The transplant factories employee mostly younger workers and have almost
no retirees on the books.  Healthcare expenses, and healthcare insurance
costs, go up exponentially as a person ages.

John

On 12/28/05 2:21 PM, in article
GtCsf.11074$nm.5040@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net, "Elle"
<honda.lioness@earthlink.net> wrote:

This all sounds right at face value, until you look at that new Nissan, or
Honda, or Toyota and note that they are all built in US plants using > 90%
US content by US workers.  I don't think healthcare is the real issue.

snip

CEOs who lead

<this is an auto

debate the

Today's NY Times editorial page has fascinating commentary
related to the above discussion as follows:

"Big Labor's Big Secret" (NY Times, Dec. 28, 2005)

As most Americans are aware, our auto industry is in a
crisis.

Workers' wages are falling, and hundreds of thousands of
jobs are being sent offshore. ...

How did we get here? There are many causes: poor car
designs, high pension costs, increased foreign competition.
But much of it comes down to the overwhelming health
insurance costs borne by the auto makers. This is why the
union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, has urged Congress to
enact sweeping health insurance reforms.

If the government paid everyone's health insurance bills, as
those in Canada and most of Europe do, Detroit's Big Three
could save at least $1,300 per vehicle. Profitability would
return. With deeper pockets, the auto makers could afford to
pay their suppliers. Communities would be spared layoffs.
...

Most advocates of universal health care focus on the
opposition of Republicans and insurance companies. But
perhaps the most important factor keeping an overhaul off
the national agenda is one that few Democrats acknowledge:
most of Mr. Gettelfinger's fellow labor leaders don't
support a single-payer system either.

The reason comes down to simple self-interest. The United
Auto Workers is one of the few private-sector unions that
doesn't run its own health plan. Rather, most have created
huge companies to administer their workers' plans, giving
them a large and often corrupt stake in the current system.

Opposition to a national health care plan is as much a part
of the American trade union tradition as the picket line. It
goes back to Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American
Federation of Labor, who railed at early Congressional
efforts to pass a law mandating employer coverage as Britain
had done, which he said had "taken much of the virility out
of the British unions."

This line of thinking led to the notorious decision in 1991
by the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s health care committee to reject a
proposal that the federation support a single-payer plan.
The majority said a national system simply had no chance in
Congress, but others saw a conflict of interest:
government-supplied health care would put union-run plans
out of business.

The deciding vote was cast by Robert Georgine, chief
executive of Ullico, a huge insurance provider created by
the unions. A decade later, Mr. Georgine, who was paid $3
million a year by Ullico, and several other company
directors - all heads of major A.F.L.-C.I.O. unions - were
investigated by a federal panel for insider trading
involving Ullico stock. Mr. Georgine and several directors
resigned, and this year he agreed to pay back $13 million to
the company.

Let's face it: union-administered health insurance funds
provide irresistible opportunities for labor leaders. First
there's patronage: hiring friends and relatives. Then there
are the conventions, junkets and retreats provided by the
plans and the providers. And for those willing to cross the
line of legality, there's the chance to take kickbacks from
health care vendors.

Many officials are charged, but few go to prison, even when
money allegedly winds up in Mafia hands. Last month federal
prosecutors lost a criminal case in Brooklyn in which they
charged that the Genovese crime family leaned on two
International Longshoremen's Association local presidents
to, among other things, choose a favored health vendor.

Evidently, the jury was convinced by the defense's argument
that the union leaders were under duress. Even Lawrence
Ricci, the principal accused Genovese figure, was acquitted,
although he disappeared during the trial and never
testified. (His body was found last month in the trunk of a
car in Union, N.J.)

Despite shrinking membership, organized labor still has
enough money and muscle to get behind a campaign for
national health insurance. Last month, public-sector unions
in California came up with tens of millions of dollars in a
successful campaign to defeat a ballot measure that
challenged their right to use union dues for political
purposes.

The problem is getting American unions to fight for common
concerns as opposed to narrow institutional interests. It
may just be that a broad-scale union overhaul will have to
precede one in American health care.

