOT of things that had been negotiated for over the years because Barack got involved and the companies blamed their financial problems on labor. depending on who you talk to, labor costs are 5-12% of the cost of a car. these concessions were promised back to the employees ONCE THE COMPANY BECAME PROFITABLE again. over the last 10 years the big 3 have made a collective $250 BILLION in profit. stock buybacks which at one time was illegal, Stellantis bought about $66 Billion worth of stock back but that was part of their expenses. since 2019 GM had an increase of 50%, Ford 34% in net profit and Stellantis (not in existence until 2021) saw a one year increase of 19% in net profit.

the biggest thing that i see in the strikes is the union wants a roll over of the supplemental employees and end the tiers system. more money would be nice. skilled trades in the plants are at about 75% of outside trade's wages. and Stellantis (a French company headquartered in the Netherlands) works 35 hours a week and gets paid 40. yet theyre not following that same game plan in the US where dare i say 90% of their revenue comes from...

[Allen]

Thanks for the detail.

I actually remember speaking to someone on line, I think here, who worked at Chrysler after it was bought by Benz. He wasn't too happy about the way things were going.

It may have been you.

[Major Tom]

When Fiat takes over any U.S. factory it never ends well! Years ago, Fiat bought J.I.Case company and things went to hell very quickly! I know because I worked at the Case Burlington,Iowa plant for 40 years.

[dryheat]

Where can I get one of those signs?

[Major Tom]

UAW struck CNH a year ago That is Case new Holland, makers of Case backhoes. The union wasn't out of line in wanting more for the workers, in fact, quite resonable! But, they were out of work for 8 months! UAW gave the strikers some monetary support and held many food banks for members. Still, some lost homes and cars due to defaulting their payments.
What the UAW today by striking auto plants may be a long strike! And Winter is around the corner along with the Holidays. Gonna be some slim pikings with the strikers!