UAW strike and car prices

I suspect if most knew of the reality of their work situation/pay, they might be less than supportive, as shown here.

It's a bit like the writers strike, at least early on, where the writers were complaining they needed to make more... because they sometimes would not work for months... uh.... you sometimes don't work for months?  Who gets that option?!  Maybe you need to find additional work!?  Maybe there are way too many people working in your field?

I don't know about the auto workers, but the Hollywood crowd (many of them) are so used to the massive money train (which is drying up a bit now), they have a somewhat unrealistic view of the reality of the working world.  There is a reason why many of the Hollywood jobs are in such demand and so many are trying to get in (hint: you probably need to know someone).

As noted, this clearly does not apply to everyone involved with Hollywood, but certainly many.

Also associated, now, both the writers and autoworkers (and dock workers) have automated options that can do most (or all in some cases) of their jobs.  In the case of the writers BTW, is there any consideration that if the writers go back to work THEY will use the automation (AI) to do their job?

Heck, it may even come down to a decision between shipping the jobs out of the country, or automating domestically.

I thought we banned fabricated numbers with Mr F...

In reply to aircooled :

That is a very flawed representation of the writer's complaints.

A lot of what is driving this is the shift from traditional network syndication of shows to a streaming model, and this has MASSIVELY upset how they earn money. The way contracts work just doesn't align with the realities of the industry anymore.

It used to be that, if you were a writer or credited on a show, you got a royalty when that show aired. If the show was good, it would get picked up and continue to run in re-runs for a long time. If it was successful, you would continue to get paid for as long as the show you helped create continued to earn money.

But streaming doesn't work like that.

The streaming services do not track how much people watch any particular show. Or if they do, they don't share. The way the streaming model works, they are under NO obligation to pay writers for showing their work. So streaming services make money off of the shows, but do not pay anything out.

One could argue that, "If they want to keep making money, they should keep work!" but creative works like TV aren't really like that. It's a much bigger gamble. They spend a lot of time looking for jobs, and most jobs they work aren't going to be winners that pay ongoing royalties. Many rely on getting one or two big hits under their belt.

These people striking aren't the ones on the "massive money train". They're mostly trades people. It's all of the people whose names appear in the movie credits after most of us have left the theater.

Jealousy is an ugly trait. 
 

Jim Farley doesn't make $75 million. He makes $21 million. 
 

But that's the value of his ENTIRE compensation package. His actual salary is $1.7 million. He gets $15.2 million in stock, and $2.8 million in incentive plan compensation. 
 

That's a lot of stock. But think about it... if the stock goes down, he loses money. His compensation package is directly related  to the success of the company (as it should be). And the $2.8 million... that's incentives. Like commissions. The more units sold, the more he makes. 
 

How about if the UAW gets something similar?  They can have their raise, but only 8% of the package will be in cash. The rest will be tied to productivity and stock options.
 

The real cost of a 40% increase in salaries for Ford's UAW workers?  $724 per car in direct salary costs. Probably about $1200 by the time all the employee overhead costs are paid. 
 

The real cost of the entire $21 million compensation package for Farley?  $0.21 per car.

Ford is a $169 billion company. 

In reply to Beer Baron :

That's a very good summary of the writer's strike. 
 

The problem is that whether they like it or not, the streaming model is here to stay.   There is no resolution. So, the strike is only gonna hurt the workers. 

In reply to SV reX :

Ford got big by mass producing cars with labor paid well enough to be able to afford said cars.  Ford paid extremely well.  So well that the employees basically built Detroit.

If auto workers make more money, they will spend more money at my business.  Or they will spend more money with people who spend their money at my business.  Either way it benefits me for them to make more money.

It costs more than a small handful of execs but it is not the execs that drive the economy.

In reply to SV reX :

So you know, there are more than one high up exec that gets paid in the millions. Let alone the board of directors. 
 

And I find it childish to call it jealousy. Executives got raises and extra bonuses when the line workers raises were really small. They would like regular raises like the execs get. Not volumes, just happens somewhere near the same rate. These are the people who build the stuff that gets sold for $169B. So they matter a lot, too. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

That's not actually an accurate representation of what Ford did. 
 

He didn't pay more so they could buy cars. He paid more to stop his terribly high turnover rate (because the job sucked, and he lost workers at a rate of 4:1)

Plus, 50% of that wasn't paid in cash. It was "lifestyle" bonuses-  extreme paternalism and intrusive social mandates on how they lived. 
 

$5 per day fallacy- Forbes

Thats a modern folk tale. 