----

By Robert Fitch, author of the forthcoming "Solidarity for
Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and
Undermined America's Promise."

So the UAW (the auto industry union) has no ties to health
insurance; its industry is being devastated by health costs;
and so the UAW is for a national health plan, which is
consistent with the whole (let's face it, socialist or at
least social-democrat) notion of unions.

(But what ties to health insurance profits do auto companies
have? Would it pay for the CEOs of auto companies to lobby
for a national health plan?)

Unions in other industries have ties to health insurance;
are in industries not /as/ devastated (knock on wood) by
health costs; and so oppose a national health plan, which is
antithetical to the notion of unions. And, apparently, they
have opposed such a plan as a matter of historical record.

<snip>

For sure, Elle, plus the enormous cultural reticence to admit that the
free market / rugged individualism isn't hacking this particular issue
and that the govt might offer something worthwhile.

There's a term which I can't remember which theorizes that one problem
with health care in the US stems from the insured consumer's insulation
from the economic consequences of his health care choices. Sounds as
though that's what you're talking about above?

I'll believe you. :-)

I don't know.

I think it's hard to compare the successes of two companies
satisfying the same basic need, but also many others,
operating in two different countries, with different
cultures  and mores and different governmental philosophies.

I reckon you're mostly right.

I think also of reports (or the cinemization) of lawsuits
where car companies defend against making a certain design
change, because the cost of the 'wrongful death' yada
lawsuits is much lower than the cost of the design change.

Still, on a day to day basis with engineers, I don't buy
that they are idiots who never object to certain proposed
features as being inherently unsafe that will result in a
car with many problems, threatening life and property. And
so costing the company money, yada.

After I posted, I did notice one of the lastest articles on
GM's problems said a major component was the cost of the
company's health care plans.

Some are saying that's GM management's screwup, though.

So, no, I don't have all the facts. Surely there's a site or
two that talks about why GM and Ford are doing so poorly,
and how Honda manages in comparison.

As you suggest below, my suspicion is that some large
companies are already starting to push somewhat for
universal care. (I may have read as much.) They won't be
gung-ho for it, I suppose, for some time (if ever), because
their business ties in with that of insurers.

I'm not talking about a conspiracy, but more about how
executives look out for each other; one hand washes the
other; etc.

Sure.

We'd then maybe have a two-pronged attack on current
American cultural mores: With the ailing American car
companies, more small cars would go on the road. With the
ailing health insurance system, Americans would be more
willing to accept catastrophic health insurance plans and
not accept every last procedure/drug (efficacies being not
clear) their doctor prescribed.

<snip>

Advertising first, check out the history of GM.

Didn't the Japanese carmakers answer this question in the 70's?

Which safety innovations (after the rear view mirror, which was a racing
innovation) were not mandated? The US automakers have fought every
change tooth & nail (emissions as well as safety - Ford famously tried
to sell safety in their '56 models & lost a bundle).

So, you don't want to comment until all the facts are in? (a famous
quote by Gen Turgidson in "Dr. Strangelove"). ;)

The Japanese carmakers seem to be able to crank out cars profitably from
their US plants, so I don't think it's primarily the cost of labor. Did
you have anything specific in mind with "labor problems"?

"These companies have obligations to shareholders and their employees to
turn a pretty profit, or else"

Leading to many very unhappy employees & shareholders as of late.  ;)

One final observation - the price of every new GM car includes something
like $1,500 for health care costs (plus another chunk for retirement),
which foreign carmakers, Asian & European, don't incur because those
countries have universal health coverage & retirement. Wouldn't it be
ironic if it were the auto (and other) CEOs who lead the charge to
universal health coverage in the US? <this is an auto related
observation, not a political one, and I won't debate the politics of
such a move>

I agree that marketing and advertising and making a buck
play a huge role in design. I agree the outcome is most
certainly not always a better design, engineering-wise. I
could even stomach someone's argument that most design
changes are not engineering oriented at all.

