"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

McGurn seems to have a few blind spots. He's saying that GM is not
competitive against car companies in countries that have single-payer
health care paid by taxes, and his solution is to have the workers pay
for their own health care...which is supposed to protect them if they're
laid off...with, one assumes, no income at the time...and they're covered
by some kind of unexplained catastrophic health care plan which makes up
the bulk of the high insurance rates now...hmmmm...

The high cost of medical, as well as retirement benefits is what I hear
most cited as reasons for Detroit's inability to compete.

That's what we keep hearing, all right. The costs are very high, but I'd
like to see a detailed accounting -- especially against German car makers.
Indications are that it's not really a competitive issue, against them, at
least. There's a lot of piling-on here by the press and I doubt if most of
them know what they're talking about, beyond GM and Chrysler's press
releases.

One thing I've not heard cited is the relative top loading of white collar
jobs and top level management and associated salaries, compared to other
car makers.
Not asking you to go do the research, but off hand do you have any ideas
how this might compare?

Only from a few anecdotes I've seen in the press. On first approximation it
looks more like the same situation we've faced since the '70s: not the level
of salaries so much as the number of them. Detroit apparently still has a
top-heavy management structure.

But it would take some digging. When I was covering car-industry issues in
the metalworking press, it took a lot of time to stay on top of it.

--
Ed Huntress