In reply to alfadriver :

I already suggested they get the exact same rate. 8% in cash, the rest in options and productivity incentives- the exact same as Farley. 
 

We will have to disagree on the name calling. I think it's childish to want what someone else has.  Call it what you want. 

In reply to Beer Baron :

Yeah, I realize that, but it also points out the other slightly "out of the normal world" aspect of the movie industry is used to.  Generally, when someone is hired to create artwork, or write something, or create something, especially when they work for a company, they do not retain ongoing compensation for that work.  If you are hired to build a car or design/paint a car for someone, you don't get a percentage of what the car sells for for ever into the future.

That sort of concept is generally reserved for someone who creates the work by ther own volition. E.g. you design a car yourself and sell the plans to others. The movie industry has just gotten used to working in their own little world and modern times have pushed them into more of the "real" world. It all a mater of contracts of course, but most industries just don't work that way.

As noted, it's a new reality and things need to adjust.  Some of those adjustments might include realizing their value is lower because of automation and an over saturated labor pool.

I honestly think the biggest problem the writers have mediocrity.  There seems to be an abundance of it in the entertainment writing world. The mediocre are easily replaced by AI.  It's the truly skilled that are valuable and still very much needed even with AI. A similar thing could likely be said about auto workers and automation.

In reply to aircooled :

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but please don't blame the writers for mediocre television and movies, as it's not the writers who get to choose what gets produced and what gets shelved.

At the end of the day (almost) nobody sets out to make a bad move or TV show, sometimes a perfectly good premise gets muddled between the first draft and when it goes live–often by people who aren't writers.

The above can be illustrated via Motor Trend TV. Cancel all the shows with good content, replace with "We're gonna lose the shop!" BS shows.

Bring back Junkyard Gold and Garage Squad.

In reply to aircooled :

Different industries use different payment models. Those writers may get ongoing royalties, but they generally don't get health insurance, PTO, retirement plans, etc that are common in the auto industry. You may think the payment model for writing and acting is stupid, but it's pretty common in creative industries. TV and movie studios agreed to these terms when they contracted the writers.

Maybe it would be better if those terms were renegotiated... but there's the key problem: payment models were *not* renegotiated. Streaming services unilaterally changed the game and circumvented the previous model so that they did not have to pay people what was written into their original contracts.

So now... yeah... writers want to renegotiate the terms of how they're contracted. That's what the strike is. The two sides will disagree and eventually compromise.

I don't think this would be too tough to fix. You can adapt the model used by streaming music services. Track how many times a work is viewed for a minimum length of time. Pay royalties on that.

In reply to SV reX :

As I've pointed out before, much of the raise issue is about the bonuses that the execs get on a higher and more regular basis than the rest of the company. Making it more like base pay than salary. 
 

And it's childish to want to be treated like the execs?  Seriously?  They are not asking for $1m salaries, which is what they get. They are asking for a steadier pay that's less reliant on dumb decisions by an individual. 
 

Unless I'm missing a demand that they all get cars for free, huge annual bonuses, massive pay offs for being let go, etc.  How would you feel if someone got multiple millions of dollars after tanking the company?  I know I was disgusted by that. People lost their jobs and livelihood because of him, and he got paid lot of money to be fired.  
 

But if you want to think I was jealous of that move, go for it. 

aircooled said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

Yeah, I realize that, but it also points out the other slightly "out of the normal world" aspect of the movie industry is used to.  Generally, when someone is hired to create artwork, or write something, or create something, especially when they work for a company, they do not retain ongoing compensation for that work.  If you are hired to build a car or design/paint a car for someone, you don't get a percentage of what the car sells for for ever into the future.

That sort of concept is generally reserved for someone who creates the work by ther own volition. E.g. you design a car yourself and sell the plans to others. The movie industry has just gotten used to working in their own little world and modern times have pushed them into more of the "real" world. It all a mater of contracts of course, but most industries just don't work that way.

As noted, it's a new reality and things need to adjust.  Some of those adjustments might include realizing their value is lower because of automation and an over saturated labor pool.

I honestly think the biggest problem the writers have mediocrity.  There seems to be an abundance of it in the entertainment writing world. The mediocre are easily replaced by AI.  It's the truly skilled that are valuable and still very much needed even with AI. A similar thing could likely be said about auto workers and automation.

This is true, but it's also true they aren't really "hired". The vast majority of screenwriters are self employed subcontractors.  They may be commissioned, but they are still self employed. 
 

So, they ARE the ones who are creating the work an selling it.

The screenwriters are a very unique situation. 

SV reX said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Eric, let's not make this a personal attack. I didn't introduce the word "childish" to this thread.