But America is also a revoltingly consumer-ist society.
Which came first--the advertising blitzes pushing "bigger;
more," or some sort of instinctual drive from Americans to
insist on bigger more--is debatable.

So Americans want pickup trucks and SUVs which rarely
satisfy any physical need and are merely to keep up with the
Joneses. What's an auto company executive to do to keep food
on his family's table? So to speak.

But safety, things like better fuel mileage or more Hp
performance, are not ignored. Many improvements do lengthen
the life of a car, etc.

Yes, I know. But I hesitate to say more without reading up
on why GM and Ford has been going down the proverbial can
the last several years. I thought it was more like labor
problems: GM and Ford can't build a car cheaply. I dunno.
Someone can post a citation on why they're failing while I
guess Honda and Toyota are doing fine. 'Cause America still
loves big, gas guzzling vehicles, from what I see.

You seem to be ignoring the <false> demand generated by skillful
advertising.

So how much has GM made the past year? Ford? How about Honda & Toyota? Hmmm.

Do you think that car companies should produce what the
companies think is right for the American consumer, or what
consumers want?

These companies have obligations to shareholders and their
employees to turn a pretty profit, or else.

and instead of investing that money on a DECENT small car design, they
blow it.

meanwhile, the japanese took the money they made off selling excellent
small cars and trucks, and invested it in making bigger trucks. the
tundra is a really nice truck! course it should be, since the engine
design was based on the lexus LS series.

I give you the pick-up and the platform frame SUV built on chasis and
suspensions from 1950 that all the people in the country have flocked to
dealerships like sheep and plunked billions of dollars on and to which the
automobile companies have spent next to nothing on in technology.

When someone posts a decent citation of whatever Honda is
proposing be flown-by-wire, then comment will be worthwhile.

To categorically reject change because the "current system
is good enough" is foolishness and demonstrates
obliviousness to the many points in automotive history when
of course the old way was "good enough," but the new way
yielded some advantage, so it predominated.

We have been served up a lot of dumb ideas in the past...ideas
which were interesting, but not worth the cost and the risk.

I am sure we will continue to make firm advancements in
transportation science.  If Honda wants to spend the  money
to offer a solution to a problem that does not exist, go for it.

Ya, so was the horse and buggy, the bicycle, etc.

This reminds me of Bill Gates comment a few decades ago that
no one should ever need more than 64k of RAM on his/her
computer.

What you quote is incredibly short-sighted. It demonstrates
a lack of willingness to do any kind of investigation of why
fly-by-wire was considered. In short, these are the words
not of an engineer, scientist, or technical person but a
ninny, and a ninny tired of having more demanded of him for
his labors, at that.

He's happy with the status quo. Others are not. He should
get out of the business or certainly never enter it.

    This concern has been answered eloquently by a contributor to
these newsgroups a few years ago.  Sorry I can't name the author, but
that person hit the nail squarely on the head with these words:

    ".........more importantly than that, you've got to have the
insight and wisdom to know when something has been developed to the
point where further development amounts to pointless engineering
masturbation.

    "The hydraulic brake system is a textbook model of development
to perfection. So was the hydromechanical automatic transmission --
computerisation of the automatic transmission has taken away
three-for-one in durability, dependability and cost of repair what
little it has given us. We know how to make steering systems that work
and essentially never give trouble. There is, therefore, no valid
reason for steer-by-wire."

Hi there.

I have been looking at the new Honda Civic, it's pretty sweet, and the
welds and everything are as nice as anything I have ever seen. I just
have a question about the "Drive by wire" system that they are supposed
to have.

What happens if the Engine dies on you? In my current car, my timing
chip went once and the engine went out. I had enough steering control
left, even without power steering, to pull my car over before it came
to a stop. If the drive by wire system has no "real" or active
connection, how can it work if the engine or electronics quit on you?
Are there any backups built into the system in case any of that stuff
happens? And what if your battery dies and you need to push the car?
Can you turn the steering wheel to adjust your wheels when you push the
car?

Much thanks, sorry to bother.

David