 

No, you just accuse the workers as being jealous. As if doing that isn't a personal attack on random uaw workers.  Or the very related base engineers at Ford, which I was one of those. 

There have been some really interesting points brought up, on both 'sides' of the discussion. There's two that really stick out, I think it might have been SV reX that said one of them? A person he knew was making a large salary because he has been at the job since Noah was drying his sandals. Naturally the CEO, CFO, or someone else who's job it is to reduce the bottom line figured they could bring in new blood at 25% of his pay and get at least the same output. That's a very good point. Honestly, it makes me REALLY second guess my plans to pressure my manager to tell the company to get off it's wallet and pay folks.  

On the other hand, there's something that REALLY pisses me off and Alfa Driver hit the nail on the head. The execs and upper management get large bonuses and raises even when the company does poorly, we get 0-1% raises because the company is doing poorly. Ok, the company is doing poorly but MY job is done well above the standard you set. I'm hitting the ball out of the park. So is my entire team, so is 75% of the employees I know. We are doing our best, the company doing poorly isn't a result of our failings. That's not......I'm going to use the f-word here.....fair.  

That's why people get pissed off enough to strike.


I would be fine if my pay was directly proportional to the quality and quantity of my work, but that will never be the case.

In reply to SV reX :

Yeah, that is the distinction I was trying to make.  Being hired (contracted / commissioned) to make something vs making something and selling it.  Both happen in Hollywood but most of it seems to be of the hired to variety, which, in most industries, is not a royalty situation.

I am afraid I disagree that if someone is commissioned to do something, they are the ones selling it.  Seems by definition, they are not.  They are "selling" their services and talent much like most every other worker in the world.

On the list of things that I need to spend my time caring about, this isn't particularly high, but if what the union is saying about having made major concessions to "save the company" is true and if it is also true that now that things are healthy again, they're not being rewarded in line with how much they gave up before, I can't really argue too much.

I'm glad I'm not in a job where my pay and my negotiations with my employer are featured on the national news.  Personally, I think it's between the employees and the employer and not really any of my business.  I've got enough of my own E36 M3 to care about.

alfadriver said:

SV reX said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Eric, let's not make this a personal attack. I didn't introduce the word "childish" to this thread.

 

No, you just accuse the workers as being jealous. As if doing that isn't a personal attack on random uaw workers.  Or the very related base engineers at Ford, which I was one of those. 

When union leaders raise issues such as executive compensation that is a way to score publicity points. That is most likely not because the line workers are bolting on mirrors grumbling that they should also be making millions a year. Pointing out the disparity is an easy way to get public opinion on their side, which would be more difficult if they bleated on about how the auto workers demanded triple an average blue collar salary instead of the double they currently get.

alfadriver said:

The real big deal is that the upper management bonuses are considerably more regular in size than the minions. So realistically, they are not bonuses. So the UAW would like to see the bonuses become fixed and not variable. Especially when the minion bonuses are largely a reflection of management decisions vs their hard work. So if someone makes a last sec cut and causes a $1B warrantee problem, we suffer when they don't. Hardly a way to motivate your work force. 

so the answer is "give us an absurdly huge pay raise", not "fix the merit structure"?

this feels like the equivalent to "there is a fire in the kitchen... quick! flatten the whole neighborhood before it spreads"

4cylndrfury said:

alfadriver said:

The real big deal is that the upper management bonuses are considerably more regular in size than the minions. So realistically, they are not bonuses. So the UAW would like to see the bonuses become fixed and not variable. Especially when the minion bonuses are largely a reflection of management decisions vs their hard work. So if someone makes a last sec cut and causes a $1B warrantee problem, we suffer when they don't. Hardly a way to motivate your work force. 

so the answer is "give us an absurdly huge pay raise", not "fix the merit structure"?

It's the responsibility of C-suite management to fix systemic issues, including that merit structure. If they did that, the union members would probably be more content.

The workers can't force the C-suite to get their act together, but they can make it uncomfortable for them not to.

For sure the price of cars will go up, it has to to cover the cost of labour.

What I find fascinating is the reality that the next generation of consumers will not be buying stuff like cars, insurance, houses, house parts or any of the other big ticket items that are related to middle-class consumers; because nobody is going to pay them enough to buy the stuff. I have this  mental image of a Giant Sequoya tree with a sapling sized trunk growing out of the ground trying to support the monster tree.

NOHOME said:

I have this  mental image of a Giant Sequoya tree with a sapling sized truck growing out of the ground trying to support the monster tree.

It's like that, but there are thousands of little saplings so they don't look individually important.